The sort, and I
should not be surprised if I went back to Rome after another forty-three
years to find most of them standing in 1951 where they now stand in
1908. Rome was not built in a day, and it will not be unbuilt or rebuilt
within the brief period that will make me one hundred and fourteen years
old. By that time I shall have outlived most of the medievalists, and I
can say to the few survivors: "There, you see that new Rome never went
half so far as you expected."
But no doubt it will go further than it has yet gone, in the way that is
for the good and comfort of mankind. In one of the newer quarters, of
which the Baths of Diocletian form the imperial centre, my just American
pride was flattered by tho sign on a handsome apartment-house going up
in gardened grounds, which advertised that it was to be finished with a
lift and steam-heating. Many of the newer houses are already supplied
with lifts, but central heating is as yet only beginning to spread from
the hotels, where steam has been installed in compliance with the
impassioned American demand to be warm all round when one is in-doors.
New Rome is not going so fast and so far but that it will keep, to
whatever end it reaches, one of the characteristic charms of the old and
older Rome. I shall expect to see when I come back in 1951 the same or
the like corners of garden walls, with the tops of shining foliage
peering over them, that now enchant the passer in the street; from the
windows of my electric-ele-vatored, steam-heated apartment I shall look
down into the seclusion of gardens, with the golden globes of orange
espaliers mellowing against the walls, and the fountain in the midst of
oleanders and of laurels
"Shaking its loosened silver in the sun."
Slim cypresses will then as now blacken through the delicate air against
the blue sky, and a stone-pine will spread its umbrella over some
sequestered nook. By that time the craze for the eucalyptus which now
possesses all Italy will be over, and every palm-tree will be cut down,
while the ilex will darken in its place and help the eternal youth of
the marbles to a greener old age of moss and mould in the gloom of its
spreading shade. All these things beautifully abound in Rome now, as
they always have abounded, and there is no reason to fear that they will
cease to abound.
Rome grows, and as Italy prospers it will grow more and more, for there
must forever be a great and famous capital where there has always been
one.
