remains. But, indeed, old things are not so beautiful in this dry
climate and clear atmosphere as in moist England. . . . .

Whatever beauty there may be in a Roman ruin is the remnant of what was
beautiful originally; whereas an English ruin is more beautiful often in
its decay than even it was in its primal strength. If we ever build such
noble structures as these Roman ones, we can have just as good ruins,
after two thousand years, in the United States; but we never can have a
Furness Abbey or a Kenilworth. The Corso, and perhaps some other
streets, does not deserve all the vituperation which I have bestowed on
the generality of Roman vias, though the Corso is narrow, not averaging
more than nine paces, if so much, from sidewalk to sidewalk. But palace
after palace stands along almost its whole extent,--not, however, that
they make such architectural show on the street as palaces should. The
enclosed courts were perhaps the only parts of these edifices which the
founders cared to enrich architecturally. I think Linlithgow Palace, of
which I saw the ruins during my last tour in Scotland, was built, by an
architect who had studied these Roman palaces. There was never any idea
of domestic comfort, or of what we include in the name of home, at all
implicated in such structures, they being generally built by wifeless and
childless churchmen for the display of pictures and statuary in galleries
and long suites of rooms.

I have not yet fairly begun the sight-seeing of Rome. I have been four
or five times to St. Peter's, and always with pleasure, because there is
such a delightful, summerlike warmth the moment we pass beneath the
heavy, padded leather curtains that protect the entrances. It is almost
impossible not to believe that this genial temperature is the result of
furnace-heat, but, really, it is the warmth of last summer, which will be
included within those massive walls, and in that vast immensity of space,