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Life of John Sterling-Part24_Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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stage-declamation, at bottom, in our day, thoroughly mean and prosaic.

My other remark is, that Rome, seen from the tower of the Capitol,



from the Pincian or the Janiculum, is at this day one of the most

beautiful spectacles which eyes ever beheld. The company of great



domes rising from a mass of large and solid buildings, with a few

stone-pines and scattered edifices on the outskirts; the broken bare



Campagna all around; the Alban Hills not far, and the purple range of

Sabine Mountains in the distance with a cope of snow;--this seen in



the clear air, and the whole spiritualized by endless recollections,

and a sense of the grave and lofty reality of human existence which



has had this place for a main theatre, fills at once the eyes and

heart more forcibly, and to me delightfully, than I can find words to



say."

"_January 22d_, 1839.--The Modern Rome, Pope and all inclusive, are a



shabby attempt at something adequate to fill the place of the old

Commonwealth. It is easy enough to live among them, and there is much



to amuse and even interest a spectator; but the native existence of

the place is now thin and hollow, and there is a stamp of littleness,



and childishpoverty of taste, upon all the great Christian buildings

I have seen here,--not excepting St. Peter's; which is crammed with



bits of colored marble and gilding, and Gog-and-Magog colossal statues

of saints (looking prodigiously small), and mosaics from the worst



pictures in Rome; and has altogether, with most imposing size and

lavish splendor, a tang of Guildhall finery about it that contrasts



oddly with the melancholy vastness and simplicity of the Ancient

Monuments, though these have not the Athenian elegance. I recur



perpetually to the galleries of Sculpture in the Vatican, and to the

Frescos of Raffael and Michael Angelo, of inexhaustible beauty and



greatness, and to the general aspect of the City and the Country round

it, as the most impressive scene on earth. But the Modern City, with



its churches, palaces, priests and beggars, is far from sublime."

Of about the same date, here is another paragraph worth inserting:



"Gladstone has three little agate crosses which he will give you for

my little girls. Calvert bought them, as a present, for 'the bodies,'



at Martigny in Switzerland, and I have had no earlier opportunity of

sending them. Will you despatch them to Hastings when you have an



opportunity? I have not yet seen Gladstone's _Church and State_; but

as there is a copy in Rome, I hope soon to lay hands on it. I saw



yesterday in the _Times_ a furious, and I am sorry to say, most absurd

attack on him and it, and the new Oxonian school."



"_February 28th, 1839_.--There is among the people plenty of squalid

misery; though not nearly so much as, they say, exists in Ireland; and



here there is a certain freedom and freshness of manners, a dash of

Southern enjoyment in the condition of the meanest and most miserable.



There is, I suppose, as little as well can be of conscience or

artificial cultivation of any kind; but there is not the affectation



of a virtue which they do not possess, nor any feeling of being

despised for the want of it; and where life generally is so inert,



except as to its passions and material wants, there is not the bitter

consciousness of having been beaten by the more prosperous, in a race



which the greater number have never thought of running. Among the

laboring poor of Rome, a bribe will buy a crime; but if common work



procures enough for a day's food or idleness, ten times the sum will

not induce them to toil on, as an English workman would, for the sake



of rising in the world. Sixpence any day will put any of them at the

top of the only tree they care for,--that on which grows the fruit of



idleness. It is striking to see the way in which, in magnificent

churches, the most ragged beggars kneel on the pavement before some



favorite altar in the midst of well-dressed women and of gazing




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