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known short deep snort of the wild boar, and the long hollow bark of the wolf; but a thousand fierce sounds, mingled with these, were equally new and terrific to my ears. One voice, however, was so grand in its notes of sullen rage, that I could not help asking a soldier, who sate on horseback near me, from what wild beast it proceeded. The man answered, that it was a Lion; but then what laughter arose among some of the rabble, that had overheard my interrogation; and what contemptuous looks =were thrown upon me by the naked negroes, who sate grinning in the torch-light, on the top of their carriages! Then one or two of the soldiers would be compelled to ride into the midst of the confusion, to separate some of these wretches, fighting with their whips about precedence in the approaching entrance to the Amphitheatre; and then it seemed to me that the horses could not away with the strong sickly smell of some of the beasts that were carried there, for they would prance, and caper, and rear on end, and snort as if panic-struck, and dart themselves towards the other side; while some of the riders were thrown off in the midst of the tumult, and others, with fierce and strong bits, compelled the frightened or infuriated animals to endure the thing they abhorred in their wrath and pride forcing them even nearer than was necessary to the hated waggons. In another quarter, this close-mingled pile of carts and horses was surmounted by the enormous heads of elephants, thrust high up into the air, some of them with the huge lithe trunks lashing and beating (for they too, as you have heard, would rather die than snuff in the breath of these monsters of the woods,) while the tiara'd heads of their leaders would be seen tossed to and fro by the contortions of those high necks, whereon for the most part they had their sitting-places. There was such a cry of cursing, and such a sound of whips and cords, and such blowing of horns, and whistling and screaming; and all this mixed with such roaring, and bellowing, and howling from the savage creatures within the caged waggons, that I stood, as it were, aghast and terrified, by reason of the tumult that was round about me."

But an exhibition of more fearful interest follows. He is taken in Rubellia's chariot to the Amphitheatre, the Coliseum; that place in which the grandeur of imperial opulence, and the horrors of Heathenism, seem to have met in one unequalled consummation. The passage is very eloquent, picturesque, and touching. The author treads upon untried ground, and he treads with a learned and manly step. "Behold, me, therefore, in the midst of the Flavian Amphitheatre, and seated, unVOL. XI.

der the wing of this luxurious lady, in one of the best situations which the range of benches set apart for the females and their company, afforded. There was a general silence in the place at the time we entered and seated ourselves, because proclamation had just been made that the gladiators, with whose combats the exhibition of the day was appointed to commence, were about to enter upon the arena, and shew themselves in order to the people. As yet, however, they had not come forth from that place of concealment to which so many of their number were, of necessity, destined never to return; so that I had leisure to collect my thoughts, and to survey for a moment, without disturbance, the mighty and most motley multitude, piled above, below, and on every side around me, from the lordly senators, on their silken couches, along the parapet of the arena, up to the impenetrable mass of plebeian heads which skirted the horizon, above the topmost wall of the Amphitheatre itself. Such was the enormous crowd of human beings, high and low, assembled therein, that when any motion went through their assembly, the noise of their rising up or sitting down could be likened to nothing, except, perhaps, the far-off sullen roaring of the illimitable sea, or the rushing of a great night-wind amongst the boughs of a forest. It was the first time that I had ever seen a peopled amphitheatre

nay,
it was the first time that I had ever
seen any very great multitude of men as-
sembled together, within any fabric of hu-
man erection; so that you cannot doubt there
was, in the scene before me, enough to im-
press my mind with a very serious feeling of
astonishment-not to say of veneration. Not
less than eighty thousand human beings,
(for such they told me was the stupendous
capacity of the building,) were here met to-
gether. Such a multitude can nowhere be
regarded, without inspiring a certain inde-
finite indefinable sense of majesty; least
of all, when congregated within the wide
sweep of such a glorious edifice as this, and
surrounded on all sides with every circum-
stance of ornament and splendour, befitting
an everlasting monument of Roman victo-
ries, the munificence of Roman princes, and
the imperial luxury of universal Rome.
Judge then, with what eyes of wonder all
yesterday, as it were, emerged from the so-
this was surveyed by me, who had but of
litary stillness of a British galley--who had
been accustomed all my life to consider as
among the most impressive of human spec-
tacles, the casual passage of a few scores of
legionaries, through some dark alley of a
wood, or awe-struck village of barbarians.

"Trajan himself was already present, but in nowise, except from the canopy over other Consul that sate over against him; his ivory chair, to be distinguished from the tall, nevertheless, and of a surety very majestic in his demeanour; grave, sedate, and

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benign in countenance, even according to the likeness which you have seen upon his medals and statues. He was arrayed in a plain gown, and appeared to converse quite familiarly, and without the least affectation of condescension, with such Patricians as had their places near him; among whom Sextus and Rubellia pointed out many remarkable personages to my notice; as for example, Adrian, who afterwards became emperor; Pliny, the orator, a man of very courtly presence, and lively, agreeable aspect; and, above all, the historian Tacitus, the worthy son-in-law of our Agricola, in whose pale countenance I thought I could easily recognize the depth, but sought in vain to discover any traces of the sternness of his genius. Of all the then proud names that were whispered into my ear, could I recollect or repeat them now, how few would awaken any interest in your minds! Those, indeed, which I have mentioned, have an interest that will never die. Would that the greatest and the best of them all were to be remembered only for deeds of greatness and goodness!

"The proclamation being repeated a second time, a door on the right hand of the arena was laid open, and a single trumpet sounded, as it seemed to me, mournfully, while the gladiators marched in with slow steps, each man-naked, except being girt with a cloth about his loins-bearing on his left arm a small buckler, and having a short straight sword suspended by a cord around his neck They marched, as I have said, slowly and steadily; so that the whole assembly had full leisure to contemplate the forms of the men; while those who were, or who imagined themselves to be skilled in the business of the arena, were fixing, in their own minds, on such as they thought most likely to be victorious, and laying wagers concerning their chances of success, with as much unconcern as if they had been contemplating so many irrational animals, or rather, indeed, I should say, so many senseless pieces of ingenious mechanism. The wide diversity of complexion and feature exhibited among these devoted athletes, afforded at once a majestic idea of the extent of the Roman empire, and a terrible one of the purposes to which that wide sway had too often been made subservient. The beautiful Greek, with a countenance of noble serenity, and limbs after which the sculptors of his country might have model led their god-like symbols of graceful pow. er, walked side by side with the yellow. bearded savage, whose gigantic muscles had been nerved in the freezing waves of the Elbe or the Danube, or whose thick strong hair was congealed and shagged on his brow with the breath of Scythian or Scandinavian winters. Many fierce Moors and Arabs, and curled Ethiopians, were there, with the beams of the southern sun burnt in every various shade of swarthiness

upon their skins. Nor did our own remote island want their representatives in the deadly procession, for I saw among the armed multitude and that not altogether without some feelings of more peculiar interesttwo or three gaunt barbarians, whose breasts and shoulders bore uncouth marks of blue and purple, so vivid in the tints, that I thought many months could not have elapsed since they must have been wandering in wild freedom along the native ridges of some Silurian or Caledonian forest. As they moved around the arena, some of these men were saluted by the whole multitude with noisy acclamations, in token, I supposed, of the approbation wherewith the feats of some former festival had deserved to be remembered. On the appearance of others, groans and hisses were heard from some parts of the Amphitheatre, mixed with contending cheers and huzzas from others of the spectators. But by far the greater part were suffered to pass on in silence ;this being in all likelihood the first-alas ! who could tell whether it might not also be the last day of their sharing in that fearful exhibition!

"Their masters paired them shortly, and in succession they began to make proof of their fatal skill. At first, Scythian was matched against Scythian--Greek against Greek-Ethiopian against Ethiopian Spaniard against Spaniard; and I saw the sand dyed beneath their feet with blood streaming from the wounds of kindred hands. But these combats, although abundantly bloody and terrible, were regarded only as preludes to the serious business of the day, which consisted of duels between Europeans on the one side, and Africans on the other; wherein it was the well-nigh intransgressible law of the Amphitheatre, that at least one out of every pair of combatants should die on the arena before the eyes of the multitude. Instead of shrinking from the more desperate brutalities of these latter conflicts, the almost certainty of their fatal termination seemed only to make the assembly gaze on them with a more intense curiosity, and a more inhuman measure of delight. Methinks I feel as if it were but of yesterday, when,-sickened with the protracted terrors of a conflict, that seemed as if it were never to have an end, although both the combatants were already covered all over with hideous gashes,-I at last bowed down my head, and clasped my hands upon my eyes, to save them from the torture of gazing there

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mine eyes. I saw those rich lips parted asunder, and those dark eyes extended in their sockets, and those smooth cheeks suffused with a stedfast blush, and that lovely bosom swelled and glowing; and I hated Rubellia as I gazed, for I knew not before how utterly beauty can be brutalized by the throbbings of a cruel heart. But I look ed round to escape from the sight of her ;and then the hundreds of females that I saw with their eyes fixed, with equal earnestness, on the same spot of horrors, taught me, even at the moment, to think with more charity of that pityless gaze of one.

"At that instant all were silent, in the contemplation of the breathless strife; insomuch, that a groan, the first that had escaped from either of the combatants, although low and reluctant, and half-suppressed, sounded quite distinctly amidst the deep hush of the assembly, and being constrain ed thereby to turn mine eyes once more downwards, I beheld that, at length, one of the two had received the sword of his adversary quite through his body, and had sunk before him upon the sand. A beautiful young man was he that had received this harm, with fair hair, clustered in glossy ringlets upon his neck and brows; but the sickness of his wound was already visible on his drooping eye-lids, and his lips were pale, as if the blood had rushed from them to the untimely outlet. Nevertheless, the Moorish gladiator who had fought with him, had drawn forth again his weapon, and stood there awaiting in silence the decision of the multitude, whether at once to slay the defenceless youth, or to assist in removing him from the arena, if perchance the blood might be stopped from flowing, and some hope of recovery even yet extend ed to him. Hereupon there arose, on the instant, a loud voice of contention; and it

seemed to me as if the wounded man re

garded the multitude with a proud, and withal contemptuous glance, being aware, without question, that he had executed all things so as to deserve their compassion, but aware, moreover, that even had that been freely vouchsafed to him, it was too late for any hope of safety. But the cruelty of their faces, it may be, and the loudness of their cries, were a sorrow to him, and filled his dying breast with loathing. Whe he ther or not the haughtiness of his countenance had been observed by them with displeasure, I cannot say ; but so it was, that those who had cried out to give him a chance of recovery, were speedily silent, and the Emperor looking round, and seeing all the thumbs turned downwards, (for that is, you know, the signal of death,) was constrained to give the sign, and forthwith the young man, receiving again without a struggle the sword of the Moor into his gashed bosom, breathed forth his life, and lay stretched out in his blood upon the place of guilt."

At the close of those sanguinary exhibitions, Thraso the Christian is brought forward to suffer. He is offered life on recantation, but the old man is firm; the questions of his persecutors are answered by the principles of his belief; and in consideration of his ancient services, he is condemned to the more merciful death by the sword of the executioner. Valerius, already half a convert, looks on this murder with the double abhorrence excited by humanity and religion; and retires to give himself up to meditations on the guilt of Heathenism, and the beauty of Athanasia. His sleep is full of strange dreams, and he rises still perplexed with the crowds, the glare, the imperial presence, and the bloody combats. In acknowled ging the strange and feverish interest which he felt in the gladiatorship, he touches on that mysterious question, the source of human interest, in those terrible trials which repel the eye by the extremes of human struggle, grief, and agony. He seems to us to have aasigned the true principle, though without sufficient limitations. He attributes this wild and stern anxiety to the intense and common desire of man, to see how death is met by man. But his position seems too general for truth. There are multitudes to whom a gladiatorial exhibition would be a sight of unequivocal disgust and horror. Of the multitudes who yet would throng the place of butchery in our day, the majority would undoubtedly

be of low and ruffian habits, with no deeper stimulus than brute curiosity. Our bear-baitings, cock-fights, and boxing-matches, the disgrace of our manners and our magistracy, are crowded from no motive but the gross passions for novelty, for filling a rude mind with some occupation for the time, for debauchery and gambling. Here the interest is stirred without the sympathy.

But the position, that horror is necessarily vanquished on those occasions, is untenable. The populace, who alone flock to executions, have in general but little horror to combat a great deal of the common inquisitiveness, which makes the vulgar and idle eager to see every thing that is to be seen. An exe sion to Blackfriar's Bridge, are attendcution at Newgate, and a city procesed by the same restless and vagabond curiosity. In remote districts, where

executions are rare, the peasantry attend in seriousness, and perhaps in horror, but also in the feeling of novelty, and the novelty is spread over a wider space of the mind, and presses it with a more penetrating feeling than the horror. At a London execution, the habits of the populace are merely carried from the hovel to the street; and robbery, ribaldry, and blasphemy, ply at the foot of the scaffold. Valerius seems to think the desire to see of what Death is made, the superior and universal impulse. In our conception, the horror is the universal impulse, overpowered only in peculiar instances arising from the state of the individual. The educated and humane turn away from public executions, because their sensibility is alive to the horror, and their education places them above the brute curiosity. But if any man, of whatever advantages of educated humanity, were to be certain that he must die the death of a culprit, it is probable that no restraint of horror at the struggle of his dying predecessor, would withhold him from seeing how death was to be undergone. In this case, the personal sympathy would vanquish the horror.

The Roman looked on the gladiator's blood, urged by no lofty moral of the lot of human nature. He drank and gamed at it; it was one of a course of amusements; and if he preferred its desperate and fatal cruelty to them all, it was from the greater variety of the combat, its longer suspense, its display of noble forms, and daring vigour, and even from its effusion of blood, for man is by nature a savage. But with how different an interest must this combat have been witnessed by the gladiators looking through the bars of the arena, and waiting for the next summons. The crowds and splendour of the Coliseum must have been as air and emptiness before the eyes that watched the champions on the sand. With what surpassing anxiety must they have watched the gestures, the sleights of practice, the ways of evading giving the mortal blow, and when it was given, the boldest posture in which a gladiator could fall, and triumph as he fell. Medical books are a repulsive study to the generality, but there is no man who does not read the history of his own disease.

Mankind fly from death-beds, but there is no man who would not hangover

that spot of dimness, melancholy, and pain, if the patient was dying of a disease which was certainly to break down his own frame. The result seems to be, not that all men have a love for sights of pain and peril,-because all men know that they must die,—but that individual circumstances can overpower general horror. With Valerius, the anxiety to see death is the rule, the horror the exception; with us it is the contrary.

The interest felt in the sorrows of tragedy is another branch of this exciting question. But if the accomplished and delicate are content to feel, it must be without the presence of horror; all objects of direct repulsiveness must be expelled from the temple where imagination is to offer its sacrifice of tears. The deaths of the theatre are involved in every circumstance of gorgeous and lofty interest, which can hide the actual desperate pangs of dissolution. If the villain dies, our eyes are fixed upon the increased glory of justice, and the confirmed perpetual security of the helpless, whom he would have undone. If the hero falls, his bier is surrounded and made illustrious by the spirits of honour, and courage, and patriotism; the pain of the moment is overpaid by the gratitude of nations, and men are taught to covet his death for his immortality. We follow the perils of kings and chieftains on the stage, where we can have no personal sympathy. But it is, because for the time we are unquestionably under the partial illusion that they are true characters. We feel for their distresses, not from our love to see distress, but from the compassion which is a part of our nature; we trace their casualties with an anxious eye, because we are naturally anxious to know that they have escaped at last. This hope, that they will escape, and triumph, is so universal, that the death of the innocent or the magnanimous always offends the imagination. No glorious cloud of poetry covering their untimely graves, can make us forget that they and we have been wronged.

Next day, Valerius is led by the opulent widow through some of the "sights" of Rome. She finally introduces him to the temple of Apollo.

"So saying, she pointed to the solemn Doric columns which sustain the portico of the famous Temple of Apollo Palatinus,

whose shade lay far out upon the marble court before us, and passing between those brazen horsemen of which we had been speaking, we soon began to ascend the steps that lead up to the shrine. Nor can I tell you how delightful was the fragrant coolness, which reigned beneath the influence of that massive canopy of marble, to us whose eyes had been so long tasked with supporting the meridian blaze of the Italian sun, reflected from so many shining towers and glowing edifices. We entered with slow steps within the vestibule of the Temple, and stood there for some space, enjoying in silence the soft breath of air that played around the flowing fountains of the God. Then passing on, the airy hall of the interior itself received us; and I saw the statue of Phoebus presiding, like a pillar of tender light, over the surrounding darkness of the vaulted place; for, to the lofty shrine of the God of day, no light of day had access, and there lay only a small creeping flame burning thin upon his altar; but a dim and sweet radiance, like that of the stars in autumn, was diffused all upon the statue, and the altar, and the warlike trophies suspended on the inner recesses, from the sacred tree of silver that stands in the centre, amidst the trembling enamelled leaves and drooping boughs of which hung many lamps, after the shape and fashion of pomegranates-and out of every pomegranate there flowed a separate gleam of that soft light, supplied mysteriously through the tall stem of the silver tree, from beneath the hollow floor of the Temple.

66 Now, there was no one there when we first came into the place, but I had not half satisfied myself with contemplating its beauties, when there advanced from behind the statue of Apollo, a very majestic woman, arrayed in long white garments, and having a fillet of laurel leaves twined above her veil, where, parting on her forehead, its folds began to fall downwards towards her girdle. Venerable and stately was her mien, but haughty, rather than serene, the aspect of her countenance. Without once looking towards us, or the place where we stood, she went up immediately to the altar, and began to busy herself in trimming the sacred fire, which, as I have said, exhibited only a lambent and fleeting flame upon its surface. But when, with many kneelings and other ceremonies, she had accomplished this solitary service, the priestess of Apollo at length turned herself again, as if to depart into the secret place from whence she had come forth; and it was then that first, as it seemed, observing the presence of strangers, she stood still before the altar, and regarding us attentively, began to recognize the Lady Rubellia, whom, forthwith advancing, she saluted courteously, and invited to come with the rest of us into her privacy, behind the shrine of the God.

"So saying, she herself led the way thither, Rubellia walking immediately behind her, and the rest of us in her train. Through several folding-doors did we pass, and along many narrow passages all inlaid, on roof, wall, and floor, with snow-white alabaster and rich mosaic work, until at length we came to a little airy chamber, where three young maidens were sitting with their embroidering cushions, while one, taller than the rest, whose back was placed towards us, so that we saw not her countenance, was kneeling on the floor, and touching, with slow and mournful fingers, the strings of a Dorian lyre. Hearing the sound of her music as we entered, we stood still in the door-way, and the priestess, willing apparently that our approach should remain unknown, advancing a step or two before us, said, 'Sing on, my love I have trimmed the flame-sing on-I shall now be able to listen to all your song; but remember, I pray you, that the precincts of Phœbus are not those of Pluto, and let not your chaunt be of such funeral solemnity. Sing some gay thing-we solitaries have no need of depressing numbers.'

"Dear aunt,' replied she that had been thus addressed, without, however, changing her attitude, you must even bear with my numbers such as they are; for if you bid me sing only merry strains, I am afraid neither voice nor fingers may be able well to obey you.'

"These words were spoken in a low and melancholy voice; but guess with what interest I heard them, when I perceived that they proceeded from no other lips than those of Athanasia herself. Sextus also, on hearing them, knew well enough who she was that spoke; but when he looked at me to signify this, I motioned to the youth that he should say nothing to disturb her in her singing.

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"Then please yourself,' said the priestess, laying her hand on Athanasia's shoulders; but do sing, for I should fain have my maidens to hear something truly of your music.'

"With that Athanasia again applied her fingers to the chords of the lyre, and stooping over them, began to play some notes of prelude, less sorrowful than what we had at first heard.

"Ay, my dear girl,' says the priestess, 'there now you have the very secret of that old Delian chaunt. Heavens! how many lordly choirs have I heard singing to it in unison! There are a hundred hymns that may be sung to it-give us whichsoever of them pleases your fancy the best.'

"I will try,' replied the maiden, ‘to sing the words you have heard from me before. If I remember me aright, you liked them.'

"Then boldly at once, yet gently, did her voice rush into the current of that old strain that you have heard so often; but it

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