Therefore, the few who do feel indignation do not speak; and the speculator, the jerry builder, the cunning lawyer and conveyancer, the vast body of greedy and gross spoilers, have their way unchecked. In the case of Rome, of course, that cruellest and ugliest of all passions, religious antagonism, has had much to do with the atrocious ruin of the Prati del Castello, of the Trastevere generally, of the passage of the four trams in derision in face of St Peter's, of the hideous gimcrack houses built under the walls of the Lateran, of the destruction of street shrines and votive chapels and ancient chapels, of the erection of the entire quarters of what is called New Rome;[16] but religious hatred cannot be the cause of the barbarous scraping and daubing of classic buildings, of the degradation of the Via Nomentana, and of Porta Pia, of the ruin of such glory and grace as that of the Ludovisi and the Farnesina villas, of the bedaubing and beplastering, the dwarfing and disfiguring, the vulgarising and disfiguring of everything which is touched by the modern ædiles of Rome. No matter what the syndic be called, whether Ruspoli or Guiccioli, or Torlonia, or Colonna, no matter whether the cabinet be headed by Rudini or Giolitti, by Crispi or Pelloux, the pickaxe is never at rest, and the hammer and hatchet sound ceaselessly in street and garden, on desecrated altars, and in devastated groves. [Footnote 16: It is now almost forgotten that the Ludovisi gardens ever existed as the motley fashion of the new Roman world flocks to the American Legation in the Pal. Piombino!] To what end have served the fury and haste with which ancient ecclesiastical buildings have been razed to the ground in both the cities and the provinces? To none whatever, so far as any diminution of the funds and the numbers of ecclesiastical foundations can be counted.