the imaginations of men, through the waste and gloom of future ages,
after it shall have gone quite to decay and ruin: the brilliant, though
scarcely distinct gleam of a statelier dome than ever was seen, shining
on the background of the night of Time. This simile looked prettier in
my fancy than I have made it look on paper.

After we had enjoyed the silver illumination a good while, and when all
the daylight had given place to the constellated night, the distant
outline of St. Peter's burst forth, in the twinkling of an eye, into a
starry blaze, being quite the finest effect that I ever witnessed. I
stayed to see it, however, only a few minutes; for I was quite ill and
feverish with a cold,--which, indeed, I have seldom been free from, since
my first breathing of the genial atmosphere of Rome. This pestilence
kept me within doors all the next day, and prevented me from seeing the
beautiful fireworks that were exhibited in the evening from the platform
on the Pincian, above the Piazza del Popolo.

On Thursday, I paid another visit to the sculpture-gallery of the
Capitol, where I was particularly struck with a bust of Cato the Censor,
who must have been the most disagreeable, stubborn, ugly-tempered,
pig-headed, narrow-minded, strong-willed old Roman that ever lived. The
collection of busts here and at the Vatican are most interesting, many of
the individual heads being full of character, and commending themselves
by intrinsic evidence as faithful portraits of the originals. These
stone people have stood face to face with Caesar, and all the other
emperors, and with statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, and poets of the
antique world, and have been to them like their reflections in a mirror.
It is the next thing to seeing the men themselves.

We went afterwards into the Palace of the Conservatori, and saw, among