It is said that the German archaeologists objected to those
laurels where the birds sing so sweetly; perhaps they thought them not
strictly scientific; but when the German Kaiser, who always knows so
much better than all the other Germans put together, visited the Forum,
he liked them, and he parted from the Genius Loci with the imperial
charge, "Laurels, laurels, evermore laurels." After that the emotional
tourist must be hard indeed to please who would begrudge his laurels to
Commendatore Boni, or would not wish him a perpetual crown of them.
IV
THE ANGLO-AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE SPANISH STEPS
It is not every undeserving American who can have the erudition and
divination of the Genius Loci in answer to his unuttered prayer during a
visit to even a small part of the Roman Forum. But failing the company
of the Commendatore Boni, which is without price, there are to be had
for a very little money the guidance and philosophy, and, for all I
know, the friendship of several peripatetic historians who lead people
about the ruins in Rome, and instruct them in the fable, and doubtless
in the moral, of the things they see.
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