followers of Brahmah, in the
disciple of Mahomet, and I wonder at in all the variety of forms it
adopts in the Christian world. You must not be angry with me that I do
not allow infallibility to your Church, having been myself brought up by
Protestant parents, who were rigidly attached to the doctrines of
Calvin."

I saw Ambrosio's countenance kindle at Onuphrio's explanation of his
opinions, and he appeared to be meditating an angry reply. I endeavoured
to change the conversation to the state of the Colosaeum, with which it
had begun. "These ruins," I said, "as you have both observed, are highly
impressive; yet when I saw them six years ago they had a stronger effect
on my imagination; whether it was the charm of novelty, or that my mind
was fresher, or that the circumstances under which I saw them were
peculiar, I know not, but probably all these causes operated in affecting
my mind. It was a still and beautiful evening in the end of May; the
last sunbeams were dying away in the western sky and the first moonbeams
shining in the eastern; the bright orange tints lighted up the ruins and
as it were kindled the snows that still remained on the distant
Apennines, which were visible from the highest accessible part of the
amphitheatre. In this glow of colouring, the green of advanced spring
softened the grey and yellow tints of the decaying stones, and as the
lights gradually became fainter, the masses appeared grander and more
gigantic; and when the twilight had entirely disappeared, the contrast of
light and shade in the beams of the full moon and beneath a sky of the
brightest sapphire, but so highly illuminated that only Jupiter and a few
stars of the first magnitude were visible, gave a solemnity and
magnificence to the scene which awakened the highest degree of that
emotion which is so properly termed the sublime. The beauty and the
permanency of the heavens and the principle of conservation belonging to
the system of the universe, the works of the Eternal and Divine
Architect, were finely opposed to the perishing and degraded works of man
in his most active and powerful state. And at this moment so humble
appeared to me the condition of the most exalted beings belonging to the
earth, so feeble their combinations, so minute the point of space, and so
limited the period of time in which they act, that I could hardly avoid
comparing the generations of man, and the effects of his genius and
power, to the swarms o