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. A good round tax, such as Carlsbad levies upon all
sojourners, if laid upon the multitudinous tourists joining in such a
chorus of criticism of Rome would give them the indefeasible right to
their opinions and would help to replete a treasury which they believe
is always in danger of being exhausted.
III
THE COLOSSEUM AND THE FORUM
As I have told, the first visit I paid to the antique world in Rome was
at the Colosseum the day after our arrival. For some unknown reason I
was going to begin with the Baths of Caracalla, but, as it happened,
these were the very last ruins we visited in Rome; and I do not know
just what accident diverted us to the Colosseum; perhaps we stopped
because it was on the way to the Baths and looked an easier conquest. At
any rate, I shall never regret that we began with it.
After twoscore years and three it was all strangely familiar. I do not
say that in 1864 there was a horde of boys at the entrance wishing to
sell me postcards - these are a much later invention of the Enemy - but I
am sure of the men with trays full of mosaic pins and brooches, and
looking, they and their wares, just as they used to look. The Colosseum
itself looked unchanged, though I had read that a minion of the wicked
Italian government had once scraped its flowers and weeds away and
cleaned it up so that it was perfectly spoiled. But it would take a good
deal more than that to spoil the Colosseum, for neither the rapine of
the mediaeval nobles, who quarried their palaces from it, nor the
industrial enterprise of some of the popes, who wished to turn it into
workshops, nor the archeology of United Italy had sufficed to weaken in
it that hold upon the interest proper to the scene of the most
stupendous variety shows that the world has yet witnessed. The terrible
stunts in which men fought one another for the delight of other men in
every manner of murder, and wild beasts tore the limbs of those glad to
perish for their faith, can be as easily imagined there as ever, and the
traveller who visits the place has the assistance of increasing hordes
of other tourists in imagining them.
I will not be the one to speak slight of that enterprise which marshals
troops of the personally conducted through the place and instructs them
in divers languages concerning it. Save your time and money so, if you
have not too much of either, and be one of an English, French, or German
party, rather than try to puzzle the facts out for yourself, with one
contorted eye on your Baedeker and the other on the object in question.
In such parties a sort of domestic relation seems to grow up through
their associated pleasures in sight-seeing, and they are like family
parties, though politer and patienter among themselves than real family
parties. They are commonly very serious, though they doubtless all have
their moments of gayety; and in the Colosseum I saw a French party
grouped for photography by a young woman of their number, who ran up and
down before them with a kodak and coquet-tishly hustled them into
position with pretty, bird-like chirpings of appeal and reproach, and
much graceful self-evidencing. I do not censure her behavior, though
doubtless there were ladies among the photographed who thought it
overbold; if the reader had been young and blond and _svelte,_ in a
Parisian gown and hat, with narrow russet shoes, not too high-heeled for
good taste, I do not believe he would have been any better; or, if he
would, I should not have liked him so well.
On the earlier day which I began speaking of I found that I was
insensibly attaching myself to an English-hearing party of the
personally conducted, in the dearth of my own recollections of the local
history, but I quickly detached myself for shame and went back and
meekly hired the help of a guide who had already offered his services in
English, and whom I had haughtily spurned in his own tongue. His
English, though queer, was voluminous; but I am not going to drag the
reader at our heels laden with lore which can be applied only on the
spot or in the presence of postal-card views of the Colosseum. It is
enough that before my guide released us we knew where was the box of
Caesar, whom those about to die saluted, and where the box of the
Vestals whose fatal thumbs gave the signal of life or death for the
unsuccessful performer; where the wild beasts were kept, and where the
Christians; where were the green-rooms of the gladiators, who waited
chatting for their turn to go on and kill one another. One must make
light of such things or sink under them; and if I am trying to be a
little gay, it is for the readers' sake, whom I would not have perish of
their realization. Our guide spared us nothing, such was his conscience
or his science, and I wish I could remember his name, for I could
commend him as most intelligent, even, when least intelligible.
However, the traveller will know him by the winning smile of his
rosy-faced little son, who follows him round and is doubtless bringing
himself up as the guide of coming generations of tourists.
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