CHAPTER III.

THE CITY OF THE CÆSARS.

Approach to Rome - View from the Capitol -The Seven Hills The Roman Forum, and its Ruins.

FROM the first moment of entering Italy, our thoughts, our wishes, and our hopes all centered in ROME. There is something indescribably solemn in the wildness and neglected condition of the approach towards that city at any point; something which strikes the traveler with double awe as he comes near this oasis of the desert. Enter it on the road from Naples, and the desolation is still more profound. Then, the fragments of the costly tombs of the once rulers of the world, fling their shadows across your pathway, and you pass in to the Eternal City with the ruined fragments of the palace of the Cæsars around you—the stern and kingly mass of the Colosseum, rising like a spectre of the past before you: and close to it, the Forum, strewed with the memorials of architectural grandeur;

"Those shattered fanes

Still matchless monuments of other years."

Our first approach to the city was by the Civita Vecchia road, and we entered it near the grand Basilica of St. Peters. Its huge dome had been visible for the last twelve miles, towering up in solitary grandeur: and as we drove by the semicircular colonnade, enclosing its oval piazza, the first view of the entire structure was by no means commensurate with our preconceived ideas of its extent. Nor was our first

impression of the Eternal City very favorable, as our diligence dashed along through narrow and filthy streets, af fording us glimpses every now and then of bridges, ornamented with statues, sombre looking cupolas, or strange barrack-like buildings. I had not made a pilgrimage to the Eternal City, to view the churches with their resplendent altars, their gorgeous ceremonies and magnificent rituals; to witness how far the present generation with all the light of Christianity, has deviated from the greatness and glory of the olden time: but I went there to gratify the cravings of a more laudable curiosity, to see the memorials of the world's masters: to stand in the midst, and trace out the ruins of ancient Rome,

"The land of heroes, and the nurse of arms."

Modern Rome does not occupy either the extent or the site of the ancient city. The Campus Martius, which, in the days of the greatness of ancient Rome, was an open field for military exercises and games, is now the only part within the walls that can be called populous. Of the Seven Hills, the Capitoline and Quirinal only are covered with habitations. Deserted villas, olive grounds, vineyards, cottages of the peasantry, and above all, convents, occupy the wide extent of the Palatine, Aventine, Celian, Esquiline and Viminal hills.

Standing upon the Tower of the modern Capitol, which now occupies the site of the Tabularium, or Record office of ancient Rome, and stands like "a Pharos," between two ages of the world; a most interesting view spreads out before you. From this point you can readily discover the ancient grandeur of Rome, and its modern strength. In the view is united in a remarkable degree the charm

of a magnificent landscape with that which springs from historic association. Through the cloudless and transparent atmosphere, a large part of the Latian plain is visible. Its luxuriant pasturages and thickets fade away on one side into the faint line of the distant sea, and rise on the other into the stately amphitheatre of the mountains, steep and lofty-studded on their verdant slopes with towns and villages; and towards their more southern extremity clothed with beautiful woods. The Tiber, stained to a deep yellow by the fertilizing soil, which it has washed away from its banks, after entering the Umbrian and Etruscan vales, glitters like a belt of gold along the plain, in the sunshine which irradiates with Italian clearness, the sward, the scattered trees, and the shadowy hills. In the distance are spots hallowed by their classic memories. There may be seen Tivoli, the favorite haunt of the poet Horace— there, too, is the Alban Mount, bearing upon one of its ridges, the ruins of ancient Tusculum, consecrated in the thoughts of the classic scholar, as having been the favorite retreat of Rome's greatest orator, and the scene of his Tusculan disputations. Towards the south-east stretches the long line of the Appian way, and its ruined tombs,that highway, whose worn stones are the same as those pressed by the great Apostle, when he approached the city, where he was to die, accompanied by the brethren "who had gone out to meet him as far as the Apii Forum, and the Three Taverns." To the south-west stretches in eloquent desolation the Campagna, as far as Ostia and the sea. History has consecrated this mighty waste by the memory of noble deeds-Imagination has hallowed it by the spell of poetry, and Superstition with her most graceful fantasies. Rome, in her infant greatness, filled that vast plain

with her shadow; making it the bloody stage on which to practice for the subjugation of a world.

Bringing from our position, the eye back again to range within the walls, we can easily trace out the seven hills on which the Imperial City once stood, when it gave laws to a subject world. On the north and west of our position, immediately beyond the Tiber, the view within the city is bounded by the Janiculum Mount, and Monte Mario, crested with villas, and embosomed amongst pines and other evergreens. The former of these elevations on the opposite side of the river, and the Pincian Mount on the nearer bank, form a semicircle, of which our position on the Capitoline Tower is the centre: and this area includes almost the whole of the modern city, the greater part of which lies between us and the water's edge, covering the flat surface of what in the days of ancient Rome was the Campus Martius.

The ancient city of the seven hills, beginning with the Capitoline Mount, in the midst of whose modern buildings we are standing, is nearly all' contained in the remaining semicircle enclosed by the city walls. Now, every spot once covered by the ancient city is a waste, almost without inhabitant. Piles of shattered architecture rise amidst vineyards and rural lanes, exhibiting no tokens of habitation, except some decayed and decaying villas and a convent. Facing the Campagna, on our right is the Palatine Mount. It is the spot connected with every period of Roman story. It was the birth-place of the infant republic of Romulus; and at last became too small to hold the palace of a single emperor. Still farther to the right, and almost behind you is the rocky Aventine, rising from the Tiber, bare and almost solitary, and displaying the shattered fragments

of the stupendous baths of Caracalla. A little beyond the Palatine is the Celian, with the remains of Roman aqueducts, crossing in broken masses from the Porta Maggiore, towards the site of the ancient city. Directly before us, in the distance, is the Esquiline, commencing at the point where the Celian ends, near the gate of St. John Lateran, and running down with it to the Colisseum; and there a little to the left of the Esquiline, are the Quirinal and Pincian hills-the immense palace and gardens of the Pontiff crowning the one, and the modern gardens of Rome the other.

Descending from our position on the Tower of the Capitol, let us visit the open space below, where fragments of columns, triumphal arches, and broken pavements, tell that here once stood the pride of Rome, the Roman Forum. This space, so celebrated in the world's history, in its palmiest days appears to have been an oblong area, considerably wider at the end nearest the Capitol; than at the other, narrowing from one hundred and eighty to one hundred and ten feet. The Capitoline Hill is at its head, the Palatine hemming it in on one side, the extremities of the Quirinal and Viminal on the other; while the Esquiline, rears itself directly opposite to the Capitoline-so that, in reality, the Forum was hemmed in by five of the seven hills on which Rome stood. If we look now to the boundaries of this celebrated space, the prospect is mournful enough. At one end we have the Capitoline Hill, on the summit of which, instead of the Temple of Jupiter, the wonder of the world, is the gloomy looking palace of the modern Capitol, erected in the heavy style of Michael Angelo. Turning to the right is the Palatine Hill, once glittering with the brazen tiles and gilded pinnacles of Nero's Golden House: now covered with the vast ruins of