What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me?  What is there for me to touch that others have not touched?  What is there for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to others?  What can I discover?—­Nothing.  Nothing whatsoever.  One charm of travel dies here.  But if I were only a Roman!  —­If, added to my own I could be gifted with modern Roman sloth, modern Roman superstition, and modern Roman boundlessness of ignorance, what bewildering worlds of unsuspected wonders I would discover!  Ah, if I were only a habitant of the Campagna five and twenty miles from Rome!  Then I would travel.

I would go to America, and see, and learn, and return to the Campagna and stand before my countrymen an illustrious discoverer.  I would say: 

“I saw there a country which has no overshadowing Mother Church, and yet the people survive.  I saw a government which never was protected by foreign soldiers at a cost greater than that required to carry on the government itself.  I saw common men and common women who could read; I even saw small children of common country people reading from books; if I dared think you would believe it, I would say they could write, also.

“In the cities I saw people drinking a delicious beverage made of chalk and water, but never once saw goats driven through their Broadway or their Pennsylvania Avenue or their Montgomery street and milked at the doors of the houses.  I saw real glass windows in the houses of even the commonest people.  Some of the houses are not of stone, nor yet of bricks; I solemnly swear they are made of wood.  Houses there will take fire and burn, sometimes—­actually burn entirely down, and not leave a single vestige behind.  I could state that for a truth, upon my death-bed.  And as a proof that the circumstance is not rare, I aver that they have a thing which they call a fire-engine, which vomits forth great streams of water, and is kept always in readiness, by night and by day, to rush to houses that are burning.  You would think one engine would be sufficient, but some great cities have a hundred; they keep men hired, and pay them by the month to do nothing but put out fires.  For a certain sum of money other men will insure that your house shall not burn down; and if it burns they will pay you for it.  There are hundreds and thousands of schools, and any body may go and learn to be wise, like a priest.  In that singular country if a rich man dies a sinner, he is damned; he can not buy salvation with money for masses.  There is really not much use in being rich, there.  Not much use as far as the other world is concerned, but much, very much use, as concerns this; because there, if a man be rich, he is very greatly honored, and can become a legislator, a governor, a general, a senator, no matter how ignorant an ass he is—­just as in our beloved Italy the nobles hold all the great places, even though sometimes they are born noble idiots.