iness Pius IX.

XXIV.

THE ETERNAL CITY.

ROME, Friday, June 27, 1851.

ROME is mighty even in her desolation. I knew the world had nothing like
her, and yet the impression she has made on me, at the first view, is
unexpectedly great. I do not yet feel able to go wandering from one
church, museum, picture or sculpture gallery to another, from morning
till night, as others do: I need to pause and think. Of course, I shall
leave without seeing even a tenth part of the objects of decided interest;
but if I should thus be enabled to carry away any clear and abiding
impression of a small part, I shall prefer this to a confused and foggy
perception of a greater multiplicity of details.

That single view of the Eternal City, from the tower of the Capitol, is
one that I almost wish I had given up the first day to. The entire of
Rome and its inhabited suburbs lies so fully and fairly before the eye,
with the Seven Hills, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Obelisks, the
Pillars, the Vatican, the Castle of St. Angelo, the various Triumphal
Arches, the Churches, &c., &c., around you, that it seems the best use
that could be made of one day to simply move from look-out to look-out
in that old tower, using the glass for a few moments and then pausing
for reflection. I have half a mind thus to spend one of my three
remaining days. True, the Coliseum will seem vaster close at hand, but
from no point can it be seen so completely and clearly, in its immensity
and its dilapidation combined, as from that. The Tarpeian Rock seems an
absurd fable--its fatal leap the daily sport of infants--but in all
ancient cities the same glaring discrepancy between ancient and modern
altitudes is presented, and especially, we hear, at Jerusalem. The Seven
Hills whereon Rome was built are all distinguishable, visible to-day;
but they are undoubtedly much lower than at first, while all the
intervening valleys have been filling up through centuries. Monkish
traditions say that what is now the basement of the Church of Sts. Peter
and Paul (not the modern St. Peter's) was originally on the level of the
street, and this is quite probable: though I did not so readily
lubricate the stories I was told in that basement to-day of St. Peter,
Paul and Luke having tenanted this basement, Paul having lived and
preached here for the first two years of his residence in Rome; and when
they showed me the _altar_ at which St. Paul was wont to minister, I
stop