father and mother talk of it when I was your age, and Robert was but a
lad. My father said it would take a lifetime of patient study to learn
thoroughly all that can to-day be learned of what we call ancient
Rome--the Rome of the Cæsars; and how many Romes existed before that, of
which we can know nothing, save through legend and tradition! 'Now,
will it not be best,' he asked, 'that we read all we can of legend and
the chief points of Roman history up to the present time, so that the
subject of Rome get into our minds and hearts; and then try to absorb
all we can of the spirit of both past and present, so that we shall know
Rome even though we have not tried to find out all about her? We cannot
accomplish the latter, and if we try I fear we shall miss everything.'
My mother agreed fully with him. And so, many evenings at home; father
would read to us pathetic legends and stirring tales of ancient Roman
life; and we would often go and sit amidst the earth-covered ruins on
the Palatine. Here, children, I have heard your own dear father more
than once repeat, as only he could, Byron's graphic lines:--

"Cypress and ivy, weed and wall-flower grown,
Matted and mass'd together; hillocks heap'd
On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strewn
In fragments; choked-up vaults, and frescoes steep'd
In subterranean damps, where the owl peep'd
Deeming it midnight.

"He used to love to repeat bits of poetry everywhere, just as Margery
does.

"We climbed the Colosseum walls and sat there for hours dreaming of what
it once was--and so we went all over the city--until I really think I
lived in ancient Rome a part of the time. Often did I weep over the