Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1912-07-09
W YHAT shall we say OF Rome?
AAI What can we say? She Is
the worlds city of the ages,
w and 1t is improbable that

WV the worlds city of the ages,
w and 1t is improbable that
any conceivable combination
of advantages can ever produce
rival to her supreme charms. The
capital of the greatest empire of an
tiquity, and In more modern times the
metropolis of Christendom, she Is I'M
like any great city in the world. The
whole of Rome Is one vast museum,
In which the very galleries, palaces.
churches-which contain the finest OF
its treasures-are themselves but sin
gle items in that museum which is
Romo. What gives to all this its spe-
cial charm is that Rome is still liv-
Ing city, the capital of a nation, and
with an actual life OF its own, which
often enough can be seen in its direct
descent from antiquity.
When Hawthorne wrote his fas-
cinating tale of the Transformation, in
the early sos, Rome was a maze OF
narrow, unclean lanes, congeries of
evil smelling, squalid dwellings inter-
spersed with gloomy medieval pal
aces In sad disrepair. In short, an Ill
drained, ill-lit, unsavory old city, TEEN
ing with beggars, models, thieves and
outthroats, and, to cap all, the ac-
knowledged headquarters OF the malig
nant malarial fever. But the sQualid
city Of Hawthorne's time has now CIV
en- place to the fine, well ?built capital
OF United Italy. We must look to the
most unitarian reasons for any inter-
est We may feel in Rome today; to
health statistics, to sanitary reform,
to building laws. All these seem
prosaic when done under our eyes,
but the same things were full OF poetry
when done in the time of Augustus
and Trajan. Let us rid ourselves OF
the illusions of time and admit that
to have driven out dirt, brigandage,
and pestilence, and to have diminished
crime. is not unworthy tribute to
the glory of Rome as modern capital,
writes Harvey Middleton in Grit
Area Has Increased.
When the Italian troops entered the
city through the Porta Pia on the
memorable goth of September, 1870,
and papal Rome became the capital
of the reconstructed kingdom of Italy,
new era dawned. Since that day the
area covered by houses has been in
creased one-fourth, and the face OF
Rome has changed more in the past
40 years than in the previous three
centuries. Rome in the SOS had
population Of about $4,000. In 1911,
when Rome celebrated the fiftieth an
niversary of the Proclamation of the
Italian Kingdom with three great ex-
hibitions, the population had grown to
nearly half a million. II map OF
the city Of 1870 is placed opposite a
map of today 1t Is easy to see at what
point the increase of building has TAX
en- place. The space once covered by
the beautiful Ludovici Gardens is now
filled by wide streets. lined by tall,
handsome and perfectly dull but
healthy houses Other streets have
arisen on the gardens and fields which
lay on the Esquiline and Celian hills
between Santa Maria Maggiore and
st. John Lateran. A still larger mass
of houses-partly detached or semi
detached villa-like residences, partly
high blocks OF tenement dwellings in
habited by the poorer classes-has
sprung up in the district called the
Meadows of the Castle pratt di Cas-
tello), to the north of the Castle OF st.
Angelo, and to the north of the Vati-
cana region that was open country
from the time when Cincinnatus titled
its fields until 1870
At the opposite side OF the city
thickly set houses line the streets
which run out into the Campagna from
the Porta Pia and the Porta San Lo-
renzo, so that considerable suburbs
now cover what had been a perfectly
lonely and silent region from the days
of the Emperor Constantine to the
days of Pope Leo XIII. Open vine
yards have given place to factories,
warehouses and dwellings.
Three new bridges have been flung
across the Tiber to the former farm
lands of Cincinnatus. In this neigh
bcrhood, too, all along the city side OF
the Tiber, the embankment. which has
done so much for the health OF Rome,
has swept away innumerable tame