THE FORUM AT ROME.

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 of its patriotism-the long struggles for freedom and for power-the popular tumults-the loud acclamations--the energetic harangues-the impassioned eloquence-and 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.

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 grassgrown area, I felt, with enthusiasm which brought tears into my eyes, that I now stood on the very spot his feet had then trod.

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 was the Rostrum? Not a vestige of it 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, 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 Patriæ, that 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.

ROME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.