baskets.

On reaching the hither side of the river, I soon struck upon the ruins of
the theatre of Marcellus, which are very picturesque, and the more so
from being closely linked in, indeed, identified with the shops,
habitations, and swarming life of modern Rome. The most striking portion
was a circular edifice, which seemed to have been composed of a row of
Ionic columns standing upon a lower row of Doric, many of the antique
pillars being yet perfect; but the intervening arches built up with
brickwork, and the whole once magnificent structure now tenanted by poor
and squalid people, as thick as mites within the round of an old cheese.
From this point I cannot very clearly trace out my course; but I passed,
I think, between the Circus Maximus and the Palace of the Caesars, and
near the Baths of Caracalla, and went into the cloisters of the Church of
San Gregorio. All along I saw massive ruins, not particularly
picturesque or beautiful, but huge, mountainous piles, chiefly of
brickwork, somewhat tweed-grown here and there, but oftener bare and
dreary. . . . . All the successive ages since Rome began to decay have
done their best to ruin the very ruins by taking away the marble and the
hewn stone for their own structures, and leaving only the inner filling
up of brickwork, which the ancient architects never designed to be seen.
The consequence of all this is, that, except for the lofty and poetical
associations connected with it, and except, too, for the immense
difference in magnitude, a Roman ruin may be in itself not more
picturesque than I have seen an old cellar, with a shattered brick
chimney half crumbling down into it, in New England.

By this time I knew not whither I was going, and turned aside from a
broad, paved road (it was the Appian Way) into the Via Latina, which I
supposed would lead to one of the city gates. It was a lonely path: on