Humanly Speaking. Samuel McChord Crothers
made in the picture?
"They say that seeing is believing, but here you see so many things that are different from what you have always believed. The Past doesn't seem to be in the past, but in the present. There is an air of contemporaneousness about everything. Do you remember that story of Jules Verne about a voyage to the moon? When the voyagers got a certain distance from the earth they couldn't any longer drop things out of the balloon. The articles they threw out didn't fall down. There wasn't any down; everything was round about. Everything they had cast out followed them. That's the way Rome makes you feel about history. That which happened a thousand years ago is going on still. You can't get rid of it. The Roman Republic is a live issue, and so is the Roman Empire, and so is the Papacy.
"The other day they found a ruined Arch of Marcus Aurelius in Tripoli, and began to restore it. New Italy is delighted at this confirmation of its claims to sovereignty in North Africa. The newspapers treat Marcus Aurelius as only a forerunner of Giolitti. By the way, I never heard of Giolitti till I came over here. But it seems that he is a very great man. But when ancient and modern history are mixed up it's hard to do any clear thinking. And when you do get a clear thought you find out that it isn't true. You know Dr. Johnson said something to the effect that that man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose feelings would not grow warmer among the ruins of Rome. Marathon is a simple proposition. But when one is asked to warm his enthusiasm by means of the Roman monuments, he naturally asks, 'Enthusiasm over what?' Of course, I don't mean to give up. I'm faint though pursuing. But I'm afraid that Rome is not a good place to rest in."
"I'm afraid not," I said, "if you insist on keeping on thinking. It is not a good place in which to rest your mind."
II
I think Bagster is not the first person who has found intellectual difficulty here. Rome exists for the confusion of the sentimental traveler. Other cities deal tenderly with our preconceived ideas of them. There is one simple impression made upon the mind. Once out of the railway station and in a gondola, and we can dream our dream of Venice undisturbed. There is no doge at present, but if there were one we should know where to place him. The city still furnishes the proper setting for his magnificence. And London with all its vastness has, at first sight, a familiar seeming. The broad and simple outlines of English history make it easy to reconceive the past.
But Rome is disconcerting. The actual refuses to make terms with the ideal. It is a vast storehouse of historical material, but the imagination is baffled in the attempt to put the material together.
When Scott was in Rome his friend "advised him to wait to see the procession of Corpus Domini, and hear the Pope
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