tween all the great battle-fields of the world. One
attribute in especial they all possess, namely, that of vastness;
inspiring the mind of the spectator with an idea of grandeur, to which
the recollection of the carnage of which they were the scene adds a
feeling of melancholy. The Troy and the Marathon of the ancient world
have found their representative in the modern one, in that gloomy
expanse in Flanders where Napoleon witnessed the total defeat of his
arms and the final overthrow of his fortunes. We would make the same
remark regarding great capitals. There is a family likeness in their
sites. The chief cities of the ancient world arose, for the most part,
on extensive plains, nigh some great river; for rivers were the
railroads of early times. I might instance queenly Thebes, which arose
in the great valley of the Nile, with a boundary of fine mountains
encircling the plain on which it stood. Babylon found a seat on the
great plain of Chaldea, on the banks of the Euphrates. Niniveh arose on
the same great plain, on the banks of the Tigris, with the glittering
line of the snowy Kurdistan chain bounding its horizon. To come down to
comparatively modern times, ROME has been equally fortunate with her
predecessors in a site worthy of her greatness and renown. No one needs
to be told that the seat of that city, which for so many ages held the
sceptre of the world, is the CAMPAGNA DI ROMA.

I need not dwell on the magnificence of that truly imperial plain, to
which nature has given, in a country of hills, dimensions so goodly.
From the foot of the Apennines it runs on and on for upwards of an
hundred miles, till it meets the Neapolitan frontier at Terracina. Its
breadth from the Volscian hills to the sea cannot be less than forty
miles. Towards the head of this great plain lies Rome, than which a
finer site for the capital of a great empire could nowhere have been
found. By nature it is most fertile; its climate is delicious. It is
watered by the Tiber, which is seen winding through it like a thread of
gold. A boundary of glorious hills encloses it on all sides save the
south-west. On the south-east are the gentle Volscians, clothed with
flourishing woods and sparkling with villas. Running up along the plain,
and lying due east of Rome, are the Sabine hills, of a deep azure
colour, with a fine mottling of light and shade upon their sides.
Shutting in the plain on the north, and sweeping round it in a
magnificent bend t