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1 When I was at Rome, I fell in with an English acquaintance, whom I had met occasionally in his own county, and when he was on a visit at my own University. I had always felt him a pleasant, as rather engaging companion, and his talent no one could question; but his opinions on a variety of political and ecclesiastical subjects were either very unsettled or at least very uncommon. His remarks had often the effect of random talking; and though he was always ingenious, and often (as far as I was his antagonist) unanswerable, yet he did not advance me, or others, one step towards the conviction that he was right and we were wrong in the matter which happened to be in dispute. Such a personage is no unusual phenomenon in this day, in which every one thinks it a duty to exercise the “sacred right of private judgment;” and when, consequently, there are, as the grammar has it, “quot homines, tot sententiæ;” nor should I have distinguished my good friend from a score of theorists and debaters, producible at a minute’s notice in any part of the United Kingdom, except for two reasons—first, that his theories lay in the different direction from those now in fashion, and were all based upon the principle of “bigotry,” (as he, whether seriously or paradoxically, avowed)—next, that he maintained they were not novelties, but as old as the Gospel itself, and possessing as continuous a tradition. Yet, in spite of whatever recommendations he cast about them, they did not take hold of me. They seemed unreal; this will best explain what I mean:—unreal, as if he had raised his structure in the air, an independent, self-sustained pile of buildings, sui simile, without historical basis or recognized position among things existing, without discoverable relations to the wants, wishes, and opinions of those who were the subjects of his speculations.
We were thrown together at Rome, as we had never been before; and, getting familiar with him, I began to have some insight into his meaning. I soon found him to be quite serious in his opinions; but I did not think him a wit the less chimerical and meteoros than before. However, as he was always entertaining, and could bear a set-down or a laugh easily, from the sweetness and amiableness of his nature, I always liked to hear him talk. Indeed, if the truth must be spoken, I believe, in some degree, he began to poison my mind with his extravagances.
One day I had called at the Prussian Minister’s, and found my friend there. We left together. The landing from which the staircase descended looked out over Rome; affording a most striking view of a city which the Christian can never survey without the bitterest, the most loving, and the most melancholy thoughts. I will not describe the details of the prospect; they may be found in every book; nothing is so common now as panoramic or dioramic descriptions. Suffice it to say, that we were looking out from the Capitol all over the modern city; and that ancient Rome, being for the most part out of sight, was not suggested to us except as the basis of the history which followed its day. The morning was very clear and still: all the many domes, which gave feature to the view before us, rose gracefully and proudly. We lingered at the window without saying a word. News of public affairs had lately come from England, which had saddened us both, as leading us to forebode the overthrow of all that gives dignity and interest to our country, not to touch upon the more serious reflections connected with it.
My friend began by alluding to a former conversation, in which I had expressed my anticipation, that Rome, as a city, was still destined to bear the manifestation of divine judgments. He said, “Have you really the heart to say that all this is to be visited and overthrown?” His eye glanced at St. Peter’s. I was taken by surprise, and for a moment overcome, as well as he; but the parallel of the Apostles’ question in the Gospel soon came to my aid, and I said, by way of answer, “Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!” He smiled; and we relapsed into our meditative mood.
At length I said, “Why, surely, as far as one’s imagination is concerned, nothing is so hard to conceive as that evil is coming on our own country: fairly as the surface of things still promises, yet you as well as I expect evil. Not long before I came abroad, I was in a retired parish in Berkshire, on a Sunday, and the inestimable blessings of our present condition, the guilt of those who are destroying them, and moreover, the difficulty of believing they could be lost, came forcibly upon me. When everything looked so calm, regular, and smiling, the church bell going for service, high and low, young and old flocking in, others resting in the porch, and others delaying in the churchyard, as if there were enjoyment in the very cessation of that bodily action which for six days had worried them, (but I need not go on describing what both of us have seen a hundred times,) I said to myself, ‘What a heaven on earth is this! how removed, like an oasis, from the dust and dreariness of the political world! And is it possible that it depends for its existence on what is without, so as to be dissipated and to vanish at once upon the occurrence of certain changes in public affairs?’ I could not bring myself to believe that the foundations beneath were crumbling away, and that a sudden fall might be expected.”