le witness can doubt that
the Italians will be equal to this as well as their other national
undertakings. These in Rome are peculiarly difficult and onerous,
because they must be commensurate with the scale of antiquity. In a city
surviving amid the colossal ruins of the past it would be grotesque to
build anything of the modest modern dimensions such as would satisfy the
eye in other capitals. The Palace of Finance, at a time when Italian
paper was at a discount almost equal to that of American paper during
the Civil War, had to be prophetic of the present solvency in size. The
yet-unfinished Palace of Justice (one dare not recognize its beauty
above one's breath) must be planned so huge that the highest story had
to be left off if the foundations were to support the superstructure;
the memorial of Victor Emmanuel II. must be of a vastness in keeping
with the monuments of imperial Rome, some of which it will partly
obscure. Yet as the nation has grown in strength under burdens and
duties, it will doubtless prove adequate to the colossal architectural
enterprises of its capital. Private speculation in Rome brought disaster
twenty-five years ago, but now the city has overflowed with new life the
edifices that long stood like empty sepulchres, and public enterprises
cannot finally fail; otherwise we should not be digging the Panama Canal
or be trying to keep the New York streets in repair. We may confide in
the ability of the Italians to carry out their undertakings and to pay
the cost out of their own pockets. It is easy to criticise them, but we
cannot criticise them more severely than they criticise themselves; and
perhaps, as our censure cannot profit them, we might with advantage to
ourselves, now and then, convert it into recognition of the great things
they have accomplished.

XIII. CASUAL IMPRESSIONS

The day that we arrived in Rome the unclouded sun was yellow on the
white dust of the streets, which is never laid by a municipal
watering-cart, though sometimes it is sprinkled into mire from the
garden-hose of the abutting hotels; and in my rashness I said that for
Rome you want sun and you want youth. Yet there followed many gray days
when my age found Rome very well indeed, and I would not have the
septuagenarian keep away because he is no longer in the sunny sixties.
He may see through his glasses some things hidden even from the eyes of
the early forties. If he drives out beyond the Porta Pia, say, so