nothing but disjointed columns, porticoes, and cupolas illumined by the blaze; and the flames rising in a thousand places at once, and every street thronged with women and children, or desolated with the dying and the dead, nothing could exceed their rage and disappointment! And yet, had the ruins, which every where presented themselves, existed for many ages, and been the result of the enterprizes of their ancestors, those very soldiers would have beheld the scene with awe and admiration. So different are the associations, when men see, than from those that arise, when they both see and suffer. The effects of association, awakened by external objects, are well described by Gibbon. "At the distance of five and twenty years," said he, “I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions, which agitated my breast, as I first approached the ETERNAL CITY. After a sleepless night, I trod, with lofty step, the ruins of the forum; each spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, was present to my sight." Poggio Bracciolini, amid the same ruins, took pleasure in revolving the various occurrences, each ruin had seen, or given birth to. And such was his proficiency, that he could trace the history of every palace and of every temple. Among the ruins of the Tarpeian rock, he contrasted the state of Rome,―proud and imperious Rome!-when Tully graced the bar, and Cato the senate, with those ruins, which, at the moment he viewed the city, lay scattered on every side around him.' Ruins, which, by 1 Should the reader desire to form some idea of the ancient splendour of Rome, the Campus Martius, and its environs, he may consult with 1 their associations, recalled the memory of a thousand illustrious actions. "Even the water of Rome," said Angelica Kauffman, " elicits all the nobler faculties of the soul!" IV. The melancholy appearance of these ruins was the remote cause of Rienzi's attempt to re-establish the commonwealth and with what genuine feeling did Petrarch lament, that the marble columns and fragments of antiquity, which had formed the glory of that once mighty city, should be transported from their native soil to adorn the palaces of Naples! Alas! how much more fallen now has become the City of the World, once the "delight and beauty of the universe;"-raising its melancholy ruins among fields, which appear, by their abandoned state, to have suffered from a conflagration, a famine, or a pestilence. Pope Alexander the Sixth destroyed the pyramid of Scipio, to pave the streets with its materials: -and not a few of the noblest structures were defaced and destroyed by Gregory the Great, that pilgrims and devotees might not lose their enthusiasm in their admiration of antiquity. Robbed, insulted, and ruined by the modern Vandals ;-men, who derived an exquisite pleasure in treading on all, that was great, illustrious, and magnificent, and who, in the advantage Piranesi's Ichnography, in Il Campo Marzio Dell' Antica Roma, tab. iv. fol., and De Fortunæ Varietate Urbis Romæ, &c. The former is in the library of the London Institution, the latter in that of the British Museum. fury and ignorance of barbarian pride, would have disfigured even an angel of Albano,-how many an awful event transformed Italy into barbarism, and left the finest country in the world desolate and weeping! Violence and rapine stalked upon her mountains; fire and slaughter depopulated her vallies; her palaces were despoiled of their treasures; and the master-pieces of Caracci, Raphael, and Guido, of Titian, Angelo, and Correggio, doomed to adorn the galleries of an exotic soil. Had the Colosseum' and St. Peter's been capable of removal, those eternal monuments, also, had contributed to the embellishment of a foreign capital.-Where once stood Nineveh, wandering tribes slake their thirst, at a solitary fountain! V. It is impossible to contemplate Rome without sentiments of profound awe and admiration. For so transcendant is its power of exciting associations, that of them; and it is a re "These ruins cover about five acres of ground; and the space has, in the course of ages, become, as it were, a natural botanic garden: so numerous and so various are the plants, which grow there. Dr. Sebastiani, of Rome, has drawn up a list markable fact, that out of two hundred and sixty-one, no fewer than one hundred and forty-eight are natives of the British Islands."-Williams* Travels in Italy, Greece, and the Ionian Islands, vol. i. p. 389. The Flora is peculiarly interesting, not only to the botanist, but to the antiquary. It is entitled, Enumeratio Plantarum sponte nascentium in ruderibus amphitheatri Flavii. 2 These works have lately been restored to their respective cities. 3 When Ariosto first saw Florence and its environs, he exelaimed, • If all these palaces were assembled together, two Romes would scarcely were St. Peter's, and all the remains of ancient and modern industry and art pulverized, as it were, into atoms, small as the sands of the desert; yet will that portion of the Tiber, near which they stood, be sacred to the poet, the pilgrim, the philosopher, and the statesman, till a new order of intellect has impressed upon mankind a new order of sensation, and a new method of employing the faculties of memory and perception. Immortalized by three hundred and twenty triumphs: so magnificent, that a prince of Persia1 could not refrain from congratulating himself, that men died there, as well as elsewhere: and now exhibiting, in one single monument, a structure so admirable, that the Abbé Barthelemy recognized in it all the grandeur of "l'ancienne Egypte, l'ancienne Athènes, l'ancienne Rome:" impossible is it to stand at the feet of antique columns; to see the numerous mutilated statues and imperfect vases; the fragments, and the half-defaced inscriptions; to walk upon the remains of tessellated pavements; and to read their history in coins and medals; without feeling the mind assume all the faculties of a poet. For the heart melts, as if it were awakened from the contemplation of a melancholy, yet delightful, dream: while a hallowed sensibility, stampt in the moulds of delicacy and taste,-adds purity to the grandeur and sublimity of the soul. equal the grandeur of Florence." When Napoleon invited Canova to take up his permanent abode at Paris, Canova replied, "Sans son atelier, sars ses amis, sans son beau ciel, sans sa Rome." So well did the sculptor feel the power and influence of that city. 1 Ammianus Marcellinus. VI. Meditating on the rise of republics; the revolutions of empires; the changes of manners, customs, laws, and opinions; a progression of ages is exhibited to the mind, in characters and pictures, which, giving an enlarged view of human actions, speak a language, promising immortality: though every fragment bears for its own inscription, "I die daily." And yet all this is nothing to what is felt in the rude majesty of untamed Nature! The stem Of oak gigantic, wither'd by the blast, More sacred is, than when it rear'd its head, Moulded to beauty, charms the bosom more Than all the palaces of princes.-Rocks, Which raise their crested heads into the clouds, Hymn to the Moon. In viewing these fragments, the mind seems as if it were born for high purposes: and it contemplates them, in consequence, with awe and solemnity. Towers, arches, and battlements seem to survive the silent lapse of ages, merely for the purpose of exciting to actions, worthy some mighty intellectual power. Fame seems to mantle every turret, for the purpose of throwing into remote perspective the comparative |