rtue, heroism, courage, cowardice, faith,
falsehood and knavery played the grandest harmonies and the wildest
discords in mad succession, till humanity was weary of listening, and
silenced the harsh music forever. However we may think of him, he was
great for a moment, yet however great we may think him, he was little in
all but his first dream. Let him have some honour for that, and much
merciful oblivion for the rest.

[Illustration]

REGION VIII SANT' EUSTACHIO

The Eighth region is almost symmetrical in shape, extending nearly north
and south with a tolerably even breadth from the haunted palace of the
Santacroce, where the marble statue of the dead Cardinal comes down from
its pedestal to pace the shadowy halls all night, to Santa Maria in
Campo Marzo, and cutting off, as it were, the three Regions so long held
by the Orsini from the rest of the city. Taking Rome as a whole, it was
a very central quarter until the development of the newly inhabited
portions. It was here, near the churches of Saint Eustace and Saint
Ives, that the English who came to Rome for business established
themselves, like other foreigners, in a distinct colony during the
Renascence. Upon the chapel of Saint Ives, unconsecrated now and turned
into a lecture room of the University, a strange spiral tower shows the
talents of Borromini, Bernini's rival, at their lowest ebb. So far as
one can judge, the architect intended to represent realistically the
arduous path of learning; but whatever he meant, the result is as bad a
piece of Barocco as is to be found in Rome.

As for the Church of Saint Eustace, it commemorates a vision which
tradition attributes alike to Saint Julian the Hospitaller, to Saint
Felix, and to Saint Hubert. The genius of Flaubert, who was certainly
one of the greatest prose writers of this century, has told the story of
the first of these in very beautiful language, and the legend of Saint
Hubert is familiar to every one. Saint Eustace is perhaps less known,
for he was a Roman saint of early days, a soldier and a lover of the
chase, as many Romans were. We do not commonly associate with them the
idea of boar hunting or deer stalking, but they were enthusiastic
sportsmen. Virgil's short and brilliant description of AEneas shooting
the seven stags on the Carthaginian shore is the work of a man who had
seen what he described, and Pliny's letters are full of allusions to
hunting. Saint Eustace was a contemporary of t