columns, single, or in groups of two or three, still erect, but battered
and bruised at some forgotten time with infinite pains and labor;
fragments of other columns lying prostrate, together with rich capitals
and friezes; the bust of a colossal female statue, showing the bosom and
upper part of the arms, but headless; a long, winding space of pavement,
forming part of the ancient ascent to the Capitol, still as firm and
solid as ever; the foundation of the Capitol itself, wonderfully massive,
built of immense square blocks of stone, doubtless three thousand years
old, and durable for whatever may be the lifetime of the world; the Arch
of Septimius, Severus, with bas-reliefs of Eastern wars; the Column of
Phocas, with the rude series of steps ascending on four sides to its
pedestal; the floor of beautiful and precious marbles in the Basilica of
Julia, the slabs cracked across,--the greater part of them torn up and
removed, the grass and weeds growing up through the chinks of what
remain; heaps of bricks, shapeless bits of granite, and other ancient
rubbish, among which old men are lazily rummaging for specimens that a
stranger may be induced to buy,--this being an employment that suits the
indolence of a modern Roman. The level of these excavations is about
fifteen feet, I should judge, below the present street, which passes
through the Forum, and only a very small part of this alien surface has
been removed, though there can be no doubt that it hides numerous
treasures of art and monuments of history. Yet these remains do not make
that impression of antiquity upon me which Gothic ruins do. Perhaps it
is so because they belong to quite another system of society and epoch of
time, and, in view of them, we forget all that has intervened betwixt
them and us; being morally unlike and disconnected with them, and not
belonging to the same train of thought; so that we look across a gulf to
the Roman ages, and do not realize how wide the gulf is. Yet in that
intervening valley lie Christianity, the Dark Ages, the feudal system,
chivalry and romance, and a deeper life of the human race than Rome