——¥:

160

civilized world, and beyond it ; but now it is re-
duced to a Senator, a mere mayor. We are again
on the Capitoline Hill, flanked by two -great
museums. Pass through the Piazza to the right,
and round to the other side of the Palace of the
Senator, a wilderness of ruins lies before us, the
Roman Forum. Three columns of one temple,

ROUGH NOTES ON ROME.

eight of another, tower bare and gaunt aboye.a |
host of smaller ruins ; a little to the left, the arch
of Septimius Severus stands knee deep in the
earth, which has been excavated to the level of
the ancient road ; next comes a single column, de-
scribed by Lord

is specially called the “Palace of the Czesars,”
built as if they were meant to outlast the world ;
but now a bare and broken shell, so entirely
stripped of every decoration, that it is impossible
to fix their date accurately, and yet more fortunate
than the golden house of Nero, (the Cesar’ to
whom St. Paul appealed) some dubious fragments
of which are all that remain.

Passing round thus to the side of the Palatine
Hill, away from the Forum, and skirting the side
of the Circus Maximus, we stand between a
startling contrast of the new and the old—on the

one side are the

3yron as So

gas-works, on the

other is the site

aameless column,

with .a buried
base,” but which

of the hut of Ro-

mulus, the tradi-

has beenexcayated

tional founder of

since his time, and

Rome, aboutwhich

the uncovered base
of which now re-
veals its name and
origin, and informs

fig-trees still grow,
asif they professed
to be descendants
of that under

us that it was

which the shep-

erected by one big
rascal in honour
of another. A bare
space, once a mag-
nificent _pillared
basilica, lies open
by its side; carry
the eye onward,
and it rests on the

three remaining
columns of the

Temple of Castor,
to the leftof which
the remains of the
Temple of Anto-
ninusand Faustina
have been utilized
for the Church of

herd found the
she-wolf suckling
the royal twins,
and which was
supposed to have
stood near.

A few steps on-
ward carry us still
farther into the
dim regions of an-
tiquity, to the spot
assigned as the
cave of Cacus,
the fire-breathing
son of Vulean, the
fire-god, who stole
the cattle of Her-
cules, and dragged

We

Rome’s great Dea-
con, St. Lawrence.
The chureh of St.
Francesca Romana hides the remains of the Temple |
of Venus andRome. The Arch of Titus, still adorned
with the representation of the golden candlestick
and the silver trumpets plundered from the Temple
at Jerusalem, leads to the Coliseum, standing grimly
in its despoiled majesty, a city in itself, every thing
more or less a ruin, or at least battered by time and
violence.

On the right of this long vista rises the Pala-
tine Hill, where stood the palatial residences of
the Emperors, from which every palace has de-
rived its name: and what are they now? Ruins.

Onr engraving shows the huge remains of what

RUINS OF THE PALACE OF THE CESARS,

WHS
FOB BRANAN

them into his cave
by their tails, so
that their footsteps
should seem to indicate that they had come out
of it.

We now turn our backs upon the Palatine, going
down the street of St. George in the Velabrum,
past the church of St. George (the only one, I
believe, of that name in Rome), leaving on our left
the huge sewer of undefined antiquity, by the side
of which the people still get their drinking water,
from a spring whose history is mixed up with
Castor and Pollux, we eross the broad space at
the end of the Via de’ Cerchi (Cireus Street), and

come out of that into the Piazza della Bocca della
Verita.