Peter's, and the _Fete des
Oignons_ in the St. John Lateran, till they have acquired an
ecclesiastical turn of thought and expression, a habit of seeing
things through the spectacles of the Sacred College, and a faith which
has no sympathy with the outer world. I do not share their opinions,
and I have never found their advice particularly useful; but they
interest me, I like them, and I sincerely pity them. Who can tell what
events they are destined to witness in their time? Who can foresee the
spectacles which the future reserves for them, and the changes that
their habits will be made to undergo by the Italian revolution?
Already their hearing is distracted by the locomotives that rush
between Rome and Frascati; already the shriek of the steam-blast daily
and nightly hisses insolently at the respectable comedy of the past
between Rome and Civita Vecchia. Steamboats, another engine of
disorder, furnish the bi-weekly means of an invasion of the most
dangerous character. Those dozens of travellers who throng the streets
and the squares are about as much like our good old foreign tourists,
as the barbarians of Attila were like the worthy Spaniard who came to
Rome on purpose to see Titus Livius.
Examine them carefully; they are of every possible condition; for now
that travelling costs next to nothing, everybody is able to afford
himself a sight of Rome. Briefless barristers, physicians without
practice, office-clerks, poor students, apprentices, and shop-boys
drop down like hail on the Eternal City, for the sake of saying that
they have taken the Communion in it.
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