ime these stations became villages, towns, and cities such as
Chester, Leicester, Lancaster, Manchester. Thus, strange as it may
appear, the Milliarium Aureum of the Roman Forum has had much to do
with the origin of our most ancient and important towns, and with the
formation of the great lines of railway that now carry on the enormous
traffic between them.

The exposed vaults immediately behind the Arch of Severus, bounding
the Forum in this direction, are richly draped with the long, delicate
fronds of the maidenhair fern. Shaded from the sun, it grows here in
the crevices of the old walls in greater luxuriance and profusion than
elsewhere in the city. There is something almost pathetic in this
association of the frailest of Nature's productions with the ruins of
the most enduring of man's works. Strength that is crumbling to dust
and ashes, and tender beauty that ever clings to the skirts of time,
as she steps over the sepulchres of power, have here in their
combination a deep significance. The growth of the soft fern on the
mouldering old stones seems like the sad, sweet smile of Nature over a
decay with which she sympathises, but which she cannot share. The same
feeling took possession of me when, wandering over the ruins of the
Palaces of the Caesars on a sunny February afternoon, I saw above the
hoary masses of stone the rose-tinted bloom of almond-trees. Out of
the gray relics of man's highest hour of pride, the leafless
almond-rod blossomed as of old in the holy place of the Hebrew
Tabernacle; and its miracle of colour and tenderness was like the
crimson glow that lingers at sunset upon Alpine heights, telling of a
glory that had long vanished from the spot.

Beneath these fern-draped vaults is the oldest prison in the world.
The celebrated Mamertine Prison takes us back to the very foundation
of the city. It was regarded in the time of the Caesars as one of the
most ancient relics of Rome, and was invested with peculiar interest
because of its venerable associations. It consists of a series of
vaults excavated out of the solid tufa rock, where it slopes down from
the Capitoline Hill into the Forum, each lined with massive blocks of
red volcanic stone. For a long time these vaults have been used as
cellars under a row of tall squalid-looking houses built over them
between the Via di Marforio and the Vicolo del Ghettarello; and the
sense of smell gives convincing proof that where prisoners of state
used to be