Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Pencil Sketches in Rome - 1. Ecclesiastical Rome, and Italian
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284 ROMAN DAYS.
guardians of Tasso’s grave and the fresco of Leonardo da
Vinci had been forced to abandon their peaceful home, I
was heartily sorry for the old men. They formed the
" extreme left " in the Catholic church : they belonged,
in other words, to the side which is never right, but
which in course of time almost always gets it.
But back to our traveller! Whithersoever he may
wish to steer his course—towards the Porta Pia, or the
old praetorian camp, or the church of Maria Maggiore
—
over the whole north-eastern part of old Rome, which a
few years since was made up of wooden houses or waste
land, he will find streets laid out or being laid out, rows
of houses built, or the ground dug out for the founda-
tions. The new houses are large, but remind us—alas, far
too much !
—of those immense Haussman bee-hives that
parade in the most tiresome monotony along the boule-
vards of Paris, and which would be called insignificant,
if they did not constantly remind us that building lots in
the French capital are very dear. The new quarters of
Rome promise us straight and broad streets, and houses
with many and regularly placed rows of windows ; but if
they are to be filled with these " maisofis bourgeoises,’’
that fancy they outshine palaces, because they overtop
them in height, it will be but a sorry piece of Rome, with
the single merit of making elder Rome, with its narrow
winding streets, its proud grave palaces, and its many
small markets with their purling fountains, so much the
dearer to the stranger.
Our traveller will look in vain, but probably without
any sense of loss, for the papal zouaves with their impu-
dent and defiant look, and their red French trousers, who
formerly made an element so striking in the swarm of
people in the streets. As much hated as those priestly
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