daughters. They know how to dispense with the apparatus of Persia, and yet be famous in the Rione Campo Marzo. They will get you three or four pauls' worth of flowers such as you would have to give a couple of guineas for at home; produce you one or two tenori robusti for nothing, or on the implied understanding that you take some tickets at a future concert; dish you up geluti of all sorts from Nazzari or Spillman; and, hey, presto! the thing is done. You have been very hot, you have shaken hands in the most cordial manner with people whom you never saw before, you have heard a great deal of music of which, not being a judge, you cannot say whether it was bad or good,-only, people applauded monstrously,you go to bed an hour later than usual, and you wake to find yourself a very good fellow." A few scudi cover the transaction; and-egad! if you won't give another! No epidemic so catching as tea-fights. Well, it is a mild form of disease, and I believe nobody dies of it. It is a very old institution; for do we not read that Job's seven sons "used to make a feast by houses, every one in his day"? Nor is so convenient and economical a means of "fetching your neighbour another" likely soon to die out. Care may have killed a cat; but ridicule never killed a dull dog yet, you may depend upon it. 66 There are, withal, entertainments to be had ever and anon of a more sumptuous character. Ambassadors are no longer of that importance in Rome which, in the full swing of the more theocratic centuries, they used to be; but they still gather about them their retainers, rejoice in heavybraided liveries, palatial residences with pennons given to the wind, and periodically "receive." A ball is occasionally "raised" out of the more liberal; and if your daughters do not get asked, all I can say is, that madame is but a poor campaigner. Surely, too, whilst you are in Rome, somebody, or three or four somebodies, will get their hats,—in plainer parlance, be made cardinals. You must not expect to dance in the chambers of his eminence; but monsignore will throw open to you all his rooms, or all somebody else's, if he have none of his own in Rome, will dress himself in his sweetest scarlet, will invite his new hat full of distinguished people,-princes, excellencies, counts, cavaliers, soldiers all crosses, churchmen all colours, ladies of high degree, be-diamonded and be-pearled till your eyes ache again,—all these and more to meet you, heretic and mere brewer of beer, or engrosser of leases, though you be. It certainly is a most comprehensive and communistic reception. Nor is its hospitality confined churlishly to those only who enter by the door. Afront the palace has been erected what most resembles a good temporary stand at a race-course. It is decorated with immense open flaring lamps of grease, and tenanted by a couple of untiring bands, which blow loud overtures and selections for the vulgus, which your cosmopolitan priest, however high his ecclesiastical dignity, is supposed neither to hate nor to warn off. There, at any rate, are the profane in crowds-better behaved, however, than their analogues in a land I know something of; nay, for that matter, than some of the folks who are pushing their way upstairs; than he, for instance, in the uniform, who has met the noisy old dowager half way with his no-edged sword. No; they stand very quietly, and say "Dio!" now and then, when they see reason strongly to approve or disapprove the last arrival. "The Most Illustrious," as you will find your host dubbed in to-morrow's Osservatore, will expect you to come betimes and go away early; he has simple manners, dined in the middle of the day, said his mass long before you were up, and, though he is honoured by your society, would very much like to go to bed. And if you feel inclined to prolong your visit, you must indeed be very fond of society. Walk home like a sensible man, if you be allowed; and on your way look in at the Caffè della Costanza, and have a tumbler of mezzo-caldo; they will give you their decoction of punch any thing but lukewarm. Light your baiocco-e-mezzo, and toddle to the Via del Babuino rejoicing. That is, if you can manage to smoke the three-halfpenny cigar manufactured by his Holiness, or any other more highly-priced, but not one whit better, weed purchasable in the Piazza Mignanelli. Oh, if Horace had smoked! What two or three more charming Odes we should have had! Could he but have blown the soothing perfumes about as he sauntered among the nove taberna of the Forum, Virginian would not have wanted the vates sacer, and Cavendish had been as immortal as Massic! But if you will not go to bed, and are determined to make a night of it, be sure you will find plenty of airy spirits to join you. The moon is up: why not go to the Colosseum? Have you your order? Soon after the French occupation, the Roman plebs and Monsieur Zouave found the big old ruin very convenient of a dark night for the settlement of their hates and jealousies; and many a pretty fellow had a rent or two let into his jerkin during the deeper hours. So "mon général” interfered, placed his sentries thereabouts, and issues tickets of admission for seven people, on the understanding that they leave before midnight. The admissions are given freely enough; and if none of you have one about you, go to a commissionnaire at the hotel, and he will sell you as many as you want. It will be no use your starting in a romantic mood, or attempting to protect this state of mind by going alone. You will find many a merry company there already,-garrulous, vagrant, boisterous, full of quips and cranks, caring little for your or any body else's sentiment, for the ground being consecrated, for the long dark shadows, for the mournful foliage, for the silence of the stars, for the intermittent owl-cries, for the melancholy moon seen and lost among the cracks of Time, for all the sorrow and sacredness of this the most awful ruin upon earth. They have as much right to be here as you; and they whistle Broadway airs, bellow forth Fleet-Street slang, in the hope of raising an echo, yödel patriotic snatches, or screech out long Boulevard adjectives, till you yourself are almost driven to a national imprecation. You refrain, and sigh. My good fellow, you had much better go home. It is a common saying that the world is big enough for us all. I fear there are occasions when one scarcely owns it to be true; and this is one of them. Never mind; drink of the Fountain of Trevi on your way to your rooms, and come here again about half-past two to-morrow afternoon. True, there is no moon, no mystery; there are no black shadows, no weird darknesses, no startling apparitions of light, no stars, no night necromancies. But there is a soft, sunny January air, a sky of lapis-lazuli, a twitter of birds, a hum of insects, a smell of bursting buds, and-most of all-there is solitude. And then the whole of the grand ruin is at the bidding of your eye and tread: you can examine, you can reconstruct, and, finally, you can sit and be silent. I believe a Frenchman has written a long book with some such name as a Tour round my Garden, and another a Tour round my Room. They were right enough: no limit is too narrow for the observation and reflection of an understanding man. But here, in this Colosseum, were you never to stir beyond its precincts, there is occupation for your life. Would you fancy that on its walls are waving four hundred and twenty different species of plants, of which two hundred and fifty-three have been classed as genera? If this suggest the versatility of its vegetable population, what must be the variety of its noisy insect tribes! But if you prefer to leave to others inquiries into the economy of the more unpretentious of God's creatures, and think mankind, as it undoubtedly is, the noblest study of man, need you go beyond this enclosure of six acres? When the Temple of Jerusalem was being levelled with the ground, its foundations were being laid. It has been here eighteen hundred years, and can unfold to you much lore, and still greater wisdom. Not a link in its history but is tangled with disputes, in the attempt to unravel which you will find yourself becoming very learned. To begin with, Who was the architect? If you have a pious ecclesiastic or your Murray under your arm, each will answer, Gaudentius. Trust them not, even though Marangoni's "Memorie sacre e profane dell' Anfiteatro Flavio" seem to support the supposition. The critical spirit has made gigantic conquests since Byron wrote here, or hereabouts, that "all is doubly night," but has only left this centuply so. What says a certain inscription discovered in the catacombs of St. Agnes ?" Kristus . . . tibi . . . alium paravit theatrum in cœlo." Gaudentius is told not to mind the broken promises of Vespasian, but to rejoice in the death which is his reward. That he had something to do with the building, is probable; that he was first the architect of, and then a martyr within, its walls, is a pretty epigrammatic story, which you may believe if you will, but must not if you be laborious and inquisitive. And this is how we stumble not less among the story than the stones of this immemorial wonder. ... ... Therefore all that we can make out together, as we are sitting on this broken flora-cushioned column, is not gospel; but has as much to say for itself as any other information you could gather elsewhere, and is or ought to be parlous interesting. How much painful and unrewarded human toil went to its erection! We are too much accustomed, after our narrow fashion, to associate the Colosseum exclusively with Christian sufferings. But think of the twelve thousand Jewish prisoners brought to Rome and set to work upon this enormous ellipse, whose shorter axis is five hundred and thirteen feet, and its longer six hundred and twenty, and whose four tiers, though they did not realise Mr. Addison's strong-weak statement of "unpeopling Rome," were still capable of containing some 107,000 spectators. Think of the 9000 beasts slaughtered here below during the festival ordered by Titus at its completion. Alas! Cicero had gone, and had written his sonorous periods against such spectacles in vain. That they are magnificent, he says, "nemo negat. Sed quæ potest homini esse polito delectatio, quum aut homo imbecillis a violentissima bestia laniatur, aut præclara bestia venabulo transverberatur?" What gratification, indeed? But, for all that, men who thought themselves highly polished applauded to the echo when human gore was lapped by the lion, or the javelin went well home to the heart of some royal beast. That these bloodthirsty scenes had their origin in religious convictions, though they long survived the beliefs which gave them birth, there can be no manner of doubt. It is not long ago since our friend King Dahomey was compelled to restore the sacrifice of human victims within his dominions, the excuse being that every thing had gone wrong since their abolition, and that the ghost of his father had remonstrated with him for his impiety. His reply was a considerable slaughter of victims, whom he told to inform his indignant sire that the "old customs should go on better." The Etruscans we are in the habit of regarding as a people much further advanced in civilisation than the subjects of the Bight of Benin; but it was from them that the Romans inherited or borrowed the religious notion of expiatory sacrifices in honour of the departed. Originally these took place in the fora; and hence we are not surprised that Vitruvius, in designing new ones, points out that they should not be like the Grecian fora which were square, but oblong, as better fitted for gladiatorial exercises. This decided the fate of the Flavian Amphitheatre, which at once distanced, and eventually absorbed, all its rivals. Within its walls the shrieks of the slain and the plaudits of the secure came to be almost diurnal. Edile and questor, pontiff, pretor, and senator, vied with each other in pampering the populace with horrors. Festivals, victories, triumphs, emperors' birthdays, accessions, anniversaries—any excuse or none was sufficient to throng these mighty corridors, people these curving rows, and saturate the arena with human lymph. Let it not be supposed that Christians were especially chosen for this terrible lust of sacrificial games because they were Christians. Whatever might be going on in distant provinces, where quarrelsome sects were denouncing each other, and where local bigotry had its accustomed triumphs, Rome still preserved its toleration or its indifference. It cared very little about Christians; but it cared immensely about its shows. Were special proof wanting of what is well enough known to every historical scholar, it would be found in the fact that we have not any thing like proof that any "martyr" suffered in the arena before A.D. 116. This was Ignatius, disciple of John, and companion of Poly carp. But it was at Antioch that his condemnation had been decreed, and he was brought to Rome in the general character of "malefactor." The Romans would not have condemned him on account of his profession of faith: they made no inquiries, but gladly accepted all the raw material which the East might send them for their cruel machinery of sport. Nay, not only did they welcome slaves and criminals from afar, but they paid and kept at public cost those of their own city whom they could persuade to become voluntary combatants. These underwent a laborious training under professional lanista, and meanwhile lived as temperately and cautiously as the backers for the championship of the belt could desire. At last an emperor himself descended into the arena; and the name of the young Commodus is for ever associated with the annals of the ring. Were you to ask the sandalled religious, telling his beads yonder by the Meta Sudans, how the abolition of these demoralising spectacles was brought about, he would probably tell you a charming story of an Eastern monk called Telemachus making an express pilgrimage to Rome with the object of putting an end to these sanguinary shows. He arrived at the beginning of the fifth century, long after Constantine, Arcadius, and the elder Theodosius had done their best to prevent their continuance. The very day of his arrival butchery was at its height. He went straight to the amphitheatre, rushed in between the combatants, fell upon his knees, and in the name of Christ implored the spectators to have mercy on the predestined victims, and for ever renounce these tumultuous and infernal hecatombs. They stoned him straight, even as Stephen was stoned. But the stones cried out against them; and though he was a martyr to their rage, he was the last. Go on with thy beads, pleasant tonsured friar Thy bald head gleams in the sun; I reverence thy simple ways, and thank thee for thy charming story. But it is not true, padre mio. Didst ever hear of Salvian? No, I dare say not; though I wager it is in the library of thy convent, bound in stalwart vellum, and all sepulchred with dust. "Ci sono degli uomini più abili di voi ?" Well, there are; but I wish I had thy humility. This Salvian, much later in the fifth century than the year ascribed to the pilgrimage of Telemachus, complains bitterly that the Christians have an intense passion for gladiatorial spectacles in which they had ceased to be the victims; that the church is abandoned for the circus; and that the very act of adoration in the house of God is interrupted at the intimation of a gathering at the amphitheatre. One thinks to be reading of Cornish wreckers. Most stories are good, but very few are true; and nor Telemachus, nor any one individual, stems all at once the current of a nation. A chase of wild-beasts, brought from Africa by Anicius Maximus in the year 527, is the last public sanguinary spectacle of any magnitude recorded of the Colosseum, as far as I know, unless we except some bull-fights held there during the fourteenth century. But its wickedest days were over long before then. Shall we bring them back in imagination?—the retiarii, the laqueatores, the swift secutores, the lithe dimacha, the heavy hoplomachi, provoking, entan |