Our Young Gentlemen
Who Go To Rome Will Do Well To Be Upon Their Guard Against A Set
Of Sharpers,
(Some of them of our own country,) who deal in
pictures and antiques, and very often impose upon the uninformed
Stranger, by selling him trash, as the productions of the most
celebrated artists. The English are more than any other
foreigners exposed to this imposition. They are supposed to have
more money to throw away; and therefore a greater number of
snares are laid for them. This opinion of their superior wealth
they take a pride in confirming, by launching out into all manner
of unnecessary expence: but, what is still more dangerous, the
moment they set foot in Italy, they are seized with the ambition
of becoming connoisseurs in painting, musick, statuary, and
architecture; and the adventurers of this country do not fail to
flatter this weakness for their own advantage. I have seen in
different parts of Italy, a number of raw boys, whom Britain
seemed to have poured forth on purpose to bring her national
character into contempt, ignorant, petulant, rash, and
profligate, without any knowledge or experience of their own,
without any director to improve their understanding, or
superintend their conduct. One engages in play with an infamous
gamester, and is stripped perhaps in the very first partie:
another is pillaged by an antiquated cantatrice; a third is
bubbled by a knavish antiquarian; and a fourth is laid under
contribution by a dealer in pictures. Some turn fiddlers, and
pretend to compose: but all of them talk familiarly of the arts,
and return finished connoisseurs and coxcombs, to their own
country. The most remarkable phaenomenon of this kind, which I
have seen, is a boy of seventy-two, now actually travelling
through Italy, for improvement, under the auspices of another boy
of twenty-two. When you arrive at Rome, you receive cards from
all your country-folks in that city: they expect to have the
visit returned next day, when they give orders not to be at home;
and you never speak to one another in the sequel. This is a
refinement in hospitality and politeness, which the English have
invented by the strength of their own genius, without any
assistance either from France, Italy, or Lapland. No Englishman
above the degree of a painter or cicerone frequents any coffee-house
at Rome; and as there are no public diversions, except in
carnival-time, the only chance you have of seeing your
compatriots is either in visiting the curiosities, or at a
conversazione. The Italians are very scrupulous in admitting
foreigners, except those who are introduced as people of quality:
but if there happens to be any English lady of fashion at Rome,
she generally keeps an assembly, to which the British subjects
resort. In my next, I shall communicate, without ceremony or
affectation, what further remarks I have made at Rome, without
any pretence, however, to the character of a connoisseur, which,
without all doubt, would fit very aukwardly upon, - Dear Sir, Your
Friend and Servant.
LETTER XXX
NICE, February 28, 1765.
DEAR SIR, - Nothing can be more agreeable to the eyes of a
stranger, especially in the heats of summer, than the great
number of public fountains that appear in every part of Rome,
embellished with all the ornaments of sculpture, and pouring
forth prodigious quantities of cool, delicious water, brought in
aqueducts from different lakes, rivers, and sources, at a
considerable distance from the city. These works are the remains
of the munificence and industry of the antient Romans, who were
extremely delicate in the article of water: but, however, great
applause is also due to those beneficent popes who have been at
the expence of restoring and repairing those noble channels of
health, pleasure, and convenience. This great plenty of water,
nevertheless, has not induced the Romans to be cleanly. Their
streets, and even their palaces, are disgraced with filth. The
noble Piazza Navona, is adorned with three or four fountains, one
of which is perhaps the most magnificent in Europe, and all of
them discharge vast streams of water: but, notwithstanding this
provision, the piazza is almost as dirty, as West Smithfield,
where the cattle are sold in London. The corridores, arcades, and
even staircases of their most elegant palaces, are depositories
of nastiness, and indeed in summer smell as strong as spirit of
hartshorn. I have a great notion that their ancestors were not
much more cleanly. If we consider that the city and suburbs of
Rome, in the reign of Claudius, contained about seven millions of
inhabitants, a number equal at least to the sum total of all the
souls in England; that great part of antient Rome was allotted to
temples, porticos, basilicae, theatres, thermae, circi, public
and private walks and gardens, where very few, if any, of this
great number lodged; that by far the greater part of those
inhabitants were slaves and poor people, who did not enjoy the
conveniencies of life; and that the use of linen was scarce
known; we must naturally conclude they were strangely crouded
together, and that in general they were a very frowzy generation.
That they were crouded together appears from the height of their
houses, which the poet Rutilius compared to towers made for
scaling heaven. In order to remedy this inconvenience, Augustus
Caesar published a decree, that for the future no houses should
be built above seventy feet high, which, at a moderate
computation, might make six stories. But what seems to prove,
beyond all dispute, that the antient Romans were dirty creatures,
are these two particulars. Vespasian laid a tax upon urine and
ordure, on pretence of being at a great expence in clearing the
streets from such nuisances; an imposition which amounted to about
fourteen pence a year for every individual; and when Heliogabalus
ordered all the cobwebs of the city and suburbs to be collected,
they were found to weigh ten thousand pounds. This was intended
as a demonstration of the great number of inhabitants; but it was
a proof of their dirt, rather than of their populosity.
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