A PAGE FOR ALL

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 60, 4 December 1926, Page 24

A PAGE FOR ALL

Rome of the superb Vatican Museum and the gorgeous Sixtine Chapel, the Rome of that Colosseum where Nero fed myriads of unhappy Christians to the lions, the Rome of the grim Castle of San Angelo, the Rome of the ti'tbid, fast-flowing Tiber, the Rome of the catacombs, Rome, that Eternal City whose past is still a subject of everfascinating study. It seems a shame not to spend at least a fortnight here To tell the truth, there is a positive embarrass de richesses in the wondrous Vatican galleries alone, where one masterpiece of sculpture or painting sue ceeds another with well nigh bewildering rapidity as one follows meekly behind the guide. Impressions become almost chaotic, but when I return to the sober quietude of my modest little bookroorn in far-away Maoriland, I intend to haul out my little portfolio of photographs, to dwell leisurely on the much-storied pages of Baedeker or much livelier reading—those of Mr. E V Lucas’s recently-published “Wanderer in Rome.” Rome is not for a day. a week, a fortnight, but for all time Its fascination grips one ever tighter and tighter, and when in a bumble wine shop on the Piazza Spagna, close to those famous steps where tlie visiting ' artist selects his models, I sip luxuriously at a tumbler filler with iced Orvieto I find tnvself con sumed bv enw of the velveteen-ccated. silverv-haired old American painter who tells me this is In’s sixth vear in Rome, and that lie is still far from Imnyerino to return to his native-and wineless Kalamazoo (Mich 1, Peoria (Til), or whatever his “home town” may be Some Stray Notes.

The latter-day Italian is, I fear, more or less a degenerate and rather tasteless individual so far as architecture is concerned. As in most great modern cities, the rage for a floridly over-ornate style of building is omnipresent to-day in Rome. The Roman of to-day points with pride to the huge Monument t< Victor Emmanuel II which has cost . wot not how many scores of millions of those liras now so desperately scarce in Italv It is to mv fancy altogether too gorgeous, with its long row o. glistening white marble columns 1 nereis too, that surplusage of gilt wl, 'ch t. the bane of latter-day Italian architecture, and to me it is a veritable relie to turn to some of the ancient edifice. , ‘the noble Trojan Column, the small but indefinably elegant Fountain of the Tortoises, to drink in the austere bn compelling charm of the £ en, 7 al /7nr of the Roman Forum, to absorb, so far as the eve mav allow,_ the superb e - feet of the sadlv-ruined but still wonderfully impressive , c ° o‘sS.e"’Tl, 0 ‘ 5S . e "’T 1 ,? U 2 visit Rome, so I counsel the travelling New Zealander, in the spring or the later autumn, and do no *‘. J, recently done, sojourn on Tiber s banks in the heat of the summer. Bodtlv exercise becomes a perfect P in the hot months, and this '.ear, in common, it would appear, with the major part of Europe, the heat has been greatlv above the average Three compensations, so I thank a benefi- - providence, many of my fellow wanderers have found, is the absurdly cheap wine of the country, doubly grateful when iced, the curious absences of mosquitoes usually, I am told, a terrible nuisance in July, August and September, and the comfortable victorias or little open cabs which amble through the streets in so agreeably leisurelv a stvle, and the patronage of which entails so almost ridiculously a modest tax on the traveller s purse But I would the Italian would grow and cure and sell some more agreeable a brand of tobacco. The voting elegants of the ancient mtv patronise, I notice, a long spidery tube, cf tobacco styled Virginia, and there is a Minghetti cigar which is not a bad. smoke. But carry vour pipe tobacco with von, even if you do have some trouble in dodging the Customs Oh, for a modest fill of any good brand of the Virginia weed as we New Zealanders know it. Were Ito live in Italy I should be a hardened smuggler. I am moderately "bucked up., however, bv the prospect of seeing Florence arid Venice, and so take to the train again, with its stuffy cars, its hot cushions, and its vile sulphurous smoke in a fairly philosophical spirit.