As we take leave of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (a somewhat ignoble pair), their architecture, painting, literature, and music, we must, as in other matters, remember the good and forget the bad. We must keep in mind the Spanish Steps, which offer at their base ample room for all the flowers of all the flower-sellers of Rome, then rise in easy flight, pause, rest, and mount again, tier upon tier, till the top step stretches out into a terrace, where the pedestrian, glad to pause, turns and looks back over Rome towards the majestic dome of St. Peter's. We must remember the Trevi Fountain where gods and nymphs and waters splash and frolic together, or Guido's Aurora, where Apollo looses the rein to his heavenly horses as they gallop after Lucifer, while the straight-backed hours dance divinely alongside. We must recall the sweet sentiment in Metastasio, the light nothingness of Goldoni, the merriment of Harlequin and Columbine, the violins of Stradivarius, the singing of Farinello and Pacchierotti, the melodies of Pergolesi, and the general pleasantness of an idle, amiable society. Then we want to join the eighteenth-century travellers,--Addison, Walpole, President de Brosses, or Goethe,--and we look back with vain regret to that happy lotos-eating time, and wish it would return again. CHAPTER XXXIV THE NAPOLEONIC ERA (1789-1820) Now come those great events, most important to Italy, the French Revolution and the invasion by Napoleon. The storm burst upon a scene of quiet. Italy was still like a comedy of Goldoni, dukes enjoying taxes and mistresses, priests accepting oblations and snuff, nobles sipping chocolate and pocketing rent, while the poor peasants, kept behind the scenes, sweated and toiled for a bare subsistence. Before the Revolution came the premonitory breezes of philosophical philanthropy wafted across the Alps from the Encyclopedists. As they affected the various rulers differently, it is necessary to descend to some particulars. In Piedmont no philosophical philanthropy warmed the king; he wrapped his cloak tighter about him, and deemed the old ways good enough. He maintained his court in imitation of Versailles, and drilled his soldiers in imitation of Frederick the Great. Nobles alone were employed in the higher ranks of the civil service, nobles alone were made officers in the army; in return, they were treated like schoolboys, not allowed to leave a prescribed path without permission. The clergy had the privileges of the old regime; their tribunals had sole jurisdiction over priests, and tried to maintain jurisdiction over the laity for all offences that had a smack of sin. King, nobility, and clergy clung to the autocracy, and were resolved to maintain it in full vigour. A rash admirer of Montesquieu wrote a treatise upon "Constitutional Monarchy," and was put in prison.