Text: C. F. Briggs (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), February 15, 1845, vol. 1, no. 7, p. ??

[page 98:]

ROME; as Seen by a New Yorker in 1843-4. New York and London. Wiley & Putnam, 1845. 12mo. pp. 216.

THE author of this book is WILLIAM M. GILLESPIE, whose initials were familiar to readers a year or two ago, appended to a series of traveller's letters from Europe in the Tribune. Italy attracted most of the writer's attention. There were several descriptive sketches of Venice and Florence; while Rome, in consideration of the extent and unity of the subject, was reserved for the present volume. It is an excellent book of a traveller's first visit to the imperial city; describing such objects and scenes as all have to see, metho-dising a great deal of miscellaneous knowledge in small compass, and valuable alike to the people who journey and those who read at home. If one wants to be in the position with respect to information and the reception of future ideas he would be in after a diligent six weeks at Rome, let him read this book. It clears away all the matter-of-fact duty of sight seeing, in a pleasant way, and prepares the way for new thought or observation. It is not the book of a classical antiquarian, or a book of personal adventure; but it tells us what a well-informed man sees about him, on first going to Rome. The philosophy of the people, and new moral and social- speculations, come afterwards.

General good sense, a pains-taking eye and a careful style, are the characteristics of the volume. The subjects are conveniently arranged in groups, beginning with St. Peter's, and ending with a valuable classification of the various sights in a chapter entitled “How to see Rome.” The time, it should be remarked, to which our traveller's visit was limited, is mid winter, which introduces the ceremonies of Christmas, and excludes those of Easter and the Holy Week.

Our writer sometimes carries the remark to do in Rome as the Romans do, rather too far. Thus in the chapter on Reliques, after an enumeration of various pitiable delusions, when we expect the atmosphere to be purged by a good hearty laugh from the author, he tells us that though “Democritus would laugh at all these things, and Heraclitus would weep, we travel to very little purpose if we do not learn charity to every sincere belief, however it may seem to us; remembering that our own may seem equally so to a more enlightened order of beings.” This is neither sense nor benevolence. For that is no charity at all, when a man has to sink his understanding to practice the virtue. If man becomes wiser when he is an angel, so much the better. But is that any reason why he should throw away any little wisdom he has got on the earth? Let us hold on to what we have, and call ignorance ignorance and delusion delusion. In patronizing folly after our author's fashion, we are encouraging the accompanying knavery.

It is a hit in much better style at the implicit Romish idolatry, when Mr. Gillespie tells us a story of one of the attendants at the Vatican, who, learning that he was an American, showed him some idols from the Western Hemisphere, and wondered he did not fall down and worship them!

In similar unconsciousness of his good American understanding, in that affair of the apology for the reliques, is the somewhat astonishing sentence after an account of the Inquisition, which it seems (page 199) is still alive at Rome: — “ After all, this is not much worse than our own Inquisition of Public Opinion.” There has been too much nonsense uttered on this last subject. There is no country in the world, we believe, where there is less of this tyranny of public opinion than in the United States

The description of the Duomo of Milan will convey a very fair impression of out writer's style in description.

THE DUOMO OF MILAN.

“The only RIVAL OF ST. PETER’S is the Duomo or Mit Alf; and wonderful as is the former, I am so heretical as to find the latter far more beautiful and impressive. Imagine a white marble pyramid, miraculously sprouting, and shooting up from every part of its surface, spires, pinnacles and statues, and you will have a better idea of this most glorious Duomo, than by comparing it with any other Church. “None but itself can be its parallel.” “Facile Princeps.” The Cathedral of Cologne is indeed inspired by the same feeling, and is akin in some of its details, but it is only the bare single rose, while here in the more luxuriant soil and more balmy sky of Italy, the flower puts forth so many new leaves, and so doubles and re-duplicates its petals, that the luxuriant double rose of Milan can scarcely recognize its prototype in the single wild flower of Cologne.

“This mountain of marble sends out on each side clustered buttresses connected with the main structure by flying arches, which spring through mid air, and form noble bridges, which are half invisible from below, and on which angels might not disdain to tread. From the front also, six buttresses project and rise above the sloping summit of the body of the Church. A)1 these are filled with statues, each In a niche of its own, and from each buttress rise pinnacles on pinnacles, and spire branching from spire, each crowned with statues, so that the whole church is covered with a marble population of Saints and Angels. The whole front is also embossed with sculptures in high relief, wherever the statues have left room; and these pictures carved in stone record the various scenes and events of sacred history with more distinctness and expression than could any words. Between them are fantastic faces, smiling and frowning on you like mischievous sprites; and among other whims of the sculptor is a female head, covered with a marble veil, through which you seem to see features, which in reality have never been chiselled out, but only artfully suggested to the fancy. Days might be given to the study of all these devices, and at every visit muchwould be found both new and beautiful. The whole building is indeed a poem written in stone.

But great as is your admiration while you are below, you find when you mount to the roof, that you had not yet seen the tithe of its splendors. A winding staircase conducts you up, and you see that the same lavish and tasteful labor is given to the most secluded and seldom seen portions, as to the most conspicuous. The artists seem to have been deeply impressed with the feeling that nothing was too good for the service of the Divinity, to whom their labors were consecrated. The slabs which cover the roof, and on which you walk, are of fine marble. The backs of the statues, which can be seen only with particular pains, are found to be as highly finished as the fronts. The rich ornaments are in the most out-ot.the-way corners, and everything shows that the workmen felt themselves engaged in a true labor of love. Every part of the roof seems perfectly alive with statues. Each of the spires and pinnacles, and each of their branches, bears a colossal statue. Among the rest is placed one by Canova, and the fact that it passes unnoticed among the rest, is a sufficient proof of the great merit of all. The inhabitants of this city of marble Saints are now nearly seven thousand in number, and when the designs are fully carried out, ten thousand marble statues, each different, and each of itself a model, will people this noblest of Cathedrals. The readers of Wordsworth will remember his fine allusion, in his poem on “The Eclipse of the Sun on Lake Lugano,” to the darkness shading, as with sorrow, the faces of these Saints and Cherubs.”

The chapter entitled a Roman Dining House and Cafe, is one of the most interesting in the volume, both because it contains details which are new, having been plucked from the writer's experience, and because, as he himself remarks, though every man may not be an Antiquarian, a Poet, or an Historian, yet we all agree in our reverence for a good dinner.

The Fountains of Rome will attract the New-York reader's attention.

“Every square in Rome — every public edifice — almost every private garden — is made cheerful and picturesque by the gush of water from Fountains decorated with sculpture and statuary. None are more graceful than the two in front of St. Peter's (in which thejet falls into the vase, from the sides of which it streams in circular sheet into a second vase, and from it again into a marble basin), but the others arc so ingenionsly varied in form and ornaments, that no two are alike, although I find forty-four engraved in “a selection of the principal fountains of the renowned city of Rome,” published there in 1773. In one, a broad sheet of water pours down from a high aperture; in another the nymph empties the stream from her pitcher; in a third, dolphins pour it from their mouths; and in one of those which are always running from the walls for common use (the “free hydrants” of Rome), the water flows from the bunghole of a marble cask which a marble porter is holding in his arms. In one Piazza the fountain is shaped like a boat, of which the main jet represents the mast; in another, four graceful youths support the basin on their heads; and in a third, a Triton sits on a shell supported by four dolphins, and holds over his head a conch, from which spouts up the water. The Piazza Navona contains three fountains, and in the principal one an Egyptian obelisk stands on a mass of rock, pierced with caverns on every side, and having chained it to four river gods, represent. ing the Danube, the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rio de la Plata; so that the four quarters of the globe are thus made tributary to the Imperial city. The Fontano Paolina rises like the front of a church on the Janiculum hill, overlooking all Rome, and three torrents rush [page 99:] through its central arches, and fall into a large basin, from which they roll down the hill, turning mills and supplying reservoirs. Over the Fontana dell’ Acqua Felice rises an Ionic arcade, in the central niche of which stands Moses striking the rock at his feet, from which the water gushes out, and Aaron and Gideon figure in the basso-relievos on the other side. At the Quattro Fontane (known to our countrymen in Rome as the location of the American Consulate), two broad streets cross each uther at right angles, and when you stand at their intersection! your view is terminated in three directions by Egyptian obelisks, one on Monte Cavallo a second at the Trinita de’ Monti, and a third before Santa Maria Maggiore. At each of the four corners of the streets the angles of the houses were cut away, and fountains are there constructed, with figures recumbent under sculptured trees, and other emblematic decorations.

“But the Fountainof Trevi is the finest in all Rome, and therefore in all the world. Iu front of a palace adorned with Corinthian columns and pilasters, huge masses of rocks are piled up, so natural in shape and arrangement, that they seem to have been broken by an earthquake, and then worn by the rush of water into their present forms. From every niche and crevice, to the right and to the left, upward and downward, gush out torrents of water, in the most copious variety, and finally fall into a capacious white marble basin. In the midst of the rocks, and under a niche in the palace, a colossal statue of Neptune stands on a car, to which are harnessed two sea-horses, held by Tritons. The god of the Ocean majestically extends his right arm, as if about to rebuke the boiling waves with his famous Quos ego —.” On each side of the niche which he occupies are statues of Salubrity and Abundance, with appropriate basso-relievos. All the necessaries thus combine to heighten the admiration of the visitor to the fountain of Trevi.

“But should we be satisfied to admire, when we can emulate? The rear of our New York City Hall offers an excellent site for a similar work. It is now an eyesore; but we may make it an ornament to the City by arranging artistically before it, rough masses of rock (pleasant reminders, in the crowded city, of rural scenes), and pouring over them our Croton river, which shouldgush naturally from irregular openings as if it were just bursting up from its source. We may then employ our American sculptors to decorate the building in a style worthy of our future destinies, and in a grand central niche erect a statue, not of the false god, Netune, but of the true man, Washington; and thus make this one of’his long-desired Monuments.”

The rear of the Ciiy Hall is, indeed, an eye-sore, but we can suggest a better remedy for it than the construction of a fountain. The fountain needs a white back-ground for relief, to harmonize with the water — so the brown stone of the rear, economically contrived like the lining of a sailor's vest, would be only rendered more fatally conspicuous by the fountain. Let the City Hall be completed by the extension of wings and a new rear on Chambers street, preserving a court or quadrangle in the centre. The depth is now out of proportion with the width of the front. The order of architecture, too, requires extent of surface to set it forth — a long succession of windows, arches, and colonnades. The City Hall, with this addition, would offer something to feed the eye along the line of Broadway. The only view, the front one, is now exclusively enjoyed by the cab-men, an attorney hastily crossing the walk to be in time for a motion, and the stationary fat cattle who are occasionally exhibited at the steps.

The typographical execution of the work, we should add, is distinguished for its beauty and accuracy — rare merits in these days of anti-copyright slovenliness.