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APPENDIX, & c.

PROSE-READING.

DELICACY OF TASTE.-HUME.

NOTHING is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting. They give a certain elegance of sentiment, to which the rest of mankind are strangers. The emotions which they excite are soft and tender. They draw off the mind from the hurry of business and interest; cherish reflection; dispose to tranquillity; and produce an agreeable melancholy, which, of all dispositions of the mind, is the best suited to love and friendship. In the second place, a delicacy of taste is favorable to love and friendship, by confining our choice to few people, and making us indifferent to the company and conversation of the greater part of men. You will seldom find that mere men of the world, whatever strong sense they may be endowed with, are very nice in distinguishing characters, or in marking those insensible differences and gradations

which make one man preferable to another. Any one that has competent sense, is sufficient for their entertainment: they talk to him of their pleasures and affairs with the same frankness that they would to another; and finding many who are fit to supply his place, they never feel any vacancy or want in his absence.

But, to make use of the allusion of a celebrated French author, the judgment may be compared to a clock or watch, where the most ordinary machine is sufficient to tell the hours, but the most elaborate alone can point at the minutes and seconds, and distinguish the smallest differences of time. One that has well digested his knowledge, both of books and men, has little enjoyment but in the company of a few select companions. He feels too sensibly how much all the rest of mankind fall short of the notions which he has entertained; and his affections being thus confined within a narrow circle, no wonder he carries them further than if they were more general and undistinguished. The gaiety and frolic of a bottle companion improve, with him, into a solid friendship; and the ardors of a youthful appetite become an elegant passion.

DESCRIPTION OF THE COLISEUM.-FORSYTH.

Here,

A COLOSSAL taste gave rise to the Coliseum. indeed, gigantic dimensions were necessary; for though hundreds could enter at once, and fifty thousand find seats, the space was still insufficient for Rome, and the crowd for the morning games began at

midnight. Vespasian and Titus, as if presaging their own deaths, hurried the building, and left several marks of their precipitancy behind. In the upper walls, they have inserted stones which were evidently dressed for a different purpose. Some of the arcades are grossly unequal; no moulding preserves the same level and form round the whole ellipse, and every order is full of license. The Doric has no triglyphs nor metopes, and its arch is too low for its columns ; the Ionic repeats the entablature of the Doric; the third order is but a rough cast of the Corinthian, and its foliage the thickest water-plants; and the whole is crowned by a heavy Attic. Happily for the Coliseum, the shape necessary to an amphitheatre has given it a stability of construction sufficient to resist fires, and earthquakes, and sieges. Its elliptical form was the hoop which bound and held it entire till barbarians burst that consolidating ring; popes widened the breach; and time, not unassisted, continues the work of dilapidation. At this moment, the hermitage is threatened with a dreadful crash, and a generation not very remote must be content, I apprehend, with the picture of this stupendous monument. Of the interior elevation, two slopes, by some called meniana, are already demolished; the arena, the podium, are interred. No member runs entire round the whole ellipse; but every member made such a circuit, and reappears so often, that plans, sections, and elevations of the original work are drawn with the precision of a modern fabric. When the whole amphitheatre was entire, a child might comprehend its design in a mo

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ment, and go direct to his place without straying in the porticos, for each arcade bears its number engraved, and opposite to every fourth arcade was a staircase. This multiplicity of wide, straight, and separate passages, proves the attention which the ancients paid to the safe discharge of a crowd; it finely illustrates the precept of Vitruvius, and exposes the perplexity of some modern theatres.

Every nation has undergone its revolution of vices; and as cruelty is not the present vice of ours, we can all humanely execrate the purpose of amphitheatres now that they lie in ruins. Moralists may tell us that the truly brave are never cruel; but this monument says 'No.' Here sat the conquerors of the world, coolly to enjoy the tortures and death of men who had never offended them. Two aqueducts were scarcely sufficient to wash off the human blood which a few hours' sport shed in the imperial shambles. Twice in one day came the senators and matrons of Rome to the butchery; a virgin always gave the signal for slaughter; and when glutted with bloodshed, those ladies sat down in the wet and streaming arena to a luxurious supper! Such reflections check our regret for its ruin.

As it now stands, the Coliseum is a striking image of Rome itself-decayed, vacant, serious, yet grand— half-gray and half-green-erect on one side, and fallen on the other, with consecrated ground in its bosom ; inhabited by a beadsman, visited by every caste; for moralists, antiquaries, painters, architects, devotees all meet here to examine, to draw, to measure, and to pray!

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