It is fit surely to recognize with admiring joy any glimpse of the Beautiful and the Eternal that is hung out for us,in color,in form or tone,in canvas,stone,or atmospheric air,and made accessible by any sense,in this world:but it is greatly fitter still (little as we are used that way)to shudder in pity and abhorrence over the scandalous tragedy,transcendent nadir of human ugliness and contemptibility,which under the daring title of religious worship,and practical recognition of the Highest God,daily and hourly everywhere transacts itself there.And,alas,not there only,but elsewhere,everywhere more or less;whereby our sense is so blunted to it;--whence,in all provinces of human life,these tears!--But let us take a glance at the Carnival,since we are here.The Letters,as before,are addressed to Knightsbridge;the date _Rome_:--"_February 5th_,1839.--The Carnival began yesterday.It is a curious example of the trifling things which will heartily amuse tens of thousands of grown people,precisely because they are trifling,and therefore a relief from serious business,cares and labors.The Corso is a street about a mile long,and about as broad as Jermyn Street;but bordered by much loftier houses,with many palaces and churches,and has two or three small squares opening into it.Carriages,mostly open,drove up and down it for two or three hours;and the contents were shot at with handfuls of comfits from the windows,--in the hope of making them as non-content as possible,--while they returned the fire to the best of their inferior ability.The populace,among whom was I,walked about;perhaps one in fifty were masked in character;but there was little in the masquerade either of splendor of costume or liveliness of mimicry.However,the whole scene was very gay;there were a good many troops about,and some of them heavy dragoons,who flourished their swords with the magnanimity of our Life-Guards,to repel the encroachments of too ambitious little boys.Most of the windows and balconies were hung with colored drapery;and there were flags,trumpets,nosegays and flirtations of all shapes and sizes.
The best of all was,that there was laughter enough to have frightened Cassius out of his thin carcass,could the lean old homicide have been present,otherwise than as a fleshless ghost;--in which capacity Ithought I had a glimpse of him looking over the shoulder of a particolored clown,in a carriage full of London Cockneys driving towards the Capitol.This good-humored foolery will go on for several days to come,ending always with the celebrated Horse-race,of horses without riders.The long street is cleared in the centre by troops,and half a dozen quadrupeds,ornamented like Grimaldi in a London pantomime,scamper away,with the mob closing and roaring at their heels.""_February_9th,1839.--The usual state of Rome is quiet and sober.
One could almost fancy the actual generation held their breath,and stole by on tiptoe,in presence of so memorable a past.But during the Carnival all mankind,womankind and childkind think it unbecoming not to play the fool.The modern donkey pokes its head out of the lion's skin of old Rome,and brays out the absurdest of asinine roundelays.Conceive twenty thousand grown people in a long street,at the windows,on the footways,and in carriages,amused day after day for several hours in pelting and being pelted with handfuls of mock or real sugar-plums;and this no name or presence,but real downright showers of plaster comfits,from which people guard their eyes with meshes of wire.As sure as a carriage passes under a window or balcony where are acquaintances of theirs,down comes a shower of hail,ineffectually returned from below.The parties in two crossing carriages similarly assault each other;and there are long balconies hung the whole way with a deep canvas pocket full of this mortal shot.
One Russian Grand Duke goes with a troop of youngsters in a wagon,all dressed in brown linen frocks and masked,and pelts among the most furious,also being pelted.The children are of course preeminently vigorous,and there is a considerable circulation of real sugar-plums,which supply consolation for all disappointments."The whole to conclude,as is proper,with a display,with two displays,of fireworks;in which art,as in some others,Rome is unrivalled:--"_February 9th_,1839.--It seems to be the ambition of all the lower classes to wear a mask and showy grotesque disguise of some kind;and I believe many of the upper ranks do the same.They even put St.
