Be
it palace or whatever other dwelling, the inmates climb through rubbish
often to the comforts, such as they may be, that await them above. I
vainly try to get down upon paper the dreariness, the ugliness,
shabbiness, un-home-likeness of a Roman street. It is also to be said
that you cannot go far in any direction without coming to a piazza, which
is sometimes little more than a widening and enlarging of the dingy
street, with the lofty facade of a church or basilica on one side, and a
fountain in the centre, where the water squirts out of some fantastic
piece of sculpture into a great stone basin. These fountains are often
of immense size and most elaborate design. . . . .
There are a great many of these fountain-shapes, constructed under the
orders of one pope or another, in all parts of the city; and only the
very simplest, such as a jet springing from a broad marble or porphyry
vase, and falling back into it again, are really ornamental. If an
antiquary were to accompany me through the streets, no doubt he would
point out ten thousand interesting objects that I now pass over
unnoticed, so general is the surface of plaster and whitewash; but often
I can see fragments of antiquity built into the walls, or perhaps a
church that was a Roman temple, or a basement of ponderous stones that
were laid above twenty centuries ago.
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