Victor
Emmanuel The Great And Umberto The Kind Already Lie There; But Otherwise
The Wide Cyclopean Eye Of The Opening
In the roof of the rotunda looks
down upon a vacancy which even your own name, as written in the
Visitors' book, in the keeping of a solemn beadle, does not suffice to
fill, and which the lingering side altars scarcely relieve.
I proved the fact by successive visits; but, after all my content with
the outside of the Pantheon, I came to think that what you want in Rome
is not the best-preserved monument, not the most perfect pagan building,
but the most ruinous ruin you can get. I am not sure that you get this
in the mouldering memorials of the past on the Palatine Hill, but you
get something more nearly like it than anything I can think of at the
moment. In that imperial and patrician and plutocratic residential
quarter you see, if you are of the moderately moneyed middle class, what
the pride of life must always come to when it has its way; and your
consolation is full if you pause to reflect how some day Fifth Avenue
and the two millionaire blocks eastward will be as the Palatine now is.
Riches and power are of the same make in every time, though they may
wear different faces from age to age; and it will be well for the very
wealthy members of our smart set to keep this fact in mind when they
visit that huge sepulchre of human vainglory.
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