greatest, pious, and the happy; because by a divine impulse, the
greatness of his courage, and the aid of his army, he avenged the
republic by his just arms, and, at the same time, rescued it from the
tyrant and his whole faction." On one side of the arch are the words,
"Liberatori urbis," to the deliverer of the city; and on the other,
"Fundatori quietis," to the founder of public tranquillity.

Although erected to the honour of Constantine, this arch commemorates
the victories of Trajan, some of the basso-relievos, &c. having
been pilfered from one of the arches of Trajan. This accounts for
the Dacian captives, whose heads Lorenzo de Medicis broke off and
conveyed to Florence, but the theft might not have been so notorious
to posterity, had not the artists of Constantine's time added some
figures of inferior merit. Forsyth says, "Constantine's reign was
notorious for architectural robbery;" and the styles of the two
emperors, in the present arch, mar the harmony by their unsightly
contrasts.

Although the decree for erecting this arch was, without doubt, passed
immediately after the defeat of Maxentius, it appears from the
monument itself, that the building was not finished and dedicated till
the tenth year of Constantine's reign, or the year of Christ 315 or
316.

The newly-erected arch opposite the entrance to Hyde Park is from the
Roman arch, though, we believe, not from any particular model. In the
View of the New Palace, St. James's Park, (in our No. 278,) the arch,
to be called the Waterloo Monument, and erected in the middle of the
area of the palace, will be nearly a copy of that of Constantine
at Rome. In the court-yard of the Tuilleries at Paris, there is a