the spectacle to about one hundred thousand persons at once.
The circuit of the building is over sixteen hundred feet; the arena in
its center is about three hundred and eighty by two hundred and eighty
feet. Most of the walls have fallen for perhaps half their height,
though some part of them still retain very nearly their original
altitude. In the darker ages, after this vast edifice had fallen into
ruin, its materials were carried away by thousands and tens of thousands
of tuns to build palaces and churches, and one side of the exterior wall
was actually for ages drawn upon as if it were a quarry. But in later
years the Papal Government has disbursed thousands upon thousands in the
uncovering and preservation of this stupendous ruin, and with the
amplest success. The fall of its roof and a great portion of its walls
had filled and buried it with rubbish to a depth of some twenty to forty
feet, all of which has been taken away, so that the floor of the
interior is now the veritable sand whereon the combatants fought and
bled and rendered up their lives, while the forty or fifty entrances for
emperors, senators and people, and even the underground passage for the
introduction of the wild beasts, with a part of their cages, are now
palpable. In some places, restorations have been made where they were
necessary to avert the danger of further dilapidation, but as sparingly
as possible; and, though others think differently, the Coliseum seems to
me as majestic and impressive in its utter desolation as it ever could
have been in its grandeur and glory.

We were fortunate in the hour of our visit. As we slowly made the
circuit of the edifice, a body of French cavalry were exercising their
horses along the eastern side of it, while at a little distance, in the
grove or garden at the south, the quick rattle of the drum told of the
evolutions of infantry. At length the horsemen rode slowly away to the
southward, and our attention was drawn to certain groups of Italians in
the interior, who were slowly marching and chanting. We entered, and
were witnesses of a strange, impressive ceremony. It is among the
traditions of Rome that a great number of the early Christians were
compelled by their heathen persecutors to fight and die here as
gladiators as a punishment for their contumacious, treasonable
resistance to the "lower law" then in the ascendant, which the high
priests and circuit judges of that day were wont in their sermons a