Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-10-27
IN THE ETERNAL CITY.
Disappointed Tourist fin Rone-The Ro-
 man and the Greek.

man and the Greek.
 It was not unlike shock of pain or disap- pointment when for the first time threaded my way through the Roman streets, passed out into the Forum and wandered around the Coliseum. So dingy and denuded did the relics of old Rome appear to me that they were more like the few brown bones which the spade of the sexton has just thrown up by the side of reopened grave. l have never seen place where the remains were so few and the suggestions of what was lost were so many. Rome looked like place which first had been a cradle and afterwards had been turned into grave.
 It seemed as if everything had been born there, everything had grown old there, every thing had died there, and everything had been buried there. Rome is the city of the Holy Sepulchre At Jerusalem pilgrims visit the spot where Christ was once laid. At Rome we seem to visit the shrine where old Time himself had been buried. Under this head I may briefly note down a few first i'm pressions.
 It was said that Augustus found Rome of brick and left it of marble. It might be added that the Cloths, the popes and the nobles found Rome of marble and left it of brick, completely have these despoiling powers peeled off the beautiful white flesh and left Rome like a body, brown, shapeless
  loveliness. But the Romans themselves pre- pared the way for this deSolatSsn. Their par simony brought its own penishment. For parsimony, we must remember, is a sin fol- lowed up by its special retribution, quite as much as prodigality. The men of Rome hard, practical and utilitarian-were as pc nurious in all works of art as they were shamefully extravagant in all pursuits of physical enjoyment. Even ill the use of the cheap travertine stone they were ridiculously stingy. But when it came to marble they were by necessity as well as by nature most economical in the use of it. Athens had whole mount of marble at her back door, and could hew out of Pentelius all the shrines and statues she wanted. Rome had almost the same advan- tages; for it can hardly be urged as an apol- ogy for the city on the Fiber, that she was at a distance from the mountains of Luna and the great quarries of Carrara, when we re member that an easy waterway was ever open between the shores of Liguria and the foot of the Palatine; and when we remember, moreover, how no obstacles were allowed to remain between the Roman and the object of his ambition or his appetite-both of which he ready to gratify at an un- bounded price.
 But when it comes to works of taste the Roman betrayed his true nature. With him nothing was too much when lavished on bod fly qualification, nothing was too little when spent on art. The Athenian built his temples worthily of the gods in solid blocks of mar ble, in unmeasured splendor, giving to the deities what cost him something. The Roman, when he came to raise his temples, was con- tent to make them of brick or stucco or cheap stone, and then to sheathe these in a thin cas- ing of marble. When, therefore, the destroy ing hands of Goth or the Gothic hands of later Roman nobles, such as the Colonnas, the Farnese and the Borghese families, were laid upon the ancient edifices, it was an easy task, as well as a great temptation, to remove these light coats of marble and to invest their rising palaces with such apparel of many colors as the marbles of old Rome pre- sented, ready made, to their rapacious hands. Had the men of Rome followed the example of the men of Athens, and dedicated to their divinities few sanctuaries of solid marble, they would have left behind them such mon uments as would have defed the assaults of later generations, and would have com manded at this day the wonder of the world. HI. Bernard Carpenter ill Boston Globe