pressions concerning which we latterly indulged in
some speculation.
“Ah! how joyful to see once more this Rome, instead of the pitiful, peddling, Anglicized Rome first viewed in unutterable dismay from the coupé of the vettura,—a Rome all full of taverns, lodging-houses, cheating chambermaids, valest valets de place, and fleas! A Niobe of nations indeed! All why (secretly the heart blasphemed) did the sun omit to kill her too, when all the glorious race which wore 'her crown fell beneath his ray?"
All this had now disappeared for Margaret, and a new enchantment had taken the place of the old illusion and disappointment. For she was now able to disentangle tho strange jumble of ancient and modern Rome. In this more understanding and familiar view, she says:—
“The old kings, the consuls and tribunes, the emperors, drunk with blood and gold, return for us. The seven hills tower, the innumerable temples glitter, and the Via Sacra swarms with triumphal life once more."
In the later Papal Rome she discerns, through the confusion of rite and legend, a sense which to her marks the growth of the human spirit struggling to develop its life.” And the Rome of that day was dear to her in spite of its manifold corruptions; dear for the splendour of the race, surviving every enslaving and deforming influence; dear for the new-born hope of freedom which she considered safe in the nursing of Pope Pius.
Most of the occasions chronicled by Margaret in her letters of this period are of the sort familiarly known to travellers, and even to readers of books of travel.
The prayers for the dead, early in November, the
