This was the fate, also, of Trajan's Forum, until some papal antiquary,
a few hundred years ago, began to hollow it out again, and disclosed the
full height of the gigantic column wreathed round with bas-reliefs of
the old emperor's warlike deeds. In the area before it stands a grove of
stone, consisting of the broken and unequal shafts of a vanished temple,
still keeping a majestic order, and apparently incapable of further
demolition. The modern edifices of the piazza (wholly built, no doubt,
out of the spoil of its old magnificence) look down into the hollow
space whence these pillars rise.

One of the immense gray granite shafts lay in the piazza, on the verge
of the area. It was a great, solid fact of the Past, making old Rome
actually sensible to the touch and eye; and no study of history, nor
force of thought, nor magic of song, could so vitally assure us that
Rome once existed, as this sturdy specimen of what its rulers and people
wrought.

"And see!" said Kenyon, laying his hand upon it, "there is still a
polish remaining on the hard substance of the pillar; and even now, late
as it is, I can feel very sensibly the warmth of the noonday sun, which
did its best to heat it through. This shaft will endure forever. The
polish of eighteen centuries ago, as yet but half rubbed off, and the
heat of to-day's sunshine, lingering into the night, seem almost equally
ephemeral in relation to it."

"There is comfort to be found in the pillar," remarked Miriam, "hard
and heavy as it is. Lying here forever, as it will, it makes all human
trouble appear but a momentary annoyance."

"And human happiness as evanescent too," observed Hilda, sighing; "and
beautiful art hardly less so! I do not love to think that this dull
stone, merely by its massiveness, will last infinitely longer than
any picture, in spite of the spiritual life that ought to give it
immortality!"

"My poor little Hilda," said Miriam, kissing her compassionately, "would
you sacrifice this greatest mortal consolation, which we derive from
the transitoriness of all things, from the right of saying, in every
conjecture, 'This, too, will pass away,' would you give up this
unspeakable boon, for the sake of making a picture eternal?"

Their moralizing strain was interrupted by a demonstration from the rest
of the party, who, after talking and laughing together, suddenly joined
their voices, and shouted at full pitch,

"Trajan! Trajan!"

"Why do you deafen