within the precinct, which is fenced by walls exhibiting the scars and the decay of twenty centuries. They are garrisoned by the grandest recollections: and if all that is most dear to the arts and to civilization be not disregarded, they ought for the future to be dispensed from the assaults of war. Studded here and there with broken inscriptions and divers monumental fragments; garlanded with wild flowers, with grass, parasitical herbs, and precarious shrubs, they resemble, not so much the bulwarks of a fortress, as the precinct of some holy place,— a fence to guard the ashes of martyr, and saint, and hero, from being scattered or confounded with ignoble clay.

The region thus encompassed, is, in part, occupied by a city, singularly beautiful, and magnificently seated, for the most part, upon the Campus Martius, and on the Vatican fields beyond the Tiber; the rest, far the greater portion,-is "a marble wilrest,-far derness,"-scattered with

"the chief relics of almighty Rome."

Of this latter district of the vast enclosure, the stillness is seldom interrupted, except by some melancholy sound-at night by

the howl of the watch-dog, or, haply, by some catches of psalmody from monks, in chanting their nocturnal prayer. The vine-dresser's song by day may sound

170

PRESENT ASPECT.

less drearily; yet is that also a solemn chant, and harmonizes not inaptly with the tolling of the "Angelus," at noon, and the "Ave Maria" bell, at evening. A mean osteria, perhaps, by the way-side, with wild shepherds and herdsmen of the Campagna refreshing their animals at a pool or a fountain, or regaling themselves with a flask or a siesta in the cypress shade; a cassino, or a monastery, here and there among the solitudes, with barricaded doors and casements, a gardener's hut, or a hermit's cell, patched into the sanctuary of a temple, or the alcove of a bath, a theatre, or a banquet hall:-these, the only symptoms of animation to be met with, do not relieve but rather enhance by the contrast of so much meanness with so much of fallen grandeur, the indescribable desolation of the scenery. The very

ruins of palace, amphitheatre, and triumphal arch, have the look as if they would exalt themselves still higher in sullen haughtiness, to scathe with their glances of unutterable scorn and indignation those vile intruders upon the cemetery of heroism and empire which they seem to guard.

To this central position among the Seven Hillsto the "imperial mount "-the Palatine, once a volcano's edge-now "matted and massed with ruins," the debris which passions wilder than the volcano's rage have left behind them, and at the junction point of so many of the surrounding petty states it was, that, five-and-twenty centuries ago, a blood-stained outlaw fled for refuge. Surrounded

THE ROME OF ROMULUS.

171

by a band of followers as guilty and as desperate as himself, and like him, too, compelled to seek the fastnesses of this border district, in order to escape from the pursuit of justice, his eagle glance ranged keenly through the region, at that period a solitude partitioned between pasturage for kine and flocks, and forest scenery, in order to select the post from which to hurl down his gage of defiance to all the surrounding nations, and prospectively to declare a war of aggression and of conquest, against the entire of the then known world, with the best effect. And well did the outlaw make his selection and choose his ground; for Romulus, who laid the first stone of Rome, with befitting auguries, and in his own brother's gore, is strictly entitled to be regarded not alone as the founder of the city, but also of that defiant and aggressive policy by which Rome at length succeeded in crushing the independence of all the surrounding nations, and in usurping and concentrating within herself all resources and means for monopolizing the influence, wealth, enjoyments, and dominion of Italy, in the first place, and of the entire earth, after the Italian nations had been subdued.

On all sides of the robber town, or rather of the permanent encampment of this brigand, and of the kings and consuls who succeeded him, we have met, in the course of our peregrinations through the States, with vestiges of its aggressive genius, fierce, merciless, persevering, and irresistible as Fate itself.

The Campagna especially, we saw inundated with the blood of those who fell for liberty, during ages as many as afterwards it continued to drink in the martyrs' blood: Rome of the kings and consuls as fiercely persecuting freedom, as Rome of the Emperors persecuted Christianity, at an after period. Nation after nation, we have seen stript of indepen-dence, and city after city, like Veii and Alba, and Vulsinii, with a thousand others, we have seen extirpated and blotted out, that by their subjugation, their spoils, their tribute, and ultimately by their utter extinction, the robber-camp might be enriched, recruit its forces, and monopolize every species of resource which was to pave the way for it to universal empire and domination.* The acquisition of Sabinia, of the various Latin and Etruscan territories of Campania, Samnium, Umbria, Picenum, or even of all Italy, from the Alps to the bounds of Sicily, so far from satiating the ravening hunger of Rome for war and conquest, only seemed to stimulate the appetite for havoc and usurpation, with which, monster-like, this power rushes over every boundary by land and sea, to invade, to massacre and subjugate the nations. So long as a single one of

* Egressis urbem Albanis, Romanus passim publica privataque omnia tecta adæquat Solo, unâque horâ quadringentorum annorum opus quibus Alba steterat, excidio et ruinis dedit. ROMA INTERIM CRESCIT ALBÆ RUINIS. Livy, l. i. 29.

In these few brilliant strokes, the gist of Rome's history, so far as it records her conquests, is placed in the most vivid light.

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THE CLASSIC 'RED REPUBLIC."

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them, from Caledonia to Egypt, and from Mauritania to the remotest east, remains erect, the twoedged falchion of Romulus's city is never sheathed,— never! except in the hearts or the bowels of those who presume to defend their liberty.

"It was," says Schlegel, "as if the iron-footed god of war, Gradivus, so highly revered from of old by the people of Romulus, actually bestrode the globe, and at every step struck out new torrents of blood; or as if the dark Pluto had emerged from the abyss of eternal night, escorted by all the vengeful spirits of the lower world, by all the furies of passion and insatiable cupidity, by the bloodthirsty demons of murder, to establish his visible empire, and erect his throne for ever on the earth. There can be no doubt that, if the Roman history were divested of its accustomed rhetoric, of all the patriotic maxims and trite sayings of politicians, and were presented with strict and minute accuracy in all its living reality, every humane mind would be deeply shocked at such a picture, and penetrated with profound horror and disgust."*

Then it is, that The City, the concentration of a boundless empire, becomes itself so unbounded in extent, in magnificence, in riches, in adornments, in the multitudes of her king-like inhabitants and the variety and unbridled excesses of their enjoyments, that all the figures and highest flights of

* Schlegel, Phil. of Hist. vol. i. p. 337.