L.H.H.

THE COLLEGIO ROMANO.

The Collegio Romano was always worth a visit, because it contained the celebrated Kircherian Museum and the admirable observatory presided over by Father Secchi, the world-celebrated astronomer.  But these are matters sufficiently treated of by the guide-books, and may be left to them.  Of the story of the enormous building they have less to tell, though there is much of curious interest to be told.  But neither is that my object on the present occasion.  My purpose is to speak of the strangely-changed fortunes and destinies of the old historic pile, and of what it now is and is to be.  But little in Rome, as we all know, has remained unchanged in these strange latter days.  But few things—­at least few material things—­have experienced such a change as the Collegio Romano.  The “Collegio Romano” was in fact nothing more than the principal convent of the Jesuits.  The establishment was founded immediately after the institution of the order, and mainly by the care and energy of Saint Francisco Borgia, the third general of the order.  The present building, however, was raised in the pontificate of Gregory XIII. by the Florentine architect Ammanati, the first stone having been laid in 1582.  It is an enormous mass of building—­enormous even among the huge structures for which Rome above all other cities is remarkable—­situated near the church of the Gesu and not far from the Piazza di Venezia.  There is nothing remarkable in its outward appearance save the vast size, the object of the builders having evidently been only to adapt it in a business-like way to the purposes to which it was destined.  These included not only the provision of a residence for the fathers of the order resident in Rome, and for the all-but all-powerful general of the terrible order—­the “Black Pope,” as the Romans were wont to call him—­but also all the locale necessary for a very large educational establishment, whence the building took its name.

The Jesuits, like all other members of the almost innumerable monastic establishments in Rome, have, as we all know, been turned out of their homes, their property has been—­or rather is being—­sold, and the convents have become national property.  Many of these are vast buildings, but no one of them is to be compared with the great Jesuit convent, which was the central home and head-quarters of the “Company of Jesus.”  And a memorable day it was in Rome, and a very singular sight, when, the dreaded fathers of the terrible “Company” having taken their departure, the few remaining goods and chattels in the convent were sold by public auction.  Few and not of much value were the articles to be sold; for the fathers are not men to take no heed of those shadows which coming events cast before them, and they had long foreseen that their day in Rome was at an end, and had contrived to leave as little as might be to the spoiler.  None the less was it a strange sight, as I say, to see the profanum vulgus of the buyers of old furniture, and the still more numerous herd of the curious, looking on with very diversified feelings—­some with bitterness enough in their hearts—­pushing and tramping through those noble corridors and vast halls and secret cells, on which no profane gaze had rested for more than three hundred years.