he top of each vault there was a man-hole for letting a
prisoner down with cords into it. A visit to these six vaults of the
Mamertine Prison gives one an idea that can never be forgotten of the
cruelty and tyranny which underlay all the gorgeous despotism of Rome,
alike in the kingly, republican, and imperial periods. Some of the
remains may still be seen of the _Scalae Gemoniae_, the "steps of
sighs," down which the bodies of those who were executed were thrown,
to be exposed to the insults of the populace. The only circumstance
that relieves the intolerable gloom of the associations of the Prison
is, that Naevius is said to have written two of his plays while he was
confined in it for his attacks on the aristocracy; a circumstance
which links it to the Tower of London, which has also its literary
reminiscences. After having been immured so long in such disagreeable
physical darkness--appropriate emblem of the deeds of horror committed
in it--we were truly glad to catch at last a faint glimmer of daylight
shimmering into the uppermost passage, and to emerge into the open
sunshine, from beneath a house at the farther end of the Vicolo del
Ghettarello.

A modern carriage-road used to pass along this way, leading up to the
Piazza del Campidoglio in front of the Capitol, and cutting the Forum
into two parts, concealing a considerable portion of it. This
obstruction has now been swept away, and the Forum is fully exposed
from end to end. Below this old road we observe the "nameless column"
of _Childe Harold_, which long stood with its base buried, and was
taken for the ruins of a temple. When excavated in 1813 it was found
to stand on an isolated pedestal, with an inscription recording that
it was erected by the exarch Smaragdus to the emperor Phocas; and the
mode in which the offering was made was worthy of the infamous subject
and the venal dedicator. Nothing can be clearer from the style of the
monument than that it was stolen from the Temple of Vespasian
adjoining; for it is an exact fellow of the three graceful Corinthian
pillars still standing in front of the AErarium. It was near this
pillar, a few years after it was raised, that Gregory the Great,
before he became Pope, saw the young Saxon captives exposed to be sold
as slaves, and was so struck with their innocent looks and hopeless
fate that he asked about their nationality and religion. Being told
that they were Angli, he said, "_Non Angli, sed Angeli_." The
im