In the course of my daily walks, I passed the Church of Santa Pudenziana, said to be the oldest in Rome, and recently modernized.  It is on the spot where Pudens, the host of St. Peter, is said to have lived with his daughters Praxedis and Pudentiana.  This is interesting, but the English-speaking traveler is likely to pass by Pudaentiana’s church, and seek out the church of her sister St. Praxed.  And this not for the sake of St. Praxed or her father Pudens or even of his guest St. Peter, but for the sake of a certain English poet who had visited the church once.

Close to the Porta San Paolo is the great tomb of the Roman magnate, Gaius Cestius, which was built before the birth of Christ.  One can hardly miss seeing it, because it is near one of the most sacred pilgrimage places of Rome, the grave of John Keats.

Each traveler makes his own Rome; and the memories which he takes away are the memories which he brought with him.

III

As for my friend Bagster, now that he has come to Rome, I hope he may stay long enough to allow it to produce a more tranquilizing effect upon him.  When he gives up the attempt to take it all in by an intellectual and moral effort, he may, as the saying is, “relax.”

There is no other place in which one may so readily learn the meaning of that misused word “urbanity.”  Urbanity is the state of mind adapted to a city, as rusticity is adapted to the country.  In each case the perfection of the adaptation is evidenced by a certain ease of manner in the presence of the environment.  There is an absence of fret and worry over what is involved in the situation.  A countryman does not fret over dust or mud; he knows that they are forms of the good earth out of which he makes his living.  He may grumble at the weather, but he is not surprised at it, and he is ready to make the best of it.

This adaptation to nature is easy for us, for we are rustics by inheritance.  Our ancestors lived in the open, and kept their flocks and were mighty hunters long before towns were ever thought of.  So when we go into the woods in the spring, our self-consciousness leaves us and we speedily make ourselves at home.  We take things for granted, and are not careful about trifles.  A great many things are going on, but the multiplicity does not distract us.  We do not need to understand.

For we have primal sympathies which are very good substitutes for intelligence.  We do not worry because nature does not get on faster with her work.  When we go out on the hills on a spring morning, as our forbears did ten thousand years ago, it does not fret us to consider that things are going on very much as they did then.  The sap is mounting in the trees; the wild flowers are pushing out of the sod; the free citizens of the woods are pursuing their vocations without regard to our moralities.  A great deal is going on, but nothing has come to a dramatic culmination.