Humanly Speaking

eas of them. There is one simple impression made upon the mind. Once out of the railway station and in a gondola, and we can dream our dream of Venice undisturbed. There is no doge at present, b

s of English history make it

he ideal. It is a vast storehouse of historical material, but the

vised him to wait to see the processi

he high,

St. Pet

the description than in reality, and that it was all the be

he air-men fly through space. But the air-men complain that they sometimes come upon what they call "air holes." The atmosphere seems suddenly to give way under them. In Rom

assort their historical material. For in the days before historical criticism was invented, the histor

issuing forth, resolved to see Rome in three days. At the end of the first day his courage would ooze away as he realized the extent of his ignorance. With a hurried look at the g

To come to the city of Noah was worth a long journey. Just think of actually standing on the spot where Shem, Ham, and Japhet soothed the declining years of their father! It was hard to realize it all. And it appears tha

upiter," founded a city on the Capitoline Hill. One wonders what Shem, Ham, and Japhet thought o

tablished a rival civic centre. In the meantime, Janus had become mixed up with Roman history and was working manfully for the New Italy.

g of this early history might enjoy his first morning's walk in Rome. But to the middle-aged pilgrim from

may be a guide to those who visit this wonderful city, which boasts at once the noblest remains of antiquity, and the most faultless works of art; which possesses more claims to interest than any other city; which has in every age stood foremost in t

as nothing to contradict it. One might muse on "the grandeur that was Rome," among picturesque ruins covered with flowering weeds. But now a Rome that is obtrusively modern claims

w York politicians. Where we had expected to see stately figures in togas we were made to see hustling real-estate speculators, and millionaires, and labor leaders, and ward politicians, who were working for the prosperity o

his contemporaries called "a searcher out of strange things"! These ruins could not by the mere process of time become venerable, for they were in their very nature novelties. They were the playthings of a very rich man. There they lie upon the ground like so many broken toys. They are just

olve. A thorough soldier and yet the inaugurator of a peace policy, a 'Greekling' as his Roman subjects called him, and saturated with Hellenic ideas, and yet a lover of Roman antiquity; a poet and an artist, but with a passion for

"ancient" rather than as a modern. The enormously rich men who are at present most in the public eye present the same contradictio

of the simpler sort. It has been a city of the world. It has been cosmopolitan. "Urbs et orbis" suggests t

other. The New Testament writer distinguishes between Jerusalem as a geographical fact and Jerusalem as a spiritual ideal. There has been, he s

d itself on the imagination of the world. Since the destruction of Carthage the meaning of the word "Roman"

Rome for his triumph. Here the pomp of war could be seen, on a carefully arranged stage, and before admiring thousands. It was the triumph rather than the battle that was remembered. All

all else. The Holy Roman Empire was a creation of the Germanic imagination, and yet it was a real power. Many a hard-headed Teutonic monarch crossed the Alps at the head of his army to demand a higher sanction for his own rule of force. When he got

re Chinamen also." The assertion is so logical in form that we are inclined to accept it without question. Then we remember that in Hans Christian Andersen's day

This theory has nothing to recommend it but its extreme verbal simplicity. As a matter of fact, Rome has never been noted for its pious zeal. Such warmth as it has had has been

igious centre. It did not originate new movements. Missionaries of the faith have not gone forth from it, as they went from Ireland. It is not in Rome that we find the places where the saints received their spiritual illuminations, and fought the good fight, and gathered their disciples. Rome was the place to which the

s all. The Eternal City, he believed, was to be the regenerating influence, not only for Europe but for all the world. All the romantic enthusiasm of Garibaldi flamed forth at the sight of Rome. All other triumphs

a local issue. The most important events in that history did not occur here at all, though they were here commemorated. So it happens that every nation finds here its own, and reinforces its traditions. In the Middle Ages, the Jewish traveler, B

he year 305 A.D., left me unmoved. It was of course a long time ago; but then, I had no mental associations with Pope Liberius, and there was no encyclop?dia at hand in which I might look him up. Besides, "the church was re?rected by Sixtus III in the year 432, and was much altered in the twelfth century." But

aid to have lived with his daughters Praxedis and Pudentiana. This is interesting, but the English-speaking traveler is likely to pass by Pudaentiana's church, and seek out the church of he

which was built before the birth of Christ. One can hardly miss seeing it, because i

the memories which he takes away are t