It was by this approach that most of its distinguished pilgrims have entered the capital of the Catholic world: monks, who came hither to obtain the foundation of their Orders; saints, who thirsted to worship at the shrines of their predecessors, or who came to receive the crown of martyrdom; priests and bishops from distant lands,--many coming in turn to receive here the highest dignity which Christendom could offer; kings and emperors, to ask coronation at the hands of the reigning pontiff; and among all these, came by this road, in the full fervour of Catholic enthusiasm, Martin Luther, the future enemy of Rome, then its devoted adherent. "When Luther came to Rome," says Ampère, in his 'Portraits de Rome à Divers Ages,' "the future reformer was a young monk, obscure and fervent; he had no presentiment, when he set foot in the great Babylon, that ten years later he would burn the bull of the Pope in the public square of Wittenberg. His heart experienced nothing but pious emotions; he addressed to Rome in salutation the ancient hymn of the pilgrims; he cried, 'I salute thee, O holy Rome, Rome venerable through the blood and the tombs of the martyrs.' But after having prostrated on the threshold, he raised himself, he entered into the temple, he did not find the God he looked for; the city of the saints and martyrs was a city of murderers and prostitutes. The arts which marked this corruption were powerless over the stolid senses, and scandalised the austere spirit of the German monk; he scarcely gave a passing glance at the ruins of pagan Rome;--and inwardly horrified by all that he saw, he quitted Rome in a frame of mind very different from that which he brought with him; he knelt then with the devotion of the pilgrims, now he returned in a disposition like that of the _frondeurs_ of the Middle Ages, but more serious than theirs. This Rome of which he had been the dupe, and concerning which he was disabused, should hear of him again; the day would come when, amid the merry toasts at his table, he would cry three times, 'I would not have missed going to Rome for a thousand florins, for I should always have been uneasy lest I should have been rendering injustice to the Pope.'" When one is in Rome life seems to be free from many of the petty troubles which beset it in other places; there is no foreign town which offers so many comforts and advantages to its English visitors. The hotels, indeed, are enormously expensive, and the rent of apartments is high; but when the latter is once paid, living is rather cheap than otherwise, especially for those who do not object to dine from a _trattoria_, and to drive in hackney carriages.