than any other city; which has
in every age stood foremost in the world; which has been the light of
the earth in ages past, the guiding star through the long night of
ignorance, the fountain of civilization to the whole Western world,
and which every nation reverences as the common nurse, preceptor, and
parent."

This notion of Rome as the venerable parent of civilization, to be
approached with tenderly reverential feelings, was easier to hold a
hundred years ago than it is to-day. There was nothing to contradict
it. One might muse on "the grandeur that was Rome," among picturesque
ruins covered with flowering weeds. But now a Rome that is obtrusively
modern claims attention. And it is not merely that the modern world is
here, but that our view of antiquity is modernized. We see it, not
through the mists of time, but as a contemporary might.

When Ferrero published his history we were startled by his realistic
treatment. It was as if we were reading a newspaper and following the
course of current events. Caesar and Pompey and Cicero were treated as
if they were New York politicians. Where we had expected to see
stately figures in togas we were made to see hustling real-estate
speculators, and millionaires, and labor leaders, and ward
politicians, who were working for the prosperity of the city and,
incidentally, for themselves. It was all very different from our
notions of classic times which we had imbibed from our Latin lessons
in school. But it is the impression which Rome itself makes upon the
mind.

One afternoon, among the vast ruins of Hadrian's Villa, I tried to
picture the villa as it was when its first owner walked among the
buildings which his whim had created. The moment Hadrian himself
appeared upon the scene, antiquity seemed an illusion. How
ultra-modern he was, this man whom his contemporaries called "a
searcher out of strange things"! These ruins could not by the mere
process of time become venerable, for they were in their very nature
novelties. They were the playthings of a very rich man. There they lie
upon the ground like so many broken toys. They are just such things as
an enormously rich man would make to-day if he had originality enough
to think of them. Why should not Hadrian have a Vale of Tempe and a
Greek theatre and a Valley of Canopus, and ever so many other things
which he had seen in his travels, reproduced on his estate near
Tivoli?

An historian of the Empire says: "The characte