Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/81

 heaven and of earth, should build themselves between her walls? That she is now a museum of art and history is not wonderful when one thinks of the history that was made here, and that the greatest artists of the ages have come here to decorate her, to make her beautiful. But if Mrs. Garrison will read her histories of art she will find that not one of these artists save Montegna, who cannot be called very great, was a Roman. And of all the great men who have made her fortunes their own, few were born here. She has been supreme; but she has been barren. Not with her own sons has she ruled and become splendid, but by her strange power of drawing the sons of other lands to give their lives in her service; and here lies her fascinating mystery.”

It was not difficult for the imagination of Anne to become possessed by the mystery and beauty, the ugliness and squalor that is Rome; and it soon became for her, not a place to see, but an experience that worked upon her nature, a quickener to new and vital feelings, which is what Rome has always been to those who have loved her most.

Superficially concealed by modern and common-place streets, a confusing network of electric-car lines, and a number of large and offensively new hotels, the old Rome still remains, and her immense