esars
that Nero could from his windows give the signal for the games. The
circus was large enough to contain three hundred thousand persons. The
nation almost in its entirety was amused at the same moment, and these
immense festivals might be considered as a kind of popular institution,
which united every man in the cause of pleasure as they were formerly
united in the cause of glory.

Mount Quirinal and Mount Viminal are so near each other that it is
difficult to distinguish them: it was here that the houses of Sallust
and of Pompey, formerly stood; it is here also that the Pope has now
fixed his abode. We cannot take one step in Rome without bringing the
present near to the past, and different periods of the past near to each
other. But we learn to reconcile ourselves to the events of our own
time, in beholding the eternal mutability of the history of man; and we
feel ashamed of letting our own lot disturb us in the presence of so
many ages, which have all overthrown the work of the preceding ones.

By the side of the Seven Hills, on their declivities or on their
summits, are seen a multitude of steeples, and of obelisks; Trajan's
column, the column of Antoninus, the Tower of Conti (whence it is said
Nero beheld the conflagration of Rome), and the Dome of St Peter's,
whose commanding grandeur eclipses that of every other object. It
appears as if the air were peopled with all these monuments, which
extend towards Heaven, and as if an aerial city were majestically
hovering over the terrestrial one.

On entering Rome again Corinne made Oswald pass under the portico of
Octavia, she who loved so well, and suffered so much; then they
traversed the _Path of Infamy_, by which the infamous Tullia passed,
trampling her father's corpse beneath the feet of her horses. At a
distance from this spot is seen the temple raised by Agrippina in honour
of Claudius whom she caused to be poisoned. And lastly we pass the tomb
of Augustus, whose enclosure now serves as an amphitheatre for the
combats of beasts.

"I have caused you to run over very rapidly," said Corinne to Lord
Nelville, "some traces of ancient history; but you will comprehend the
pleasure to be found in these researches, at once learned and poetic,
which speak to the imagination as well as to the mind. There are in Rome
many distinguished men whose only occupation is to discover some new
relation between history and the ruins." "I know no study that would
more captivat