"And it smothers the history of Europe. You can't see Europe
because of it. Europe is obsessed by Rome. Everywhere Marble
Arches and ARCS DE TRIOMPHE. You never get away from it. It
is like some old gentleman who has lost his way in a speech
and keeps on repeating the same thing. And can't sit down.
'The empire, gentlemen--the Empire. Empire.' Rome itself is
perfectly frightful. It stares at you with its great round
stupid arches as though it couldn't imagine that you could
possibly want anything else for ever. Saint Peter's and that
frightful Monument are just the same stuff as the Baths of
Caracalla and the palaces of the Caesars. Just the same. They
will make just the same sort of ruins. It goes on and goes
on."
"AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS," said Dr. Martineau.
"This Roman empire seems to be Europe's first and last idea.
A fixed idea. And such a poor idea! . . . America never came
out of that. It's no good-telling me that it did. It escaped
from it. . . . So I said to Belinda here, 'Let's burrow, if
we can, under all this marble and find out what sort of
people we were before this Roman empire and its acanthus
weeds got hold of us.'"
"I seem to remember at Washington, something faintly
Corinthian, something called the Capitol," Sir Richmond
reflected. "And other buildings. A Treasury."
"That is different," said the young lady, so conclusively
that it seemed to leave nothing more to be said on that
score.
"A last twinge of Europeanism," she vouchsafed. "We were
young in those days."
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