But the fact is, that, through the Forum, . . . . and
anywhere out of the commonest foot-track and roadway, you must look well
to your steps. . . . . If you tread beneath the triumphal arch of Titus
or Constantine, you had better look downward than upward, whatever be the
merit of the sculptures aloft. . . . .
After a while the visitant finds himself getting accustomed to this
horrible state of things; and the associations of moral sublimity and
beauty seem to throw a veil over the physical meannesses to which I
allude. Perhaps there is something in the mind of the people of these
countries that enables them quite to dissever small ugliness from great
sublimity and beauty. They spit upon the glorious pavement of St.
Peter's, and wherever else they like; they place paltry-looking wooden
confessionals beneath its sublime arches, and ornament them with cheap
little colored prints of the crucifixion; they hang tin hearts and other
tinsel and trumpery at the gorgeous shrines of the saints, in chapels
that are incrusted with gems, or marbles almost as precious; they put
pasteboard statues of saints beneath the dome of the Pantheon; in short,
they let the sublime and the ridiculous come close together, and are not
in the least troubled by the proximity.
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