wreck of
chariots.

The man from Athens, skilled and wise as a charioteer, saw the mischief
in time, turned his steeds aside, and escaped the whirling, raging surge
of man and horse. Last of all, Orestes came, holding his horses in
check, and waiting for the end. But when he saw the Athenian, his only
rival left, he urged his colts forward, shaking the reins and speeding
onward. And now the twain continued the race, their steeds sometimes
head to head, sometimes one gaining ground, sometimes the other; and so
all the other rounds were passed in safety.

Upright in his chariot still stood the ill-starred hero. Then, just as
his team was turning, he let loose the left rein unawares, and struck
the farthest pillar, breaking the spokes right at his axles' center.
Slipping out of his chariot, he was dragged along, with reins
dissevered. His frightened colts tore headlong through the midst of the
field; and the people, seeing him in his desperate plight, bewailed him
greatly--so young, so noble, so unfortunate, now hurled upon the ground,
helpless, lifeless.

The charioteers, scarcely able to restrain the rushing steeds, freed the
poor broken body--so mangled that not one of all his friends would have
known whose it was. They built a pyre and burned it; and now they bear
hither, in a poor urn of bronze, the sad ashes of that mighty form--that
so Orestes may have his tomb in his fatherland.

Such is my tale, full sad to hear; but to me who saw this accident,
nothing can ever be more sorrowful.

[Illustration]

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 33: Translated from the "Electra" of Sophocles, written about
450 years before Christ. The narrative is supposed to have been related
by the friend and attendant of the hero, Orestes.]

THE COLISEUM AT MIDNIGHT[34]

I crossed the Forum to the foot of the Palatine, and, ascending the Via
Sacra, passed beneath the Arch of Titus. From this point I saw below me
the gigantic outline of the Coliseum, like a cloud resting upon the
earth.

As I descended the hillside, it grew more broad and high,--more definite
in its form, and yet more grand in its dimensions,--till, from the vale
in which it stands encompassed by three of the Seven Hills of Rome, the
majestic ruin in all its solitary grandeur "swelled vast to heaven."

A single sentinel was pacing to and fro beneath the arched gateway which
leads to the interior, and his measured footsteps were the only sound
that broke the breathles