LETTER IX.

THE FORUM AND THE COLOSSEUM.

I HAD one advantage, which I am taking special care you shall never enjoy-that of arriving at Rome in perfect ignorance of all it contained, for which I thank Heaven. I only knew that the Colosseum was in ruins, that the very name of the Capitol had passed away, and that the Forum had been degraded into a cattle-market, and was called the Campo Vaccino. To stand on the grass-grown and deserted spot where Scipio had trode, where Cicero had spoken, where Cæsar had triumphed, and where Brutus had acted " a Roman part," was all my hope. What then was my astonishmentinstead of the vacant space I expected to find, with no trace remaining of its ancient splendour-to behold Corinthian columns, ruined temples, triumphal arches, and mouldering walls, not the less affecting from their decay-to see beneath the shade of solemn cypress and aged ilex, the ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars covering the abandoned summit

of the Palatine, and to contemplate in its distant loneliness the majestic grandeur of the Flavian Amphitheatre.

I stood in the Roman Forum !-Amidst its silence and desertion, how forcibly did the memory of ages that were fled speak to the soul! How did every broken pillar and fallen capital tell of former greatness! The days of its pride and its patriotism -the long struggles for freedom and for power— the popular tumults-the loud acclamations-the energetic harangues-the impassioned eloquenceand all the changeful and chequered events of which it had been the theatre; joined to the images of the great and the good, the wisest and the best of mankind, who had successively filled this now lonely and silent spot; the lights of ages, whose memory is still worshipped throughout the world-crowded into my mind, and touched the deepest feelings of my heart. Such to me is the charm of being where they have been, that this moment, in which I felt that I stood upon the sacred soil of the Roman Forum, was in itself a sufficient compensation for all the toils and privations, and difficulties and dangers, we had encountered in our long and tedious pilgrimage.

The Ionic portico of the Temple of Concord still stands in the Roman Forum. At the sound of its name, the remembrance flashed upon my mind that it was here Cicero accused to the assembled Senate the guilty conspirators leagued with Catiline; and, entering its grass-grown area, I felt, with enthu

siasm which brought tears into my eyes, that I now stood on the very spot his feet had then trode.

As if Time had loved to spare every relic of Cicero, I beheld before me, on the green turf, in lonely grandeur, three of the beautiful columns of that Temple of Jupiter Stator, in which he had previously accused Catiline in person,* and compelled him, by the terrors of his eloquence, to abandon his deep-formed but immature designs, and fly into voluntary exile, and open, therefore not dangerous, rebellion. At every period of my life, and long before I ever expected to behold it, whenever the name of the Roman Forum was uttered, the image of Cicero was present to my mind; and now that I actually stood on the very scene of his glorious exertions and patriotic eloquence, his spirit seemed in every object that met my view.

I eagerly inquired where the Rostrum had stood. Not a vestige of its site remains not "a stone to mark the spot" is now to be found; but its supposed site was pointed out to me on ground now occupied by some old barns or granaries, between the Capitoline and the Palatine Hills.

"It was there, then," I internally exclaimed, that the thunders of Cicero's eloquence burst forth to a people yet undegenerated from their ancient fame, and capable of feeling the virtue they inspired-it was there, in the latter days, he roused so often the languishing spark of patriotism—

Vide Middleton's Life of Cicero.

and it was there, at the close of his memorable Consulship, upon being commanded by the envious Tribune not to speak, but to restrict himself to the oath required of every Consul on resigning his office—that instead of swearing, as usual, that he had faithfully discharged his trust—he made the solemn protestation, that he had saved the republic and the city from ruin!' while the Roman people, who filled the Forum, called the gods to witness its truth in an adjuration as solemn as his own, and rent the air with shouts of rapturous applause."*

It was there, too, on that very Rostrum, where his all-persuasive eloquence had so often moved the hearts of his fellow-citizens, and made the tyrants tremble, that his head and hands were scornfully affixed, after his inhuman murder, by Mark Anthony, to revenge the writing of the Philippics.

But the unbought, and then-unprostituted title of Pater Patria, which he received as the deliverer of his country, far outvalued the crown with which that traitor would have encircled the brows of the tyrant who sought to enslave it.

I seated myself on the fragment of a broken column at the base of the Temple of Concord, and as I gazed on the ruins around me, the remembrance of the scenes their early pride had witnessed, the long lapse of ages and the fall of tyrants that have since intervened, the contrast of past greatness with present degradation, of ancient virtue and freedom,

* Vide Middleton's Life of Cicero.

with existing moral debasement and slavery-forced on my mind, with deeper conviction, the eternal truth, confirmed by the voice of ages-that man is great and prosperous only while he is free; that true glory does not consist in the mere possession of unbounded power or extended empire, but in the diffusion of knowledge, justice, and civilization; that while it is denied to the wanton conqueror of the world and the despotic master of millions, whose laurels are reddened with the blood of his fellowcreatures, and whose steps have trampled upon their rights; it is the meed of the enlightened statesman, and disinterested patriot, whose counsels have crowned them with peace and honour, and whose exertions have confirmed their liberties; and, finally, that the memory of long successions of imperial tyrants, from Cæsar to Buonaparte, must fade before the fame of Cicero !

But I must restrain my pen, and tell you not what I felt, but what I saw.

Immediately at the base of the Capitoline Hill, stands the Triumphal Arch of Septimius Severus. It is built of marble, but so changed and darkened by time, that the eye does not easily give credit to the richness of the materials. According to the general plan of these structures, it is composed of one large, and two smaller arches, with an entablature supported by four Corinthian columns, backed by as many pilasters. The whole building is adorned with sculpture in bas relief, representing the triumphs of Severus over the Parthians, &c., the rude