Welsh Journals

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YOU may see it in various ways. You may cross the Garibaldi Bridge and climb, on foot if you are energetic, in taxi or tram if you are not, up the steep Janiculan Hill to the Porta San Pancrazio, and there, from some point of vantage-the roof of the American Academy, if you have the entree, forms an ex- cellent platform-you may look down on the city beneath you: in front the great curve of the Tiber, with the Castle of Sant' Angelo and the Palace of Justice on this side, the high, irregular fronts of the old houses opposite, and then all Rome beyond, with the Alban Hills, topped by Monte Cavo, closing the view in the distance. Or,, passing the flower-sellers with their huge umbrellas and their heaped baskets of brilliant blooms, you may climb the Spanish Steps and thence gaze across the city from the opposite side, past the dome of San Carlo in Corso and the greater and nobler dome of St. Peter's, to the Janiculan Hill, with its cypresses and the long line of umbrella pines profiled against the sky. Or, entering by the Porta del Popolo, you may walk the narrow length of the Corso Umberto, with its hooting motors and its crowds of sight- seers, its shop-windows and banks and restaur- ants, getting as you pass many a glimpse into court-yards where palms and roses make a patch of life and colour, or where, from a cool alcove, the statue of some ancient god or goddess looks out at the never-ending stream of traffic, until you come to where the National Monument, a little self-consciously, like a wealthy parvenu not yet wholly at home in society, lifts its white and gilded magnificence. Or lastly,, and best perhaps of all, you may wander "at all adventure" through the maze of narrow streets and alleys in the quarters along the river; but wherever you go, you will find Rome always and everywhere beautiful. The sun may shine from a cloudless sky, kindling the rich brown fronts of the houses to a warmer glow, and flooding the squares and open spaces with light, or the clouds may gather and the rain descend; but in rain or sunshine the city seems always gracious and friendly the very raindrops carry with them a celestial brightness. Most cities which are not too big to be manage- able leave upon the mind some one prevailing impression. Rome, when I think of it, evokes the idea of colour, the warm luxurious tint of the south and summer. The stuccoed house-fronts, with their reddish brown wash, the bright green shutters, the feathery palms and the all but blackness of the cypresses, with here a spray of pink rambler roses flung by happy chance across THE COLOUR OF ROME by H. Idris Bell the brown wall and there a line of washing not less happily disposed, make up a symphony of colour which gladdens the eye and nils the spirit with a delicious warmth and satisfaction. I am not, I hope, of an over-sensual temperament; I have my share of the historical imagination, and cannot walk the streets of Florence,, with their colder hues and the stem austerity of their fortress-like palaces, without thinking of the fevered life that filled them once and of the poet who saw the eternal sorrow and the glory of Him who moveth all"La gloria di colui che tutto move"; but I confess that to me Rome, the city of so many memories, is, first and fore- most, not the city of the Roman Republic, of the Caesars, of the mediaeval papacy, of the high Renaissance, of Baroque architecture, of Gari- baldi and the Risorgimento, but a timeless place, detached from all the busy circumstance of prac- tical life, created once and for all to be just beautiful. Not of course that in this city of the Popes the ardours of the spirit are unknown. Even in St. Peter's, that vast monument of a half-pagan humanism, one sees almost always a nun or two or a seminary student kneeling on the marble floor at the entrance to a chapel, with rapt face and lips that murmur a prayer, quite oblivious of the tourists who pass and repass continually as if the place were a picture gallery. In Santa Maria degli Angeli I saw a girl, young, pretty and fashionably dressed, kneeling on the floor by the shrine of Our Lady of the Angels and passionately kissing her hand to the picture that sparkled above the altar. For five minutes I lingered gazing at the exquisite lightness of the arches which support the roof; and when I left, the stream of kisses was still being wafted to the figure of Our Lady. Enter, too, one of the many Baroque churches in the busy streets and squares of the commercial quarters, and you will certainly find, here a market-woman with her basket and perhaps a child at her side, there an old, wrinkled workman, strayed in to snatch a few moments of prayer and meditation amid the labours of the day; and if sometimes the children of the Roman Church bear themselves in the house of prayer with an easy familiarity a little disconcerting to a northern Protestant, may it not be a sign that they feel themselves at home there? But there is another and an older religion whose spirit is also to be met with in Rome. In a cool cupola-topped chamber in the Terme Museum, the half-veiled sunlight playing with marvellous lights and shadows about the exquisite contours of her naked form, stands the Hellenistic statue