of successive ages; but except the
luxuries of immediate consumption, they must view without desire all
that could not be removed from the city in the Gothic wagons or the
fleet of the Vandals. Gold and silver were the first objects of their
avarice; as in every country, and in the smallest compass, they
represent the most ample command of the industry and possessions of
mankind. A vase or a statue of those precious metals might tempt the
vanity of some Barbarian chief; but the grosser multitude, regardless of
the form, was tenacious only of the substance; and the melted ingots
might be readily divided and stamped into the current coin of the
empire. The less active or less fortunate robbers were reduced to the
baser plunder of brass, lead, iron, and copper: whatever had escaped the
Goths and Vandals was pillaged by the Greek tyrants; and the Emperor
Constans in his rapacious visit stripped the bronze tiles from the roof
of the Pantheon. The edifices of Rome might be considered as a vast and
various mine: the first labor of extracting the materials was already
performed; the metals were purified and cast; the marbles were hewn and
polished; and after foreign and domestic rapine had been satiated, the
remains of the city, could a purchaser have been found, were still
venal. The monuments of antiquity had been left naked of their precious
ornaments; but the Romans would demolish with their own hands the arches
and walls, if the hope of profit could surpass the cost of the labor and
exportation. If Charlemagne had fixed in Italy the seat of the Western
Empire, his genius would have aspired to restore, rather than to
violate, the works of the Caesars: but policy confined the French monarch
to the forests of Germany; his taste could be gratified only by
destruction; and the new palace of Aix-la-Chapelle was decorated with
the marbles of Ravenna and Rome. Five hundred years after Charlemagne, a
king of Sicily, Robert,--the wisest and most liberal sovereign of the
age,--was supplied with the same materials by the easy navigation of the
Tiber and the sea; and Petrarch sighs an indignant complaint that the
ancient capital of the world should adorn from her own bowels the
slothful luxury of Naples. But these examples of plunder or purchase
were rare in the darker ages; and the Romans, alone and unenvied, might
have applied to their private or public use the remaining structures of
antiquity, if in their present form and situation t