their summer perfection can be enjoyed only at the risk of catching
fever. Man has made a paradise for himself, but the malaria drives him
out of it, and all its costly beauty is almost thrown away. Only
during the desolation of winter, or the fair promise and
half-developments of spring, can one wander safely through the place.
The sting of the serpent is in this Eden. Cursed is the ground for
man's sake in the fairest scene that his industry, and genius, and
virtue can make for himself; but cursed with a double curse is the
ground that he makes a wilderness by his selfishness and wickedness.
And this double curse, this fatal Circean spell, has come upon these
beautiful grounds in common with all the neighbourhood of Rome because
of ages of human waste and wrong-doing. How striking a picture do they
present of all earth's beauties and possessions, which promise what
they cannot fully accomplish, which give no rest for the head or home
for the heart, and in which, when disposed to place our trust, we hear
ever and anon the warning cry, "Arise and depart, for this is not your
rest, for it is polluted, for it will destroy you with a sore
destruction." And not without significance is the circumstance that
such a lesson on the vanity of all earthly things should be suggested
by what one sees over against the house of prayer. It illustrates and
emphasises the precept which bids the worshipper set his affections on
things above, so that the house of God may become to him the very gate
of heaven.

From the entrance of the church, through a long suburb, you trace the
old Flaminian road till it crosses the Tiber at the Ponte Molle, the
famous Milvian Bridge. It is strange to think of this hoary road of
many memories being now laid down with modern tramway rails, along
which cars like those in any of our great manufacturing towns
continually run. This is one of the many striking instances in which