e of his Muse.

And now the Pilgrim has reached his goal, "Rome the wonderful," the
sepulchre of empire, the shrine of art.

Henceforth the works of man absorb his attention. Pompey's "dread
statue;" the Wolf of the Capitol; the Tomb of Cecilia Metella; the
Palatine; the "nameless column" of the Forum; Trajan's pillar; Egeria's
Grotto; the ruined Colosseum, "arches on arches," an "enormous
skeleton," the Colosseum of the poet's vision, a multitudinous ring of
spectators, a bloody Circus, and a dying Gladiator; the Pantheon; S.
Nicola in Carcere, the scene of the Romana Caritas; St. Peter's "vast
and wondrous dome,"--are all celebrated in due succession. Last of all,
he "turns to the Vatican," to view the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvidere,
the counterfeit presentments of ideal suffering and ideal beauty. His
"shrine is won;" but ere he bids us farewell he climbs the Alban Mount,
and as the Mediterranean once more bursts upon his sight, he sums the
moral of his argument. Man and all his works are as a drop of rain in
the Ocean, "the image of eternity, the throne of the Invisible"!

Byron had no sooner completed "this fourth and ultimate canto," than he
began to throw off additional stanzas. His letters to Murray during the
autumn of 1817 announce these successive lengthenings; but it is
impossible to trace the exact order of their composition. On the 7th of
August the canto stood at 130 stanzas, on the 21st at 133; on the 4th of
September at 144, on the 17th at 150; and by November 15 it had reached
167 stanzas. Of nineteen stanzas which were still to be added, six--on
the death of the Princess Charlotte (died November 6, 1817)--were
written at the beginning of December, and two stanzas (clxxvii.,
clxxviii.) were forwarded to Murray in the early spring of 1818.

Of these additions the most notable are four stanzas on Venice
(including stanza xiii. on "The Horses of St. Mark"); "The sunset on the
Brenta" (stanzas xxvii.-xxix.); The tombs in Santa Croce,--the
apostrophe to "the all Etruscan three," Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio
(stanzas liv.-lx.); "Rome a chaos of ruins--antiquarian ignorance"
(stanzas lxxx.-lxxxii.); "The nothingness of Man--the hope of the
future--Freedom" (stanzas xciii.-xcviii.); "The Tarpeian Rock--the
Forum--Rienzi" (stanzas cxii.-cxiv.); "Love, Life, and Reason" (stanzas
cxx.-cxxvii.); "The Curse of Forgiveness" (stanzas cxxxv.-cxxxvii.);
"The Mole of Hadrian" (stanza clii.); "The death of the Princes