ow--a rich widow; handsome, too. Do, for charity's sake,
accompany us, or meet us at the Colosseum. How well that sounds--eh?
About two."

Godolphin refused at first, but being pressed, assented.

Not surrounded by the lesser glories of modern Rome, but girt with the
mighty desolation of the old city of Romulus, stands the most wonderful
monument, perhaps, in the world, of imperial magnificence--the Flavian
Amphitheatre, to which, it has been believed, the colossal statue of the
worst of emperors gave that name (the Colosseum), allied with the least
ennobling remembrances yet giving food to the loftiest thoughts. The
least ennobling remembrances; for what can be more degrading than
the amusements of a degraded people, who reserved meekness for their
tyrants, and lavished ferocity on their shows? From that of the
wild beast to that of the Christian martyr, blood has been the only
sanctification of this temple to the Arts. The history of the Past
broods like an air over those mighty arches; but Memory can find no
reminiscence worthy of the spot. The amphitheatre was not built until
history had become a record of the vice and debasement of the
human race. The Faun and the Dryad had deserted the earth, no sweet
superstition, the faith of the grotto and the green hill, could stamp
with a delicate and undying spell the labours of man. Nor could the
ruder but august virtues of the heroic age give to the tradition of the
arch and column some stirring remembrance or exalting thought. Not
only the warmth of fancy, but the greatness of soul was gone; the only
triumph left to genius was to fix on its page the gloomy vices which
made the annals of the world. Tacitus is the Historian of the Colosseum.
But the very darkness of the past gives to the thoughts excited
within that immense pile a lofty but mournful character. A sense
of vastness--for which, as we gaze, we cannot find words, but which
bequeaths thoughts that our higher faculties would not willingly
forego--creeps within us as we gaze on this Titan relic of gigantic
crimes for ever passed away from the world.

And not only within the scene, but around the scene, what voices of
old float upon the air? Yonder the triumphal arch of Constantine,
its Corinthian arcades, and the history of Trajan sculptured upon its
marble; the dark and gloomy verdure of the Palatine; the ruins of the
palace of the Caesars; the mount of Fable, of Fame, of Luxury (the Three
Epochs of Nations); t