the baths of Dioclesian, now a French barrack, and the church of San Lorenzo, which occupies its highest point. The QUIRINAL is the last of the Seven Hills. It is covered with streets, and crowned with the summer palace and gardens of the Pope.

Thus have we made the tour of the Seven Hills, commencing at the Aventine on the extreme right, and proceeding in a semicircular line over the low swellings which lie in their peaceful covering of flower and weed, onward to the Quirinal, which rises, with its glittering casements, on the extreme left. They hold in their arms, as it were, modern Rome, with the Tiber, like a golden belt, tying in the city, and bounding the Campus Martius, on which it is seated. On the west of the Tiber are other two hills, which, though not of the seven, are worth mentioning. The first is the JANICULUM, with the Trastevere at its base. The inhabitants of this district pride themselves on their pure Roman blood, and look down upon the rest of the inhabitants as a mixed race; and certainly, if ferocious looks and continual frays can make good their claim, they must be held as a colony of the olden time, which, nestling in this nook of Rome, have escaped the intermixtures and revolutions of eighteen centuries. It has been remarked that there is a striking resemblance between their faces and those of the ancient Romans, as graven on the arch of Titus. They are the nearest neighbours of the Pope, whose own hill, the VATICAN, rises a little to the north of them. On the Vatican mount stood anciently the circus of Nero; and here many of the early Christians, amid unutterable torments, yielded up their lives. On the spot where they died have arisen the church of St Peter and the palace of the Vatican,—now but

another name for whatever is formidable to the liberties the world.

But beyond question, the spot of all others the most in teresting in Rome is the Forum. You look right down int it from where you stand. Whether it be the eloquence, o the laws, or the victories, or the magnificent monuments o ancient Rome, the light reflected from them all is concentrated on this plain. How often has Tully spoken here! How ofter has Cæsar trodden it! Over that very pavement which the excavations have laid bare, the chariots of Scylla, and of Titus. and of a hundred other warriors, have rolled. But the triumphs which this plain witnessed, once deemed eternal, are ended now; and the clods which that Italian slave turns up, or which that priest treads on so proudly, are perchance part of the dust of that heroic race which conquered the world. The tombs of the Cæsars are empty now, and their ashes have been scattered long since over the soil of Rome. Of the many beautiful edifices that stood around this plain, not one remains entire a few mouldering columns, half buried in rubbish, or dug out of the soil, only remain to show where temples stood. But there is one little arch which has survived that dire tempest of ruin in which temple and tower went down,-the Arch of Titus, which has sculptured upon its marble the sad story of the fall of Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jews. That little arch, wonderful to tell, stands between two mighty ruins, the fallen palace of the Cæsars on the one hand, and the kingly but ruined mass of the Coliseum on the other.

As regards the Coliseum, architects, I believe, do not much admire it; but to myself, who did not look at it with a professional eye, it seemed as if I had never seen a ruin half so sublime. I never grew weary of gazing upon it. It rises

eternal youth; for with the most colossal size it combines in the very highest degree simplicity of design and beauty of form. To stand on its area, and survey the sweep of its broken benches, is to feel as if you were standing in the midst of an amphitheatre of hills, and were gazing on concentric mountain-ranges. How powerfully do its associations stir the soul! How many spirits now in glory have died on that arena! The Romans, we shall suppose, have been occupied all day in witnessing mimic fights, which display the skill, but do not necessarily imperil the life, of the combatants. But now the sun is westering; the shadow of the Palatine begins to creep across the Forum, and the villas on the Alban hills burn in the setting rays, and the Romans, before retiring to their homes, demand their last grand spectacle, the death of some poor unhappy captive or gladiator. The victim steps upon the arena amid the deep stillness of the overwhelming multitude. It is no mimic combat his he is "appointed to death." This lets us into the peculiar force of Paul's words, "I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were, appointed to death; for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men."

But the most touching recollection connected with this city is this,—even that part of the Word of God was written in it, and that a greater than Cæsar has trodden its soil. A few paces below where we stand is the Mamertine prison, in whose dungeons, it is probable, Paul was confined; for this was the state-prison, and offences against religion were accounted state-offences. It is hewn in the rock of the Capitoline hill, dungeon below dungeon; and when surveying it, I could not but feel, that among all the exploits of Roman valour, there was not one half so heroic as that of the man who,

with a cruel death staring him in the face, could this dungeon, where day never dawned, and write words," I am now ready to be offered, and the departure is at hand. I have fought a good fi finished my course; I have kept the faith. Hen is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, whic the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; an only, but unto all them also that love his appearin

Here I may be allowed to allude to a branch of evidence of Christianity which has not received al to which it is entitled. When surveying from the Capitol the ruins of ancient Rome, I felt strongly t -the almost idiotcy-of denying the historic truth anity. On such a spot one might as well deny Rome existed, as deny that Christianity was pre eighteen centuries ago, and rose upon the ruins of At the distance of Rome, and amid the darkness ignorance, we can conceive of a Roman holding of Knox is a fable, that no such man ever exis preached in Scotland, or ever effected the Reform Popery. But bring him to the Castle Hill of Ed bid him look round upon city and country, studde churches and schools of the reformed faith, planted b show him the mouldering remains of the old cathe which the priesthood and faith of Rome were dri and, unless his mind is constituted in some ex way, he would no longer doubt that such a man existed, and that Scotland has been reformed fro ism to Presbyterianism. So is it at Rome. Aroun the temples of the ancient paganism. Here are bearing the inscriptions and effigies of the pagan the pagan rites. Can any sane man doubt that

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graven on the ruins of Rome; but you can trace it down till only seventeen centuries ago: then it suddenly stops; a new writing appears upon the stones; a new religion has acquired the ascendancy in Rome, and left its memorials graven upon pillar, and column, and temple. Can any man doubt that Paul visited this city,-that he preached here, as the "Acts of the Apostles" records,—and that, after two centuries of struggles and martyrdoms, the faith which he preached triumphed over the paganism of Rome? Look along the Via Sacra,—that narrow paved road which leads southward from the Capitol : the very stones over which the chariot of Scylla rolled are still there. The road runs straight between the Palatine Mount, where the ivy and the cypress strive to mantle the ruins of the palace of the Cæsars, and the wonderful and ever beautiful structure of the Coliseum. In the valley between is a beautiful arch of marble,—the Arch of Titus. The palace of the world's master lies in ruins on the one side of it; the Coliseum, the largest single structure which human hands ever created, stands rent, and scarred, and bowed, on the other; and between these two mighty ruins this little arch rises entire. What a wonderful providence has spared it! On that arch is graven the record of the fall of Jerusalem and the captivity of the Jews; and the great fact of the existence of the Old Testament economy is also attested upon it; for there plainly appears on the stone, the furniture of the temple, the golden candlestick, the table of shew-bread, and the silver trumpets. But further, about two miles to the south of Rome are the Catacombs. In these catacombs, which, not unlike the coal-mines of our own country, traverse under ground the Campagna for a circuit of many miles, the early Christians lived during the primitive persecutions. There they worshipped, there they died, and