II
Claude to Eustace
Rome disappoints me still; but I shrink and adapt myself to it.Somehow a tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppressionStill, wherever I go, accompanies ever, and makes meFeel like a tree (shall I say?) buried under a ruin of brickwork.Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo,Merely a marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots.Ye gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed,Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in?What do I find in the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars.Well, but St. Peter’s? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture!No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum.Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement,This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea?Yet of solidity much, but of splendour little is extant:‘Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!’ their Emperor vaunted;‘Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!’ the Tourist may answer.