A Walk on the Campagna

It was a bright forenoon of February; a month in which the brief
severity of a Roman winter is already past, and when violets and daisies
begin to show themselves in spots favored by the sun. The sculptor came
out of the city by the gate of San Sebastiano, and walked briskly along
the Appian Way.

For the space of a mile or two beyond the gate, this ancient and famous
road is as desolate and disagreeable as most of the other Roman avenues.
It extends over small, uncomfortable paving-stones, between brick and
plastered walls, which are very solidly constructed, and so high as
almost to exclude a view of the surrounding country. The houses are of
most uninviting aspect, neither picturesque, nor homelike and social;
they have seldom or never a door opening on the wayside, but are
accessible only from the rear, and frown inhospitably upon the traveller
through iron-grated windows. Here and there appears a dreary inn or a
wine-shop, designated by the withered bush beside the entrance, within
which you discern a stone-built and sepulchral interior, where guests
refresh themselves with sour bread and goats'-milk cheese, washed down
with wine of dolorous acerbity.

At frequent intervals along the roadside up-rises the ruin of an ancient
tomb. As they stand now, these structures are immensely high and broken
mounds of conglomerated brick, stone, pebbles, and earth, all molten
by time into a mass as solid and indestructible as if each tomb were
composed of a single boulder of granite. When first erected, they were
cased externally, no doubt, with slabs of polished marble, artfully
wrought bas-reliefs, and all such suitable adornments, and were rendered
majestically beautiful by grand architectural designs. This antique
splendor has long since been stolen from the dead, to decorate the
palaces and churches of the living. Nothing remains to the dishonored
sepulchres, except their massiveness.