II

I think Bagster is not the first person who has found intellectual
difficulty here. Rome exists for the confusion of the sentimental
traveler. Other cities deal tenderly with our preconceived ideas of
them. There is one simple impression made upon the mind. Once out of the
railway station and in a gondola, and we can dream our dream of Venice
undisturbed. There is no doge at present, but if there were one we
should know where to place him. The city still furnishes the proper
setting for his magnificence. And London with all its vastness has, at
first sight, a familiar seeming. The broad and simple outlines of
English history make it easy to reconceive the past.

But Rome is disconcerting. The actual refuses to make terms with the
ideal. It is a vast storehouse of historical material, but the
imagination is baffled in the attempt to put the material together.

When Scott was in Rome his friend "advised him to wait to see the
procession of Corpus Domini, and hear the Pope

Saying the high, high mass
All on St. Peter's day.

He smiled and said that these things were more poetical in the
description than in reality, and that it was all the better for him
not to have seen it before he wrote about it."

Sir Walter's instinct was a true one. Rome is not favorable to
historical romance. Its atmosphere is eminently realistic. The