e city extended over
fourteen months. Certainly no other passage of my boyhood time looms so
large or is rooted so deep.

But the passion for Rome (unless one be a Byron) is not a plant of
sudden growth, and I dare say that, during those first frigid weeks,
I may have shared my father's whimsical aversion to the city. He has
described, in his journals, how all things seemed to be what they should
not; and he was terribly disgusted with the filth that defiled the ruins
and the street corners. He was impressed by the ruins, but deplored
their nakedness. "The marble of them grows black or brown, it is true,"
says he, "and shows its age in that way; but it remains hard and
sharp, and does not become again a part of nature, as stone walls do in
England; some dry and dusty grass sprouts along the ledges of a ruin,
as in the Coliseum; but there is no green mantle of ivy spreading itself
over the gray dilapidation." We stumbled upon the Fountain of Trevi
in one of our early rambles, not knowing what it was. "One of these
fountains," writes my father, referring to it, "occupies the whole side
of a great edifice, and represents Neptune and his steeds, who seem to
be sliding down with a cataract that tumbles over a ledge of rocks
into a marble-bordered lake, the whole--except the fall of water
itself--making up an exceedingly cumbrous and ridiculous affair." He
goes to St. Peter's, and "it disappointed me terribly by its want of
effect, and the little justice it does to its real magnitude externally;
as to the interior, I am not sure that it would not be even more grand
and majestic if it were less magnificent, though I should be sorry to
see the experiment tried. I had expected something dim and vast, like
the great English cathedrals, only more vast and dim and gray; but there
is as much difference as between noonday and twilight." The pictures,
too, were apt in these first days to go against the grain with him.
Contemplating a fresco representing scenes in purgatory, he broke forth:
"I cannot speak as to the truth of the representation, but, at all
events, it was purgatory to look at this poor, faded rubbish. Thank
Heaven, there is such a thing as whitewash; and I shall always be glad
to hear of its application to old frescoes, even at the sacrifice of
remnants of real excellence!" Such growlings torture the soul of the
connoisseur; but the unregenerate man, hearing them, leaps up and shouts
for joy. He found the old masters, i