Sometimes I wish there had never been anything
done or written in the world! My father and I seem to feel in this way
more than the rest. We agree about Rome as we did about England."
In the course of the winter my mother had written of our chilly
reception thus:--
NO. 37 VIA PORTA PINCIANA, 2D PLANO,
PALAZZO LAIIAZANI, ROME.
MY DEAR ELIZABETH,--I could not have believed I could be in Rome a day
without announcing it to you in words and expressions which would have
the effect at least of the bell of St. Peter's or the cannon of St.
Angelo. . . . But my soul has been iced over, as well as the hitherto
flowing fountains of the Piazza, di San Pietro. I have not been able
to expand like corn and melons under a summer sun. Nipped have been
all my blossoming hopes and enthusiasms, and my hands have been too
numb to hold a pen. Added to this, Mr. Hawthorne has had the severest
cold he ever had, because bright, keen cold he cannot bear so well as
damp; and .Rosebud has not been well since she entered the city. It is
colder than for twenty years before. We find it enormously expensive
to live in Rome; our apartment is twelve hundred a year.
But I am in Rome, Rome, Rome! I have stood in the Forum and beneath
the Arch of Titus, at the end of the Sacra Via. I have wandered about
the Coliseum, the stupendous grandeur of which equals my dream and
hope. I have seen the sun kindling the open courts of the Temple of
Peace, where Sarah Clarke said, years ago, that my children would some
time play.
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