the Forum brought a keen sense of
disappointment. I knew that they could only be mere fragments and
rubbish, but I was not prepared to find them so. I learned that I
had all along secretly hoped for some dignity of neighborhood, some
affectionate solicitude on the part of Nature to redeem these works of
Art from the destruction that had befallen them. But in hollows below
the level of the dirty cowfield, wandered over by evil-eyed buffaloes,
and obscenely defiled by wild beasts of men, there stood here an
arch, there a pillar, yonder a cluster of columns crowned by a bit
of frieze; and yonder again, a fragment of temple, half-gorged by
the facade of a hideous Renaissance church; then a height of vaulted
brick-work, and, leading on to the Coliseum, another arch, and then
incoherent columns overthrown and mixed with dilapidated walls--mere
phonographic consonants, dumbly representing the past, out of which
all vocal glory had departed. The Coliseum itself does not much better
express a certain phase of Roman life than does the Arena at Verona;
it is larger only to the foot-rule, and it seemed not grander
otherwise, while it is vastly more ruinous. Even the Pantheon failed
to impress me at first sight, though I found myself disposed to return
to it again and again, and to be more and more affected by it.

Modern Rome appeared, first and last, hideous. It is the least
interesting town in Italy, and the architecture is hopelessly
ugly--especially the architecture of the churches. The Papal city
contrives at the beginning to hide the Imperial city from your
thought, as it hides it in such a great degree from your eye, and old
Rome only occurs to you in a sort of stupid wonder over the depth at
which it is buried. I confess that I was glad to get altogether away
from it after a first look at the ruins in the Forum, and to take
refuge in the Conservatorio delle Mendicanti, where we were charged
to see the little Virginia G. The Conservatorio, though a charitable
institution, is not so entirely meant for mendicants as its name would
imply, but none of the many young girls there were the children of
rich men. They were often enough of parentage actually hungry and
ragged, but they were often also the daughters of honest poor folk,
who paid a certain sum toward their maintenance and education in the
Conservatorio. Such was the case with little Virginia, whose father
was at Florence, doubly impeded from seeing her by the fact that