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 Eneas, 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 Eneid, 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.

He

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. 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 hundred 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 gambolled 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.

It is con-
After all

In point of architecture, the Coliseum is also less interesting than some other ancient edifices at Rome. sidered as a hurried and unfinished structure. 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

* 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 glaidators 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.

The ravages of

has been scourged for eighteen centuries. 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 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 praise-worthy 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;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall;
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. ANGELOISLAND 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 thirty-four 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 buildings, by which it is surrounded. It fronts one of the public areas, ornamented as usual with an Egyptian obelisk and a copious fountain. This temple, which is justly ranked among the most celebrated and interesting monuments of Roman taste, was built by Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, and designed as a repository of the statues of all the gods, as its name imports. The porch, seventy feet in length and forty in width, elevated at present only two steps above the Piazza, is supported by sixteen Corinthian pillars, forty feet in height, and five in diameter, the shafts of which are of red oriental granite, and the capitals of white marble. On either side of the door is a large niche-that on the right, once contained a statue of Augustus, and the other, the statue of Agrippa. The bronze

doors were carried off as trophies by Genseric, and buried for ever in the depths of the Mediterranean.

The temple itself is a magnificent rotunda, a hundred and fifty feet in diameter, and nearly the same in height, with a wide aperture at top, through which the bright skies of Italy shed a cheerful light, and give to the interior a charming effect. Originally the outside was covered with gilt bronze, which Pope Urban VIII. melted into cannon for the Castle of St. Angelo, and into ornaments for the shrine of St. Peter, furnishing just grounds for the satirical pun, that the barbarini (the family name of his Holiness) had pillaged what the barbarians had spared. The inner walls are encrusted with the richest marbles, and the pavement is of porphyry blended with yellow antique. Two ranges of niches extend quite round the temple-the upper one for the celestial, the lower for the terrestrial, and the floor for the infernal deities; while Jove with his group of greater gods, occupying the tribune or alcove opposite the door, presided over the whole. Among the latter, at the right hand of Jupiter himself, Julius Cæsar was placed-an extravagant and impious compliment, which Augustus had the good sense to decline.

By the exercise of plenary indulgence, the Pantheon has been cleansed of all its heathenish impurities, and converted into one of the thousand churches at Rome. Half a dozen shrines, more splendid than the idols of antiquity ever found, rise round the walls, enriched with statues and pictures. Among the former, is a vestal in a sitting posture, with a child by her side. She was found, with many other works of art, amidst the rubbish of the temple, and in the general conversion was christened St. Anna, receiving at the same time the appendage of a bambino, to show that she had ceased to belong to the ancient sisterhood. Suspended at the side of one of the altars, are great numbers of votive tablets, a dozen of which exhibit rude drawings of stilettos and pistols, making the bloody weapons still more hideous, and evincing that assassinations are ranked among the common accidents of life-by no means a comfortable idea to a traveller, who has not full faith in the miraculous intervention of a saint, to rescue him from the hands of banditti. During one of our visits to this beautiful temple, two female pilgrims came in, and knelt on the splendid mosaic before one of the shrines. They were clad in black robes, hoods