ng
crystals in the drusic cavity at the heart of it,--would lead us to
infer that the outer walls were raised in haste to secure the valuable
materials on the spot, before they could be otherwise appropriated.
Marangoni, a learned Roman archaeologist, mentions thirty-five churches
in Rome as all raised upon the sites and out of the remains of ancient
temples; and no less than six hundred and eighty-eight large columns
of marble, granite, porphyry, and other valuable stones, as among the
relics of heathen fanes transferred to sacred ground within the city,
when the bronze Jupiter was metamorphosed into the Jew Peter,

"And Pan to Moses lent his pagan horn."

Many of these relics can be traced and identified, for it may be
generally presumed, for the reason already given, that none are very
far removed from their original situation.

I know no more interesting pursuit in Rome than such an investigation;
the objects, when their history is ascertained, acquiring a charm from
association, over and above their own intrinsic beauty and interest.
Most of the materials with which the three hundred and sixty-five
churches of modern Rome have been constructed have been derived from
the ruins of the ancient city. With the exception of a few
comparatively insignificant portions brought from the modern quarries
of Carrara, Siena, and Sicily, to complete subordinate details and to
give a finish to the work, no marbles, it is said, have been used in
ecclesiastical and palatial architecture for the last fifteen hundred
years, save those found conveniently on the spot; and hardly a brick
has been made or a stone of travertine or tufa hewn out for domestic
buildings within the same period. The construction of St. Peter's
itself involved more destruction of classical monuments than all the
appropriations of previous and subsequent Vandals put together. Much
has been lost on account of this extraordinary transmutation and
reconsecration, whose loss we can never cease to deplore; but we must
not forget at the same time that much has been conserved which would
otherwise have wasted away under the slow ravages of time, been
consigned to the lime-kiln, or disappeared in obscure and ignoble use.
Enough remains to overwhelm us with astonishment, and furnish
materials for the study of years.

The white marbles of Greece were the first introduced into Rome. Paros
supplied the earliest specimens, and long held a monopoly of the
trade. _Marm