University of Virginia Library

57. LETTER LVII.

The last days of March have come, clothed in sunshine
and summer. The grass is tall in the Campagna,
the fruit-trees are in blossom, the roses and
myrtles are in full flower, the shrubs are in full leaf,
the whole country about breathes of June. We left
Rome this morning on an excursion to the “Fountain
of Egeria.” A more heavenly day never broke. The
gigantic baths of Caracalla turned us aside once more,
and we stopped for an hour in the shade of their romantic
arches, admiring the works, while we execrated
the character of their ferocious builder.

This is the beginning of the ancient Appian Way,
and, a little farther on, sunk in the side of a hill, near
the road, is the beautiful doric tomb of the Scipios.
We alighted at the antique gate, a kind of portico,
with seats of stone beneath, and reading the inscription,
“Sepulchro degli Scipioni,” mounted, by ruined
steps, to the tomb. A boy came out from the house,
in the vineyard above, with candles to show us the
interior; but, having no curiosity to see the damp cave
from which the sarcophagi have been removed (to
the museum), we sat down upon a bank of grass
opposite the chaste façade, and recalled to memory
the early-learnt history of the family once entombed
within. The edifice (for it is more like a temple to
a river-nymph or a dryad than a tomb) was built by
an ancestor of the great Scipio Africanus, and here
was deposited the noble dust of his children. One
feels, in these places, as if the improvisatore's inspiration
was about him — the fancy draws, in such vivid
colors, the scenes that have passed where he is standing.
The bringing of the dead body of the conqueror
of Africa from Rome, the passing of the funeral train
beneath the portico, the noble mourners, the crowd of
people, the eulogy of perhaps some poet or orator,
whose name has descended to us — the air seems to
speak, and the gray stones of the monument against
which the mourners of the Scipios have leaned, seem
to have had life and thought, like the ashes they have
sheltered.

We drove on to the Catacombs. Here, the legend
says, St. Sebastian was martyred, and the modern
church of St. Sebastiano stands over the spot. We
entered the church, where we found a very handsome
young capuchin friar, with his brown cowl and the
white cord about his waist, who offered to conduct us
to the catacombs. He took three wax-lights from
the sacristy, and we entered a side door, behind the
tomb of the saint, and commenced a descent of a long
flight of stone steps. We reached the bottom and
found ourselves upon damp ground, following a narrow
passage, so low that I was compelled constantly
to stoop, in the sides of which were numerous small
niches of the size of a human body. These were the
tombs of the early Christian martyrs. We saw near
a hundred of them. They were brought from Rome,
the scene of their sufferings, and buried in these
secret catacombs by the small church of perhaps the
immediate converts of St. Paul and the apostles.
What food for thought is here, for one who finds more
interest in the humble traces of the personal followers
of Christ, who knew his face and had heard his voice,
to all the splendid ruins of the works of the persecuting
emperors of his time! Most of the bones have
been taken from their places, and are preserved at the
museum, or enclosed in the rich sarcophagi raised to
the memory of the martyrs in the catholic churches.
Of those that are left we saw one. The niche was
closed by a thin slab of marble, through a crack of
which the monk put his slender candle. We saw the
skeleton as it had fallen from the flesh in decay, untouched,
perhaps, since the time of Christ.

We passed through several cross-passages, and
came to a small chamber, excavated simply in the
earth, with an earthen altar, and an antique marble
cross above. This was the scene of the forbidden
worship of the early Christians, and before this very
cross, which was, perhaps, then newly selected as the
emblem of their faith, met the few dismayed followers
of Christ, hidden from their persecutors, while they
breathed their forbidden prayers to their lately crucified
master.

We reascended to the light of day by the rough
stone steps, worn deep by the feet of those who, for
ages, for so many different reasons, have passed up and
down, and, taking leave of our capuchin conductor,
drove on to the next object upon the road — the tomb
of Cecilia Metella. It stands upon a slight elevation,
in the Appian Way, a “stern round tower,” with the
ivy dropping over its turrets and waving from the embrasures,
looking more like a castle than a tomb.
Here was buried “the wealthiest Roman's wife,” or,
according to Corinne, his unmarried daughter. It
was turned into a fortress by the marauding nobles of
the thirteenth century, who sallied from this and the
tomb of Adrian, plundering the ill-defended subjects
of Pope Innocent IV. till they were taken and hanged
from the walls by Brancaleone, the Roman senator.
It is built with prodigious strength. We stooped in
passing under the low archway, and emerged into the
round chamber within, a lofty room, open to the sky,
in the circular wall of which there is a niche for a
single body. Nothing could exceed the delicacy
and fancy with which Childe Harold muses on this
spot.

The lofty turrets command a wide view of the
Campagna, the long aqueducts stretching past at a
short distance, and forming a chain of noble arches
from Rome to the mountains of Albano. Cole's picture
of the Roman Campagna, as seen from one of
these elevations, is, I think, one of the finest landscapes
ever painted.

Just below the tomb of Metella, in a flat valley, lie
the extensive ruins of what is called the “circus of
Caracalla” by some, and the “circus of Romulus”
by others — a scarcely distinguishable heap of walls
and marble, half buried in the earth and moss; and
not far off stands a beautiful ruin of a small temple
dedicated (as some say) to Ridicule. One smiles to
look at it. If the embodying of that which is powerful,
however, should make a deity, the dedication of a
temple to ridicule is far from amiss. In our age particularly,
one would think, the lamp should be relit,
and the reviewers should repair the temple. Poor
Keats sleeps in his grave scarce a mile from the spot,
a human victim, sacrificed, not long ago, upon its
highest altar.

In the same valley almost hidden with the luxuriant
ivy waving before the entrance, flows the lovely Fountain
of Egeria, trickling as clear and musical into its
pebbly bed as when visited by the enamored successor
of Romulus twenty-five centuries ago! The hill
above leans upon the single arch of the small temple
which embosoms it, and the green soft meadow spreads
away from the floor, with the brightest verdure conceivable.
We wound around by a halfworn path in
descending the hill, and, putting aside the long
branches of ivy, entered an antique chamber, sprinkled
with quivering spots of sunshine, at the extremity of
which, upon a kind of altar, lay the broken and defaced
statue of the nymph. The fountain poured
from beneath in two streams as clear as crystal. In
the sides of the temple were six empty niches, through
one of which stole, from a cleft in the wall, a little
stream, which wandered from its way. Flowers, pale
with growing in the shade, sprang from the edges of
the rivulet as it found its way out, the small creepers,
dripping with moisture, hung out from between the
diamond-shaped stones of the roof, the air was refreshingly
cool, and the leafy door at the entrance,
seen against the sky, looked of a transparent green, as
vivid as emerald. No fancy could create a sweeter

spot. The fountain and the inspiration it breathed
into Childe Harold are worthy of each other.

Just above the fountain, on the crest of a hill,
stands a thick grove, supposed to occupy the place of
the consecrated wood, in which Numa met the nymph.
It is dark with shadow, and full of birds, and might
afford a fitting retreat for meditation to another king
and lawgiver. The fields about it are so thickly
studded with flowers, that you can not step without
crushing them, and the whole neighborhood seems a
favorite of nature. The rich banker, Torlonia, has
bought this and several other classic spots about Rome
— possessions for which he is more to be envied than
for his purchased dukedom.

All the travelling world assembles at Rome for the
ceremonies of the holy week. Naples, Florence, and
Pisa, send their hundreds of annual visiters, and the
hotels and palaces are crowded with strangers of every
nation and rank. It would be difficult to imagine a
gayer or busier place than this usually sombre city has
become within a few days.