y tower of the Capitol in the midst of the city; and the sun
clasping all to its heart of gold, the new and the old alike, past and
present, youth, age and decay,--generous as only the sun can be in this
sordid and miserly world, where bread is but another name for blood, and
a rood of growing corn means a pound of human flesh. The sun is the only
good thing in nature that always gives itself to man for nothing but the
mere trouble of sitting in the sunshine; and Rome without sunshine is a
very grim and gloomy town today.

It is worth the effort of climbing so high. Four hundred feet in the
air, you look down on what ruled half the world by force for ages, and
on what rules the other half today by faith--the greatest centre of
conquest and of discord and of religion which the world has ever seen. A
thousand volumes have been written about it by a thousand wise men. A
word will tell what it has been--the heart of the world. Hither was
drawn the world's blood by all the roads that lead to Rome, and hence it
was forced out again along the mighty arteries of the Caesars'
marches--to redden the world with the Roman name. Blood, blood and more
blood,--that was the history of old Rome,--the blood of brothers, the
blood of foes, the blood of martyrs without end. It flowed and ebbed in
varying tide at the will of the just and the unjust, but there was
always more to shed, and there were always more hands to shed it. And so
it may be again hereafter; for the name of Rome has a heart-stirring
ring, and there has always been as much blood spilled for the names of
things as for the things themselves.

It is wonderful to stand there and realize what every foot means,
beneath that narrow standing room on the gallery outside the lantern,
counting from the top downward as one counts the years of certain trees
by the branches. For every division there is a pope and an architect:
Sixtus the Fifth and Giacomo della Porta, Paul the Third and
Michelangelo, Baldassare Peruzzi and Leo the Tenth, Julius the Second
and Bramante, Nicholas the Fifth and Alberti. Then the old church of
Constantine, and then the little oratory built over Saint Peter's grave
by Saint Anacletus, the third or, according to some, the fourth bishop
of Rome; then, even before that, Nero's circus, which was either
altogether destroyed or had gone to ruins before Anacletus built his
chapel.

And far below all are buried the great of the earth, deep down in the
crypt. The