find, tracing our returning path to the Quirinal hill, once adorned by the magnificent Temple of the Sun, and now by the summer palace of the Pope. The Quirinal continues healthy, and is thickly inhabited. The Monte Pinciano, with its pleasant promenade, completes our circuit of the city, by its terraces you may descend to the Porta del Popolo, our original position.

Thus we perceive, although the Roman Empire has passed away, the physical divisions of the ground on which the city was built are still plainly traceable and obvious. And how excellent the site. The Seven Hills were separately places of defence, their summits were healthful, their position commanding. The ground which lay between one hill and the other might be enclosed as necessity required, and until needed for habitations, yielded sustenance; in either case it was commanded, and could be protected, by those in possession of the high ground.

Then as to the two more distant ranges of hills, that is the Pincian on the one side, and that on which stands the Vatican, the Marian, and Janiculum on the other, they might be used as outposts of defence in time of war, and in time of peace for wholesome recreation, and also as a means of extending the dwellings of the city. Thus a large tract of land was naturally enclosed as it were for the early Romans; they were not cooped up in a narrow spot or upon a single hill, and they had the yellow Tiber flowing by them, to supply water and facilitate commerce. The localities of the Seven Hills, may have had a considerable influence, in forming the robust character of the Roman people. They profited by their natural advantages, extended their city, guarded it by their

valour, and became by degrees a renowned and mighty nation.*

* The height of the principal hills above the sea is here given: the Capitoline, 160; Palatine, 170; Aventine, 148; Cœlian, 146; Esquiline, 180: Quirinal, 150; Pincian, 206. The Palatine Mount is nearly a mile and half in circumference, and almost square. The Capitoline contains 16 acres, is about 500 yards long, and 185 broad. The Esquiline is the most extensive of the Seven Hills.

WEEKS fled while I revelled in the intellectual enjoyments of the Eternal City. So far as bodily health permitted, I hurried from one famous spot to another, without method or a plan. I followed at times the guide-books, and visited as directed, in perverted order, things ancient and modern, sacred and profane, although wholly disconnected with each other.

Palaces, Basilicas, Temples, Amphitheatres, Baths, Catacombs, Churches, Pictures, Statues, were all mixed up in my mind in a delightful confusion. Definite or exact ideas of Ancient or Modern Rome, or of Rome in the Middle Ages, I had none. I only discovered the renowned city was a prodigious treasury of art and antiquities, which could never be exhausted.

Every morning I arranged a plan, and every evening found I had been seduced to deviate from its order by temptations not to be withstood. What seemed strange, notwithstanding my apparent activity in sight-seeing, this novel and exciting business accumulated. Fascinating occupation dispelled gloom, while it quickened flagging energies; and I forgot, in my enthusiasm, that the doctors said I was an invalid, and ought to behave as such.

Pompey's Statue.

CHAPTER VI.

Gardens of Sallust.

A Word on the His

torians and the Men who flourished in the latter Days of the Republic.

"Did he die,

And thou, too, perish, Pompey! have ye been
Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene!"

THE associations connected with a great antiquity prevail over every other during our early residence in Rome. Standing before the severe statue of Pompey in the Spada Palace, I felt transported back to the age in which the friend of Tully struggled for the commonwealth. This figure of an old Roman fully equalled my previous conception of what it ought to be. It is almost ten feet in height, the attitude imposing, one arm stretched out grasps a globe, the aspect is grave and dignified, the face that of a stern man. Gazing upon the whole statue, even if ignorant of its history, one would be tempted to exclaim "What hero of the Republic is before us?" Gibbon tells us,

"The discovery of a statue of Pompey, ten feet in length, was the occasion of a law-suit. It had been found under a partition wall. The equitable judge had pronounced that the head should be separated from the body to satisfy the claim. of the contiguous owners; and the sentence would have been executed, if the intercession of a cardinal and the liberality of

a pope had not rescued the Roman hero from the hands of his barbarous countrymen."

Hobhouse rightly observes, "The face accords much better with the hominem integrum et castum et gravem, than with any of the busts of Augustus," "and is too stern for him who was beautiful," says Suetonius, “at all periods of his life." I have seen many busts of Augustus Cæsar, and nothing can be more absurd than the assertion that the statue of Pompey could ever have been meant for the Emperor: his busts and the statue have not the slightest resemblance. The traits of the statue resemble the medals of Pompey, a fact which removes all reasonable doubt as to the person for whom it was intended. The authorities satisfied me the statue is genuine; and the fact that Napoleon coveted its possession to adorn Paris, strengthened my conviction. The proprietor, (Spada,) a nobleman employed in the administration of affairs under the Emperor, replied to Buonaparte's unreasonable demand, that he wished to preserve to his posterity the classic statue of a noble Roman, which had been handed down to him from his ancestors. The Emperor desisted from his unreasonable demand, and "dread Pompey's statue" has been suffered to stand in gloomy grandeur in an old baronial hall of the Spada Palace, the proprietors of which have not crossed its threshold for twenty-five years. Political reasons, it is rumoured, induced this noble family, under the reign of Pope Gregory, to absent themselves from their Roman palace, which is tenanted by " Great Pompey's statue," and the steward.

66

It is impossible to behold the figure of so remarkable a man, and not desire to review upon the spot his history and that of the times-the closing days of the republic in which he flourished.