Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber : $b or, The influence of Romanism on trade, justice, and knowledgeWylie, J. A. (James Aitken)
History
Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber : $b or, The influence of Romanism on trade, justice, and knowledge
Wylie, J. A. (James Aitken)
Catholic Church -- Italy; Italy -- Description and travel
Standing in the Piazza del Popolo, the person is in a good position for
comprehending the arrangement of modern Rome. Here three streets have
their rise, which, running off in diverging lines, like spokes from the
nave of a wheel, traverse the city, and form, with the cross streets
which connect them, the osteology of the Eternal City. This at least is
the arrangement which obtains till you reach the region lying around the
Capitol, which is an inextricable network of lanes, courts, and streets.
The centre one of the three streets we have indicated is the Corso. It
is a good mile in length, and runs straight south, extending from the
Flaminian gate to almost the foot of the Capitol. To an English eye it
is wanting in breadth, though the most spacious street in Rome. It is
but indifferently kept in point of cleanliness, though the most
fashionable promenade of the Romans. Here only you find anything
resembling a flag-pavement: all the other streets are causewayed from
side to side with small sharp pieces of lava, which pain the foot at
every step. The shops are small and dark, resembling those of our third
and fourth-rate towns, and exhibiting in their wares a superabundance of
cameos, mosaics, Etruscan vases, and statuary,--these being almost the
sole native manufacture of Rome. It is adorned with several truly noble
palaces, and with the colonnades and porticos of a great number of
churches. It was the boast of the Romans that the Pope could say mass in
a different church every day of the year. This, we believe, is true,
there being more than three hundred and sixty churches in that city, but
not one copy of the Bible that is accessible by the people.
The second street,--that on the right,--is the Via Ripetta, which leads
off in the direction of St Peter's and the Vatican. It takes one nigh
the tomb of Augustus, now converted into a hippodrome; the Pantheon,
whose pristine beauty remains undefaced after twenty centuries; the
Collegio Romano; and, towards the foot of the Capitol, the Ghetto,--a
series of mean streets, occupied by the Jews. The third street,--that on
the left,--is the Via Babuino. It traverses the more aristocratic
quarter of Rome,--if we can use such a phrase in reference to a city
whose nobles are lodging-house keepers, and live--
"Garreted
In their ancestral palace,"--
running on by the Piazza di Spagna, which the English so much frequent,
to the Quirinal, the Pope's summer palace, and the form of Trajan, whose
column, after the many copies which have been made of it, still stands
unrivalled and unapproached in beauty.
"And though the passions of man's fretful race
Have never ceased to eddy round its base,
Not injured more by touch of meddling hands
Than a lone obelisk 'mid Nubian sands."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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