File:Six and one abroad (1914) (14597867759).jpg

Identifier: sixoneabroad00thom (find matches)
Title: Six and one abroad
Year: 1914 (1910s)
Authors: Thomas, Sidney J., 1868-
Subjects:
Publisher: (Austin, Tex.) Printed by E.L. Steck
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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d to lap. All around were the weather-grimed statues of heroes andgods that were the work of the worlds best chisels. A drive in Rome, a mere drive with interlocutory stops, is un-satisfactory, but we were committed to the guides pro-gramme, and at that unctions dignitarys own time havingparted with the Pincian Gardens and with a fin-de-siecle couplewho had ten.porarily annexed themselves to ns there for guide-lore privileges, we unraveled a skein of Roman streets to wherethey became untangled at a bridge over the Tiber, and followedits straightened course thence by Hadrians imposing tomb—marl)le-lined and ■umptucus once, now the dismal prison ofarmy derelicts—till we brought up presently and without inci-dent at St. Peters; and there the guides printed programmereceived a smash by unanimous consent and we never tried tofollow it again. The fir.st impression of St. Peters was disappointing. Thestone of its front was so discolored bv smudges of weather rust 190 Six and One Abroad
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St. Peters and the Vatican 191 that we wondered why the world ever got its consent to gointo raptures over it. The exterior was massive enough and impressive too, but wasutterly crude and unsightly. The Vatican building ad.join-ing it on the right, but for the figures of saints on its front,might well be mistaken for a modern American factory, so de-void of finish, so numerous its windows and so square andsmall its panes of glass. A spacious court in elliptical form and circumscribed bycolonnades of clustered columns, each cluster surmounted bya statue of a saint, introduces St. Peters. Exactly in the centerof the court stands another of the seventeen Egyptian obelisksof Rome, this one having been procured by Caligula. A coupleof fountains, one on each side of the court, discharge veritablecataracts of water over graduated basin rims, the falling floodscontributing happily to the combination of effects. Interest is added by the recollection that it was at this par-ticular place that N

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