252

ARRIVAL AT

MARSEILLES.

happened to an air-pump of the steam engine, which obliged us to stop in the middle of our course. For fourteen hours we lay idly rolling on the water, with the mountainous coast of Majorca beside us. The air-pump was at length mended, and we proceeded, gaining next day a view of the snowy summits of the Pyrenees, which sent towards us a keen, sharp wind from the north-west. On the fourth morning we arrived at Marseilles, which gave but a chilly welcome to those who had just left a region glowing with sunshine, and fanned by airs that make the winter only a longer spring. Marseilles is a stately and prosperous city, nobly situated on a harbor, which I wonder not that the Greeks should have chosen as the seat of their commerce with Gaul; but its damp and frosty winds, and its sunless streets, make it just now a gloomy and dreary abode. The grippe is a prevalent malady here, and we are only waiting for one of our party to recover a little from an attack of it, to flit to a warmer coast.

ANTIQUITIES AT ROME.

253

LETTER XXIII.

DISCOVERY OF ANTIQUITIES AT ROME-RECENT CHANGES.

ROME, May 21, 1858.

I HAVE one or two things to say of Rome which may furnish matter for a short letter.

Rome has its rich collections of ancient art in the Vatican, but there is a still richer museum in the earth below. The spade can scarcely be thrust into the ground without turning up some work of art or striking upon some monument of the olden time. Most of the fine statues in the public galleries have, I believe, been discovered in digging to lay the foundations of buildings; and who can tell what masterpieces of Greek sculpture are yet concealed under that thick layer of rubbish which overlies the ancient level of the city—what representations of

"The fair humanities of old religion"

are waiting the hour when they shall be restored to daylight and the admiration of the world-prostrate Jupiters, nymphs with their placid features and taper limbs imbedded in the mould, and merry fauns that have smiled for a thousand years in the darkness of the ground!

254

EXCAVATIONS IN THE CAMPAGNA.

The present government of Rome is turning its attention to the excavation of those spots which promise most. As I was passing, the other day, in a street leading towards the Colosseum, in company with an American artist residing here, he said, pointing to certain ancient columns, the lower part of which stood deep in the earth: "The Pope wants to dig about these columns, but the spot is leased, and he cannot. If it were but in the possession of those who own the fee he might take it, but he cannot interfere with a lease. At the foot of those fine old columns he would probably find something worth his trouble."

This passion for excavation has been fortunately gratified elsewhere. If you look at Sir William Gell's Map of the Environs of Rome, you will see traced, from near the gate of St. John towards Monte Cavo, beyond the Alban lake, an ancient road bearing the name of Via Latina. If you look for it on the Campagna, you will find it covered with grass, and cattle grazing over it. On the line of this buried street, and not far from the city walls, workmen employed by the Pope are breaking the green turf and trenching the ground to a considerable depth. They have laid bare several solid masses of Roman masonry, and the foundations of an ancient Christian church, a basilica, over which were scattered, in the soil, many marble columns with Corinthian capitals and bases on which is carved the figure of the cross, indicating beyond a question the purpose of the building. But the most remarkable of these discoveries are two places of sepulture, consisting of vaulted rooms in the earth, to which you

SEPULCHRAL

CHAMBERS.

255

The earth had fallen into

descend by staircases of stone. the entrances and closed them, but had not filled the space within, so that the stucco medallions and paintings overhead were found in as perfect preservation as when they came from the hands of the artist. In one of these tombs, which consisted of a single vaulted chamber with a pure white surface, I found an artist perched upon a high seat over two huge stone coffins, copying the spirited and fanciful figures of men and animals, in stucco, with which the arched ceiling was studded. The other tomb is larger and deeper in the ground, and consists of two vaulted chambers, communicating with each other, against the walls of which stood marble sarcophagi, rough with figures in high relief. On the ceiling of one of the rooms, among the stucco medallions, were arabesques in vivid colors, and landscapes in fresco, which show a far more advanced stage of this branch of the art than any thing which has been found at Pompeii. They are painted in what seemed to me a kind of neutral tint. Here are trees with gnarled branches, and foliage drawn with a free and graceful touch, and buildings rising among the trees, and figures of people engaged in rural employments; and all is given with a decided and skilful aerial perspective, the objects becoming less distinct and sharp in outline as they are supposed to recede from the eye. "Ten years hence," said the artist who accompanied us on this excursion, “you may see all these figures engraved and published in a book. Here at Rome we never do any thing in a hurry."

It is not unlikely that the admission of the external air

256

THRONG OF SPECTATORS.

will cause the stucco to peel from these vaults, or at least will cause the paintings to fade. "I think," said our friend, the artist, "that the landscapes are less distinct now than they were ten days since." In the mean time, all Rome is talking of this discovery; it is the great topic of the time. Numbers of people are constantly passing out of Rome to visit the excavations on the Via Latina. As we approached the city the other day, by the magnificent paved road called the New Appian Way, we wondered why all Rome should be rushing into the Campagna; so many people did we meet walking, and so many carriages rattling out of the gate of San Giovanni. When at length we visited the excavations, this was all explained. There was quite a throng about the principal tomb, where a man in uniform stood at the entrance, admitting only a certain number of visitors at a time, in order that they might not be in each others' way. A few strangers were among them, but the greater number were Romans of different classes-portly men of a slightly bluish complexion, who came in carriages accompanied by welldressed ladies-and persons of an humbler condition who came on foot, the women sometimes bringing with them their infants-quiet creatures, asleep on their mothers' shoulders. There was a great deal of animated and eager discussion under the stucco figures and arabesques, for in Rome art is one of the few subjects on which people are allowed to speak freely.

As we left the spot and entered the New Appian Way to return to the city, we met two portly ecclesiastics, whose