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Tabularium, coeval with the age of the kings; and skirting its base were
the cupolas of modern churches, and the nodding columns of fallen
temples, beautiful even in their ruin, and more eloquent than Cicero,
whose living voice had often been heard on the spot where they now
moulder in silent decay. A little nearer was the naked, jagged front of
the Tarpeian rock, crested a-top with gardens, and its base buried in
rubbish, which is slowly gaining on its height. In front was a noble
bend of the Tiber, rolling on in mournful majesty, amid the majestic
silence of these mighty desolations. Beyond were the red roofs and mean
streets of the Trastevere, with the empty upland slope of the Janiculum,
crowned by the line of the gray wall. Behind, and immediately beneath
me, was the Forum, where erst the Romans assembled to enact their laws
and choose their magistrates. A ragged line of ghastly ruins,--porticos
without temples, and temples without porticos, their noble vaultings
yawning like caverns in the open day,--was seen bounding its farther
edge. Its floor was a rectangular expanse of shapeless swellings and
yawning pits. Here reposed a herd of buffaloes; there a little drove of
swine; yonder stood a row of carts; and in the midst of these noways
picturesque objects rose the gray arch of Titus. At its base sat a
beggar; while an artist, at a little distance, was sketching it with the
calotype. A peasant was traversing the Via Sacra, bearing to his home a
supply of city-baked bread. A dozen or two of old men with spades and
barrows were clearing away the earth from the ruins of the Temple of
Venus and Rome. In the south-eastern angle of the plain rose the titanic
bulk of the Coliseum, fearfully gashed and torn, yet sublime in its
decay. Over the furrowed and ragged summits of the Caelian and Esquiline
mounts were seen the early snows, glittering on the peaks of the
Volscian and Sabine range. Such was the scene which presented itself to
me from the top of the Palatine. How different, I need not say, from
that which must have often met the eye of Caesar from the same point,
prompting the proud boast,--"Is not this great" Rome, "that I have built
for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the
honour of my majesty?" "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son
of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, that didst weaken
the nations!... Is this the man that did make the earth to
tremble,--that