Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 098, February, 1876Various
History
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 098, February, 1876
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
a type of that of their once master. That ornamental individual, shorn
of his ornamental character, is useless. His _raison d'être_ is gone
as entirely as Othello's occupation was. And it will probably not be
long before the fate of the cardinal's wheels overtakes the cardinal
himself.
The second little bit of street incident which recently occurred to me
was in itself less striking, but seemed to me to symbolize changes of
yet higher moment and wider significance. This time what I saw was in
the Ghetto. Many of my readers probably know what the Ghetto at Rome
is, but untraveled stayers-at-home may very excusably never have heard
of it. The Ghetto is the Jews' quarter in Rome--the district in which
they were for many generations compelled to reside and to be locked
in by night, and where from habit the greater part, especially of the
poorer members of the Jewish community, still live. As will be easily
believed, it is the worst and most wretched quarter of the city--the
lowest physically as well as morally--and inundated with tolerable
certainty every year by the rising of the Tiber. The dilapidated and
filthy streets of the other parts of old papal Rome used to look
clean and spruce by comparison with the lurid and darksome dens of
the Ghetto. There are Ghettos in London--streets where the children of
Israel congregate, not in obedience to any law old or new, but drawn
together by mutual attraction and similarity of occupation. And the
occupations there are very much of the same nature as those pursued
in the Ghetto of Rome--the buying and selling of old clothes and
second-hand property of all sorts, the preparation and distribution of
fried fish, and here and there a little usury. But the _genius loci_
here impresses on the trade in discarded odds and ends a peculiar
character of its own. A much larger number of old pictures figure
among the hoards of useless "property" than would be the case
elsewhere. The constant decay of noble and once wealthy families
furnishes to the second-hand market a much more abundant supply of
the remains of articles that were once rich and rare in their day--old
damask hangings torn from walls that have witnessed the princely
revelry of many a generation; rich brocades and stuffs that have made
part of the moving pageant in the same saloons; lace of the finest
and rarest from the vestments of deceased prelates, whose heirs, as
regards such property, have probably been their serving-men; purple
and scarlet articles from the wardrobes of cardinals and princes of
the Church; and odds and ends of various sorts widely different in
kind from aught that could be found in similar repositories in other
cities. And another specialty of the Roman Ghetto is that it is not
altogether easy to obtain a sight of the miscellaneous treasures of
this rag-fair. Partly because the low-lying and narrow lanes of the
Ghetto are too murky and filthy to permit of the advantageous exposure
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account