friezes, all plundered from the monument of his predecessor. In the tasteless jumble of these materials, it is odd enough to see a bas-relief representing the pagan sacrifice of suovetaurilia, (in which a swine, sheep, and bull, were the triple victims,) appropriated to an Emperor, who had just seen an image of the cross in the sky, and while his brow was yet reeking with holy water from the font of St. John Lateran. But with all his inconsistencies, and with all his robberies of Rome, to embellish his own capital, Constantine did some good; and though he seems to have changed his religion from policy, rather than a sincere conviction, he was instrumental in affording protection to the early Christians. On the left side of the Forum and of the Sacred Way, once stood the temple of Saturn, which was the Treasury of the Roman Republic. It is now utterly demolished, and the Church of St. Adrian occupies its site. The brazen gate has been transferred to St. John Lateran, the mother church of Rome. In front of the temple, the centre of the ancient city, a golden column was erected by the order of Augustus, on which the distances to the respective provinces were marked. From this point, great roads diverged like radii to all parts of the empire. There was something grand in the idea, and still grander in the avenues themselves, paved, as they were with massive flags, at an immense expense. But there were giants in those days. In front of the church of St. Lorenzo, a few yards from that of St. Adrian, are ten Corinthian columns, which once belonged to a temple erected on the same site, to the memory of Antoninus Pius, and the Empress Faustina. Near it rose the temple of Remus, the brazen door and porphyry pillars of which are woven into a little church, substituted in its place. Its marble pavement, engraven with a plan of Rome in the third century, is now deposited in the Museum at the Capitol; but the parts are in such confusion as to form a complete Chinese puzzle, for the amusement of antiquaries. Next commences a region of colossal ruins, the first of which are three enormous arches, supposed to have belonged to the temple of Peace, erected by Vespasian after the conquest of Judea, and filled with the spoils of the east. Its position seems to favour this conjecture, as it stands opposite the Arch of Titus, on the Via Sacra. It is said to have been three hundred feet long, and two hundred feet wide; divided into three aisles by stupendous columns; and the vaulted ceiling covered with gilt bronze. One of its fluted Corinthian pillars, of white marble, now standing before the church of St. Maria Maggiore crowned by a statue of the Virgin, measures sixteen feet in circumference and forty-eight feet in height:-Ex pede Herculem! Its interior was filled with Grecian statues, and with the treasures of vanquished nations. Tradition says, that the edifice with all its wealth and splendour was consumed by a flame bursting out beneath it from the earth. But the truth is, little seems to be known of its history; and antiquaries are yet disputing about the age, in which it was constructed. Seated on an eminence, at the distance of a few yards, are the remains of the double temple of Venus and Rome, probably intended to illustrate the fable, that Æneas, the founder of the Roman empire, was, as Virgil makes him, the son of a goddess. Who knows but this shrine, embodying the traditions of the day, may have suggested the first idea of the Æneid, as the great epic poet, green from Mantua, was strolling along the Via Sacra, on his return from the Forum to his lodgings on the Esquiline Hill? The foundations and a part of the walls of the two-fronted temple yet remain; and enormous fragments of pillars from its porticos actually block up the road. But, the Coliseum is in sight, and what objects can appear large in the vicinity of this stupendous pile, which rises like a mountain at the termination of the Sacred Way! Its location between three of the Hills of Rome, and in the midst of Triumphal Arches, is as grand as its proportions are colossal. I have seen this ruin at all hours of the day and night; for there is a prescribed routine of fashionable visits, through which every traveller is obliged to go, under the penalty of being denounced as heretical in taste and sentiment. He must climb the Palatine, and see the sun go down, the west redden, and twilight fade in mellow tints upon the walls. He must see the moon rise, and produce an image of her own orb, by bathing one half of this little world in light, while the other is lost in darkness. He must see her softened beams peer through the ragged loopholes of time, curtained with festoons of ivy and the wild shrubbery growing upon the ramparts. He must see the bat flit, and hear the owl rustle and hoot in the desolate arches. The foot-fall of the sentinel must respond to the echo of his own, as he paces at midnight through the gloomy galleries. Thus much is an indispensable requisition. But he is at liberty to go farther. He may recal the day, when more than a hundred thousand spectators, (equal to nearly the whole population of the modern city,) were here assembled, arrayed in all the splendour of Roman costume, and ranged in five concentric tiers of seats rising one above another, from the podium appropriated to the Emperor, the Senate, and the Vestal Virgins, to the gallery at the height of a hundred and fifty feet from the ground. He may imagine what thunders of applause rent the air, as the vomitories poured forth, into an arena three hun dred feet long and two hundred feet wide, the wild beasts* of the African, Parthian, and Dalmatian forests, intermingled with gladiators accoutred for the fight; or when the scene changed, and the monsters of the deep gamboled in their own element, or brazen-headed gallies met in naval combat. He may then cast his eye over that arena, and see a throng of devotees now kneeling upon the green sod, before the circle of little shrines rising round its borders: he may watch the multitude, issuing through the gate leading to the Sacred Way, in long procession under the banners of the cross, while the vesper hymn to the Virgin, chanted by a thousand voices, dies in mournful cadence amidst the ruined porticos. I have complied to the letter with all these requisitions, and if they have failed to inspire me with that enthusiasm, which some others have felt, the fault does not arise from negligence. To deny that the Coliseum is interesting would be folly; but that it is paramount in interest among the ruins of Rome, I am not prepared to acknowledge. It is not associated with a single name or a single event, for which the visitant cares a straw. It was erected by Vespasian, and very properly dedicated to Nero, the very prince of tyrants, whose colossal statue, 125 feet in height, is said to have originally presided over the games. Hence the name of Coliseum. All its amusements were those of vulgar and even barbarous curiosity. No Roscius, no Garrick-neither the dramatic nor the comic Muse, has thrown a charm over its scenes. In character, its arena was but little elevated above a slaughter-house, which a modern spectator would scarcely attend were it possible, and which he does not care to revive in recollection. In point of architecture, the Coliseum is also less interesting than some other ancient edifices at Rome. It is considered as a hurried and unfinished structure. After all these deductions, the reader may ask, in what does its interest consist? Chiefly in its colossal proportions, its massive materials, and its miraculous preservation, through all the wars, convulsions, and dilapidations, with which Rome has been scourged for eighteen centuries. The ravages of man have been greater than those of time; and although a considerable part of the modern city has been built out of its ruins, the pillaged masses are scarcely missed by the eye, and the stupendous pile appears nearly * Five thousand wild beasts were slaughtered for the amusement of a Roman audience on the night the amphitheatre was first opened. Human victims without number, consisting of captives, slaves, early christians, and volunteer gladiators have bled upon the arena, which was so constructed as readily to imbibe the torrents of blood. The lions' den of Daniel was a paradise to this. entire. It is about seventeen hundred feet in circumference, of an oval form, and four stories high, of which the first is of the Doric, the second of the Ionic, and the other two of the Corinthian order. An awning was originally stretched across the top, to shield the audience from sun and rain. Its walls, consisting of open porticos in the three lower stories, and enriched with triple ranges of pillars, are constructed of immense blocks of Travertine marble, compactly adjusted without cement, and originally secured by iron clamps, which have nearly all been pilfered by barbarians. The complexion of the material is of a rich reddish-brown, exquisitely mellowed by time. The praiseworthy measures which the Pope and his subjects have taken, and are now taking, to prop, secure, and preserve the time-worn fabric, evince a belief in the oracular prediction of the poet, that "While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; And when Rome falls-the world." LETTER LVIII. ROME CONTINUED-FORUM OF TRAJAN-PANTHEON-TOMB OF RAPHAEL -CAMPUS MARTIUS-MAUSOLEUM OF AUGUSTUS--BANKS OF THE TIBER -BRIDGES—CASTLE OF ST. ANGELO--ISLAND OF ESCULAPIUS-CLOACA MAXIMA-TEMPLE OF VESTA-PORT AT RIPA GRANDE. April, 1826. THE ruins which have been described with as much conciseness as possible in the preceding letter, are all in the vicinity of the Forum, and in full view from the tower on the Capitoline Hill. As we are not like the ancient augurs obliged always to look towards one point of the compass, let us shift our position, and turn our faces northward, for the purpose of settling the localities of the city. On the right, the column of Trajan directs the eye of the traveller to the Forum of the same name, which is said to have surpassed even the Roman Forum in splendour. A triumphal arch led into the area, which was surrounded with porticos and temples, filled with statues. It has shared the same fate with its more celebrated rival already described, having been buried with all its ornaments to the depth of ten or twelve feet. About one half of it has been disinterred, and the old pavement now laid bare, is strewed with fragments of pillars and beautiful specimens of the arts. The other half remains unexplored, and two large churches standing upon the ground will probably prevent future excavations. Trajan's column stood in the centre of the Forum. It is ten feet in diameter and a hundred and thirty high, composed of thirtyfour blocks of marble, fastened together by clamps. The shaft is embossed with bas-relief representations of the Dacian wars, over which a bronze statue of St. Peter, poised upon the top, oddly presides. Not far hence are the Forums of Nerva and Domitian, both in utter ruin. Four or five Corinthian pillars, of Parian marble, exquisitely wrought, are the sole vestiges. Farther to the left rises the solitary pillar of Antonine, similar in materials, dimensions, and embellishments to that of Trajan. It was once shattered by lightning, and repaired by the Pope, who mounted a bronze statue of St. Paul upon the summit. The two saints are almost within speaking distance, elevated above the battlements of the city, and serving as beacons in traversing its obscure streets. Still farther to the left, and in one of the most populous districts of the modern city, the Pantheon lifts its beautiful rotunda above the meaner |