DESTRUCTION OF OLD ROME.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 431, 15 July 1881, Page 23

DESTRUCTION OF OLD ROME.

(Special Rome Correspondent of the Pilot.) i APRIL 16. — The changes which have been brought about in the mate- | rial condition of old Rome since the invasion of the Italians, have been produced so gradually that it is only from time to time that reaidents become aware of them. Attention has bfen called to them I in a recent letter from the pen of the celebrated German historian of Rome in the middle ages, Ferdinand Gregoroviuw. Writing to the President of the Academy of Saint Luke, he says that " the city of Rome, whilst it suffers one of its greatest historical transformations, is being rapidly despoiled of its old physiognomy in such a way that this will, in a very short time, be cancelled from the memory of the Romans themselves. And later on this will be a cause of no small grief, if art do not come in time to remedy the evil, by presenting in its works a deposit of Roman monumental records." And, turning more particulaily to the old buildings which are fast disappearing before the construction of the Tiber Embankment — buildings belonging to the middle ages and even to the early Empire aM. Republic — Gregoro^ius suggests that pictures, or photographs, ofu.igravings be made of the monuments doomed to destruction, so that these representations shall remain as a memory and a guide to the historian and archaeologist. The hurry of building and the expectations formed of the new constructions have blinded most people to the incalculable damage that has been already done. A few years ago Augustus Hare raised his voice in protest, but was unable to stay the destruction. The able novelist " Ouida" raised her voice with the same end in view, and supported by the London Times, wrung from the destroyer certain barren promises which are not likely to be fulfilled. Hare says : " Many famous antiquarian memories have disappeared, together with other well-known buildings, of which the interest was confined to Papal times. The Agger of Servius Tullius and the ruined Ponte Salara have been swept away. The incomparable view from the Ponte Rotto has been blocked out, the trees on the Aventine, and the woods of Monte Mario have been cut down. The Villa NegroniMassimo, the most beautiful of Roman Gardens, with the grandest of old orange avenues, and glorious groves of oypresss amid which Horace was buried, — a villa whose terraces dated from the time when it belonged to Maecenas, and which was replete with recollections of the romantic story of Vittori Accorambuoni, of Donna Camilla Peretti, and of Alfieri, has been ruthlessly and utterly ploughed up, so that not a trace of it is left. Even this, however, is as nothing compared with the entire destruction of the beauty and charm of the grandest of the buildings which remain. Tbe Baths of Caracalla, stripped of all their verdure and shrubs, and deprived alike of the tufted foliage amid which Shelley wrote, and of the flowery carpet which so greatly enhanced their lonely solemnity, are now a series of bare featureless walls, standing in a gravelly waste, and possess no more attraction than the ruins of a London warehouse. The Coliseum, no louger " a garlanded ring," is bereaved of everything which made it so lovely and so picturesque, while botanists must forever deplore the incomparable and strangely unique " Flora of the Coliseum," which Signor Rosa has caused to be carefully annihilated, even the roots of the shrubs have been extracted by the firemen, though in pulling them out, more of the building has come down than five hundred years of time would have injured." And in the new quarters of the city, every object of ancient and mediaeval interest has been removed, and the whole place turned into a wide and stony desert. No respect has been paid to ancient buildings : new houses have been constructed on their remains. Churches have not only been turned into barracks aud hospitals, but several have been completely cleared away. Statues have been scraped with the intention of rendering them white and clean, and in this process of renewal the finest lines and forms of the sculptor's art have been defaced so that these works look as if they had come out of the studio of a third-rate Milanese sculptor. And the words that have been forced from the lips of Gregorovius and Ouida and Hare are not the cries of the clerical or Papal party, but rather the utterances of those who beheld with certain satisfaction the fall of the temporal power of the Pope. They are the real expression of a protest against that Vandalism, which under the plea of improvement dooms the finest constructions and works of ancient art to irreparable destruction. P. L. COHKELLAST.