In Spite Of The Sort Of Motherly, Or At
The Worst Step-Motherly, Welcome Which She Gives To All Us
Closely or
distantly related children of hers; in spite of her immemorial fame and
her immortal beauty; in spite of
Her admirable housekeeping, in which
she rises every morning at daybreak and sweeps clean every hole and
corner of her dwelling; in spite of her wonderful sky, her life-giving
air; in spite of the level head she keeps in her political affairs, and
the miraculous poise she maintains between the antagonism of State and
Church; in spite of her wise eclecticism in modern improvements; in
spite of her admirable hygiene, which has constituted her one of the
healthiest, if not the healthiest city in Europe; in spite of the
solvency which she preserves amid expenses to which the vast scale of
antiquity obliges her in all her public enterprises (a thing to be
hereafter studied), we, the ungracious offspring of her youth, come from
our North and West and censure and criticise and carp. I have seldom
conversed with any fellow-visitor in Rome who could not improve her in
some phase or other, who could not usefully advise her, who, at the
best, did not patronize her. I offer myself as almost the sole example
of a stranger who was contented with her as she is, or as she is going
to be without his help; and I am the more confident, therefore, in
suggesting to Rome an expedient by which she can repair the finances
which her visitors say are so foolishly and wastefully mismanaged in her
civic schemes.
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