ally
concealed by their masks and peculiar dress, chaunting the Via Crucis.
I then examined the site of the Temple of Venus and Rome, and
satisfied myself by ocular demonstration of the truth of the
measurements which gave sixty feet for the height of the columns and
eighteen feet for the circumference. I knew enough of geometrical
proportion to prove this to my own satisfaction. On examining the
fragments which remain, each fluting measured a foot, that is, eight
inches right across. This appears prodigious, but it is nevertheless
true. I am forced to believe to-day what I yesterday doubted, and
deemed a piece of mere antiquarian exaggeration.

This magnificent edifice was designed and built by the Emperor Adrian,
who piqued himself on his skill in architecture, and carried his
jealousy of other artists so far, as to banish Apollodorus, who had
designed the Forum of Trajan. When he had finished the Temple of Venus
and Rome, he sent to Apollodorus a plan of his stupendous structure,
challenging him to find a single fault in it. The architect severely
criticised some trifling oversights; and the Emperor, conscious of the
justice of his criticisms, and unable to remedy the defects, ordered
him to be strangled. Such was the fate of Apollodorus, whose
misfortune it was to have an Emperor for his rival.

They are now clearing the steps which lead to this temple, from which
it appears that the length of the portico in front was three hundred
feet, and of the side five hundred feet.

While I was among these ruins, I was struck by a little limpid
fountain, which gushed from the crumbling wall and lost itself among
the fragments of the marble pavement. All looked dreary and desolate;
and that part of the ruin which from its situation must have been the
_sanctum sanctorum_, the shrine of the divinity of the place, is now a
receptacle of filth and every conceivable abomination.

I walked on to the ruins now called the Basilica of Constantine, once
the Temple of Peace. This edifice was in a bad style, and constructed
at a period when the arts were at a low ebb: yet the ruins are vast
and magnificent. The exact direction of the Via Sacra has long been a
subject of vehement dispute. They have now laid open a part of it
which ran in front of the Basilica: the pavement is about twelve feet
below the present pavement of Rome, and the soil turned up in their
excavations is formed entirely of crumbled brickwork and mortar, and
fragme