Rome, is seldom long either out of sight or mind. One constantly comes
upon it in the most unexpected manner, for there is no river front to
the city. There is a wide open space on the Ripetta--a street which runs
from the Piazza del Popolo, at the head of the foreign quarter, to
remoter parts--where a broad flight of marble steps descends to the
level of the flood, and a ferry crosses to the opposite bank: looking
over at the trees and fields, it is like the open country, yet beyond
are St. Peter's and the Vatican, and the whole of what is known as the
Leonine City. But one cannot follow the Tiber through the streets of
Rome as one may the Seine in Paris: in the thickly-built quarters the
houses back upon the stream and its yellow waves wash their foundations,
working wrath and woe from time to time, as those who were there in the
winter of 1870 will recollect. Sometimes it is lost to sight for half a
mile together, unless one catches a glimpse of it through the
carriage-way of a palace. From the wharf of the Ripetta it disappears
until you come upon it again at the bridge of St. Angelo, the Ælian
bridge of ancient Rome, which is the most direct passage from the
fashionable and foreign quarter to the Trastevere. It must be confessed
that the idle sense of mere pleasure generally supersedes recollection
and association after one's first astonishment to find one's self among
the historic places subsides; yet how often, as our horses' hoofs rang
on the slippery stones, my thoughts went suddenly back to the scene when
Saint Gregory passed over, chanting litanies, at the head of the whole
populace, who formed one vast penitential procession, and saw the
avenging angel alight on the mausoleum of Adrian and sheath his sword in
sign that the plague was stayed; or to that terrible day when the
ferocious mercenaries of the Constable de Bourbon and the wretched
inhabitants given over to sack and slaughter swarmed across together,
butchering and butchered, while the troops in the castle hurled down
what was left of its classic statues upon the heads of friend and foe,