the school of Verna, cruelly dilapidated; finally a small triumphal arch
on which there stood, perhaps, a _quadriga_, or four-yoked chariot-team;
some pedestals of statues erected to illustrious Pompeians, to Pansa, to
Sallust, to Marcus Lucretius, Decidamius Rufus; some inscriptions in
honor of this one or that one, of the great Romulus, of the aged
Æneas,--when all these have been seen, or glanced at, at least, you will
have made the tour of the Forum.

You now know what the public exchange was in a Roman city; a spacious
court surrounded by the most important monuments (three temples, the
bourse, the tribunals, the prisons, etc.), inclosed on all sides (traces
of the barred gates are still discernible at the entrances), adorned
with statues, triumphal arches, and colonnades; a centre of business and
pleasure; a place for sauntering and keeping appointments; the Corso,
the Boulevard of ancient times, or in other words, the heart of the
city. Without any great effort of the imagination, all this scene
revives again and becomes filled with a living, variegated throng,--the
portico and its two stories of columns along the edge of the
reconstructed monuments; women crowd the upper galleries; loiterers drag
their feet along the pavement; the long robes gather in harmonious
folds; busy merchants hurry to the Chalcidicum; the statues look proudly
down from their re-peopled pedestals; the noble language of the Romans
resounds on all sides in scanned, sonorous measure; and the temple of
Jupiter, seated at the end of the vista, as on a throne, and richly
adorned with Corinthian elegance, glitters in all its splendor in the
broad sunshine.

An air of pomp and grandeur--a breath of Rome--has swept over this
collection of public edifices. Let us descend from these heights and
walk about through the little city.