A
furnace and a riddle out of which religion came to the Romans - a place
that has left no language. But below me, sunlit and easy (as it seemed
in the cooler air of that summit), was the arena upon which were first
fought out the chief destinies of the world.
And I still looked down upon it, wondering.
Was it in so small a space that all the legends of one's childhood
were acted? Was the defence of the bridge against so neighbouring and
petty an alliance? Were they peasants of a group of huts that handed
down the great inheritance of discipline, and made an iron channel
whereby, even to us, the antique virtues could descend as a living
memory? It must be so; for the villages and ruins in one landscape
comprised all the first generations of the history of Rome. The stones
we admire, the large spirit of the last expression came from that
rough village and sprang from the broils of that one plain; Rome was
most vigorous before it could speak. So a man's verse, and all he has,
are but the last outward appearance, late and already rigid, of an
earlier, more plastic, and diviner fire.
'Upon this arena,' I still said to myself, 'were first fought out the
chief destinies of the world'; and so, played upon by an unending
theme, I ate and drank in a reverie, still wondering, and then lay
down beneath the shade of a little tree that stood alone upon that
edge of a new world. And wondering, I fell asleep under the morning
sun.
But this sleep was not like the earlier oblivions that had refreshed
my ceaseless journey, for I still dreamt as I slept of what I was to
see, and visions of action without thought - pageants and
mysteries - surrounded my spirit; and across the darkness of a mind
remote from the senses there passed whatever is wrapped up in the
great name of Rome.
When I woke the evening had come. A haze had gathered upon the plain.
The road fell into Ronciglione, and dreams surrounded it upon every
side. For the energy of the body those hours of rest had made a fresh
and enduring vigour; for the soul no rest was needed. It had attained,
at least for the next hour, a vigour that demanded only the physical
capacity of endurance; an eagerness worthy of such great occasions
found a marching vigour for its servant.
In Ronciglione I saw the things that Turner drew; I mean the rocks
from which a river springs, and houses all massed together, giving the
steep a kind of crown. This also accompanied that picture, the soft
light which mourns the sun and lends half-colours to the world.
