Humanly Speaking

ng down into a mirror in which were reflected the dimmed glories of the ceiling. Ther

n though experience should teach him that this is seldom the case. I had sagely counseled Bagster to go to the New Hampshir

a mysterious sign with his hand. It was evidently a gesture whic

ll you cameos or post

ot all about the Last Judgment, and we were soon

ed the better thing to do. Up in New Hampshire you can't do much but rest, but here you can improve your taste an

to feel rest

ifferent. I don't know how to arrange my material. What I want to do, in the first place, is to have

g. There was the broad Potomac, and the hospitable Virginia mansion. I had the satisfying sense that I was in the home of Washington. Everything seemed

ection between the place and the historical personages I have read about. I can't realize that the Epistle to the Romans was written to the people who lived down there. Just back of that new building is the very spot where Romulus would have lived if he had ever existed. On those very streets Scipio Africanus walked, and C?sar and Cicero and Paul and

t to be Shelleys or eve

ow, I could not keep up those walks. They were too concentrated for my constitution. I wasn't equal to them. Out in California they used to make wagers with the stranger that he couldn't eat a broiled quail every day for ten days. I don't see why he couldn't, but it seemed that the thought of to-morrow's quail, and the feeling that it was compulsory, tu

n't much that you can do

e on the wrong floor. Here you are as likely as not to find yourself in the wrong century. In Rome everything turns out, on inquiry, to be something else. There's something impressive about a relic if

ed on the ruins of Domitian's temple of Minerva, the only medi?val Gothic church in Rome. Begun A.D., 1280; was re

nted in 1848. And just round the corner from Santa Maria Sopra Minerva is the Pantheon. The inscription on the porch says that it was built by Agrippa, the son-in-law

The Pantheon was adorned with bronze columns. If you wish to see them you must go to St. Peter's, where they are a part of the high altar. So Baedeker says, but I'm told that isn't correct either. When you go inside you see that you must let by-gones be by-gones. You are confronted with the tomb of Victor Emmanue

tes his victories, till you come to the top of the column; and there stands St. Peter as if it were his m

n the course of construction. When I got out of the station I saw a huge brick building across the street, which had been left unfinished as if the workmen had gone on strike. I le

in the morning, and where criminals were formerly executed. The bronze statue of the philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was burned here as a heretic

omen are very much alive and cannot conceive that any one would come into the Piazza unless he intended to buy vegetables. Somehow the great events you have read about don't seem to have impressed themselves on the neighborhood. At any r

he strata have all been broken up by innumerable convulsions of nature. The Middle Ages were not eight or ten centuries ago; they are round the next block. A walk from the Quirinal to the Vatican takes you from the twentieth century to the twelfth. And one seems as much alive as the othe

made everything different. But when you stroll across from the Arch of Titus to the Arch of Constantine you wonder what the difference was. The two things look so much alike. And in the Vatican that huge

story of Jules Verne about a voyage to the moon? When the voyagers got a certain distance from the earth they couldn't any longer drop things out of the balloon. The articles they threw out didn't fall down. There wasn't any down; everything was round about. E

he is a very great man. But when ancient and modern history are mixed up it's hard to do any clear thinking. And when you do get a clear thought you find out that it isn't true. You know Dr. Johnson said something to the effect that that man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or

st on keeping on thinking. It is not a