a palm tree, which seems to have been placed in the midst of this wreck, expressly for painters and poets. Instead of the shouts of joy, which heretofore proceeded from the ferocious spectators in this amphitheatre, on seeing Christians devoured by lions and panthers, nothing was now heard but the barking of dogs, which belonged to the hermit resident here as a guardian of the ruins. At the moment that the sun descended below the horizon, the clock in the dome of Saint Peter resounded under the porticoes of Collisée. This correspondence, through the medium of religious sounds, between the two grandest monuments of Pagan and Christian Rome, caused a lively emotion in my mind. I reflected that this modern edifice would fall in · its turn, like the ancient one, and that the memo. rials of human industry succeed each other like the men, who erected them. I called to mind that the same Jews, who, during their first captivity, worked at the edifices of Egypt and Babylon, had also, during their last dispersion built this enormous structure; that the vaulted roofs, which now re-echoed this Christian bell

C

were the work of a Pagan emperor, who had been pointed out by prophecy as destined to complete the destruction of Jerusalem. Are not these sufficiently exalted subjects of meditation. to be inspired by a single ruin, and do you not think that a city, where such effects are produced at every step, is worthy of examination ?

I went to Collisée again yesterday, the 9th of January, for the purpose of seeing it at another season, and in another point of view. On my arrival I was surprised at not hearing the dogs, who generally appeared and barked in the superior corridors of the amphitheatre, among the ruins and withered herbage. I knocked at the door of the hermitage, which was formed under one of the arches, but I received no answer-the hermit was dead. The inclemency of the season, the absence of this worthy recluse, combined with several recent and afflicting recollections, increased the sadness arising from this place to such an extent that I almost supposed myself to be looking at the ruins of an edifice, which I had, a few days before, admired in a fresh and perfect state. It is thus that we are constantly

reminded of our nothingness. Man searches around him for objects to convince his reason. He meditates on the remains of edifices and empires; forgetting that he himself is a ruin still more instable, and that he will perish even before these. What most renders our life" the shadow of a shade"* is that we cannot hope to live long in the recollection of our friends. The heart, in which our image is graven, is like the object, of which it retains the featuresperishable clay. I was shewn, at Portici, a piece of cinder taken from Vesuvius, which crumbles into dust when touched, and which preserves the impression, (daily diminishing) of a female's breast and arm, who was buried under the ruins of Pompeia. Though not flattering to our self-love, this is the true emblem of the traces left by our memory in the hearts of men, who are only dust and ashes.

Before I took my departure for Naples, I passed some days alone at Tivoli. I traversed the ruins in its environs, and particularly those

* Pindar.

+ Job.

of Villa Adriana. Being overtaken by a shower of rain in the midst of my excursion, I took refuge in the halls of Thermes near Pécile* under a fig-tree, which had thrown down a wall by its growth. In a small octagonal saloon, which was open before me, a vine had penetrated through fissures in the arched roof, while its smooth and red crooked stem mounted along the wall like a serpent. Round me, across the arcades, the Roman country was seen in different points of view. Large elder trees filled the deserted apartments, where some solitary black. birds found a retreat. The fragments of masonry were garnished with the leaves of scolopendra, the satin verdure of which appeared like mosaic work upon the white marble. Here and there lofty cypresses replaced the columns, which had fallen into these palaces of death. wild acanthus crept at their feet on the ruins, as if nature had taken pleasure in re-producing, upon these mutilated chefs-d'œuvre of architecture, the ornament of their past beauty. The dif

* Remains of the Villa.

The

ferent apartments and the summits of the ruins were covered with pendant verdure; the wind agitated these humid garlands, and the plants bent under the rain of Heaven.

While I contemplated this picture, a thousand confused ideas passed across my mind. At one moment I admired, at the next detested Roman grandeur. At one moment I thought of the virtues, at another of the vices, which distinguished this lord of the world, who had 'wished to render his garden a representation of his empire. I called to mind the events, by which his superb villa had been destroyed. I saw it despoiled of its most beautiful ornaments by the successor of Adrian-I saw the barbarians passing like a whirlwind, sometimes cantoning themselves here; and, in order to defend themselves amidst these monuments of art which they had half destroyed, surmounting the Grecian and Tuscan orders with gothic battlementsfinally, I saw Christians bringing back civilization to this district, planting the vine, and guiding the plough into the temple of the Stoics, and the saloons of the Academy.* Ere long the

* Remains of the Villa.