That Was Another Of The Things Which I Distinctly
Remembered From The Year 1864, And I Did Not Find The Spectacle Of The
Modern Penitents Covering The Holy Steps Different In 1908.
Now, as
then, there was something incongruous in their fashions and aspirations,
but one could not doubt that it was a genuine piety that nerved them to
climb up and down the hard ascent on their knees, or, at the worst, that
it was good exercise.
Still, I would rather leave my reader the sense of
that most noble fagade of the church, with its lofty balustraded
entablature, where the gigantic Christ and ten of his saints look out
forever to the Alban hills.
XIV
TIVOLI AND FRASCATI
One of the most agreeable illusions of travel is a sort of expectation
that if you will give objects of interest time enough they will present
themselves to you, and, if they will not actually come to you in your
hotel, will happen in your way when you go out. This was my notion of
the right way of seeing Rome, but, as the days of my winter passed, so
many memorable monuments failed not merely to seek me out, but stiffly
held aloof from me in my walks abroad, that I began to feel anxious lest
I should miss them altogether. I had, for instance, always had the
friendliest curiosity concerning Tivoli and Frascati as the two most
amiable Roman neighborhoods, and hoped to see both of them in some
informal and casual sort; but they persisted so long in keeping off on
their respective hills that I saw something positive on niy part must be
done. Clearly I must make the advances; and so when, one morning of
mid-March, a friend sent to ask if we would not motor out to Tivoli with
him and his family, I closed eagerly with the chance of a compromise
which would save feeling all round. My friend has never yet known how he
was bringing Tivoli and me together after a mutual diffidence, but, as
he was a poet, I am sure he will be glad to know now.
Our road across the Campagna lay the greater part of the distance beside
the tram-line, but at other points parted with it and stretched rough,
if lately mended, and smooth, if long neglected, between the wide,
lonely pastures and narrow drill-sown fields of wheat. The Campagna is
said to be ploughed only once in five years by the peasants for the
proprietors, who have philosophized its fertility as something that can
be better restored by the activities of nature in that time than by
phosphates in less. As they are mostly Roman patricians, they have
always felt able to wait; but now it is said that northern Italian
capital and enterprise are coming in, and the Campagna will soon be
cropped every season, though as yet its chief yield seemed to be the
two-year-old colts we saw browsing about.
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