"You May Guess What I Felt At First Sight Of The City Of
Rome."
"When you arrive at Rome," he says later, in somewhat more
accustomed vein, "you receive cards from all your country folk 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." It is needless to recapitulate Smollett's
views of Rome. Every one has his own, and a passing traveller's
annotations are just about as nourishing to the imagination as a
bibliographer's note on the Bible. Smollett speaks in the main
judiciously of the Castle of St. Angelo, the Piazza and the
interior of St. Peter's, the Pincian, the Forum, the Coliseum,
the Baths of Caracalla, and the other famous sights of successive
ages. On Roman habits and pastimes and the gullibility of the
English cognoscente he speaks with more spice of authority. Upon
the whole he is decidedly modest about his virtuoso vein, and
when we reflect upon the way in which standards change and idols
are shifted from one pedestal to another, it seems a pity that
such modesty has not more votaries. In Smollett's time we must
remember that Hellenic and primitive art, whether antique or
medieval, were unknown or unappreciated. The reigning models of
taste in ancient sculpture were copies of fourth-century
originals, Hellenistic or later productions.
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