ickwork, which contained the cinerary urns, all robbed of their
treasures, their tear-bottles, and even their bones. Ruthless popes
and princes have done their best during all the intervening ages to
destroy the monuments by taking away for their own uses the marble and
hewn stone which encased them, leaving behind only the inner core of
brick and small stones imbedded in mortar which was never meant to be
seen. Pitying hands have lately endeavoured to atone for this
desecration by lifting here and there out of the rubbish heap on which
they were thrown some affecting group of family portraits, some choice
specimens of delicate architecture, some mutilated panel on which the
stern hard features of a Roman senator look out upon you, and placing
them in a prominent position to attract attention. But though they
have endeavoured to build up the fragments of the tombs into some
semblance of their former appearance, the resuscitation is even more
melancholy than was the former ruin. Their efforts at restoration are
only the very graves of graves. In some places a side path leading off
the main road to a tomb has been uncovered, paved with the original
lava-blocks as fresh as when the last mourner retired from it, casting
"a lingering look behind;" but it leads now only to a shapeless heap
of brick, or to the empty site of a monument that has been razed to
the very foundations.

One piece of marble sculpture especially arrests the eye, and awakens
a chord of feeling in the most callous heart. It represents one of
those _Imagines Clipeatae_ which the ancient Romans were so fond of
sculpturing in their temples or upon their tombs; a clam shell or
shield with the bust of a man and a woman carved in relief within it,
the hand of the one fondly embracing the neck of the other. Below is a
long Latin inscription, telling that this is the tomb of a brother
and sister who were devotedly attached to each other. Who this soror
and frater were, there is no record to tell. All subsidiary details of
their lives have been allowed to pass away with the other decorations
of the tomb, leaving behind this beautiful expression of household
affection in full and lasting relief. I felt drawn more closely to the
distant ages by this little carving than by anything else. The huge
monuments around weighed down my spirit to the earth. The very effort
to secure immortality by the massiveness of these tombs defeated its
own object. They spoke only of du