The Makers of Modern Rome, in Four Books

The Makers of Modern Rome, in Four Books

I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK WITH THE DEAR NAMES OF THOSE OF MINE WHO LIE UNDER THE WALLS OF ROME: AND OF HIM, THE LAST OF ALL, WHO WAS BORN IN THAT SAD CITY: ALL NOW AWAITING ME, AS I TRUST, WHERE GOD MAY PLEASE. F. W. O. M. W. O. F. R. O. Nobody will expect in this book, or from me, the results of original research, or a settlementif any settlement is ever possibleof vexed questions which have occupied the gravest students. An individual glance at the aspect of these questions which most clearly presents itself to a mind a little exercised in the aspects of humanity, but not trained in the ways of learning, is all I attempt or desire. This humble endeavour has been conscientious at least. The work has been much interrupted by sorrow and suffering, on which account, for any slips of hers, the writer asks the indulgence of her unknown friends. There is no place in the world of which it is less necessary to attempt description (or of which so many descriptions have been attempted) than the once capital of that world, the supreme and eternal city, the seat of empire, the home of the conqueror, the greatest human centre of power and influence which our race has ever known. Its history is unique and its position. Twice over in circumstances and by means as different as can be imagined it has conquered and held subject the world. All that was known to man in their age gave tribute and acknowledgment to 2 the Csars; and an ever-widening circle, taking in countries and races unknown to the Csars, have looked to the spiritual sovereigns who succeeded them as to the first and highest of authorities on earth. The reader knows, or at least is assisted on all hands to have some idea and conception of the classical cityto be citizens of which was the aim of the whole world's ambition, and whose institutions and laws, and even its architecture and domestic customs, were the only rule of civilisationwith its noble and grandiose edifices, its splendid streets, the magnificence and largeness of its life; while on the other hand most people are able to form some idea of what was the Rome of the Popes, the superb yet squalid medival city with its great palaces and its dens of poverty, and that conjunction of exuberance and want which does not strike the eye while the bulk of a population remains in a state of slavery. But there is a period between, which has not attracted much attention from English writers, and which the reader passes by as a time in which there is little desirable to dwell upon, though it is in reality the moment of transition when the old is about to be replaced by the new, and when already the energy and enthusiasm of a new influence is making its appearance among the tragic dregs and abysses of the past. An ancient civilisation dying in the impotence of luxury and wealth from which all active power or influence over the world had departed, and a new and profound internal revolt, breaking up its false calm from within, before the raging forces of another rising power had yet begun to thunder at its gates withoutform however a spectacle full of interest, especially when the scene of so many conflicts is traversed and lighted up by the most lifelike figures, and has left its record, both of good and evil, in authentic and detailed chronicles, full of individual character and life, in which the men and women of the age stand before us, occupied and surrounded by circumstances which are very different 3 from our own, yet linked to us by that unfailing unity of human life and feeling which makes the farthest off foreigner a brother, and the most distant of our primeval predecessors like a neighbour of to-day. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 40135
Author: Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Release Date: Jul 3, 2012
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Illustrator: Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926 , Riviere, Henry Parsons, 1811-1888