base is almost entirely surrounded with small structures, which seem to
be used as farm-buildings. On the summit is a large iron cross, the
Church having thought it expedient to redeem these shattered pipkins from
the power of paganism, as it has so many other Roman ruins. There was a
pathway up the hill, but I did not choose to ascend it under the hot sun,
so steeply did it clamber up. There appears to be a good depth of soil
on most parts of Monte Testaccio, but on some of the sides you observe
precipices, bristling with fragments of red or brown earthenware, or
pieces of vases of white unglazed clay; and it is evident that this
immense pile is entirely composed of broken crockery, which I should
hardly have thought would have aggregated to such a heap had it all been
thrown here,--urns, teacups, porcelain, or earthen,--since the beginning
of the world.

I walked quite round the hill, and saw, at no great distance from it, the
enclosure of the Protestant burial-ground, which lies so close to the
pyramid of Caius Cestius that the latter may serve as a general monument
to the dead. Deferring, for the present, a visit to the cemetery, or to
the interior of the pyramid, I returned to the gateway of San Paolo, and,
passing through it, took a view of it from the outside of the city wall.
It is itself a portion of the wall, having been built into it by the
Emperor Aurelian, so that about half of it lies within and half without.
The brick or red stone material of the wall being so unlike the marble of
the pyramid, the latter is as distinct, and seems as insulated, as if it
stood alone in the centre of a plain; and really I do not think there is
a more striking architectural object in Rome. It is in perfect
condition, just as little ruined or decayed as on the day when the
builder put the last peak on the summit; and it ascends steeply from its
base, with a point so sharp that it looks as if it would hardly afford
foothold to a bird. The marble was once white, but is now covered with a