of the world.  London may contain more people than did ancient Rome, and may possess more commercial wealth; but London represents only the British monarchy, not a universal empire.  Rome, however, monopolized every thing, and controlled all nations and peoples; she could shut up the schools of Athens, or disperse the ships of Alexandria, or regulate the shops of Antioch.  What Lyons and Bordeaux are to Paris, Corinth and Babylon were to Rome,—­mere dependent cities.  Paul, condemned at Jerusalem, stretched out his arms to Rome, and Rome protected him.  The philosophers of Greece were the tutors of Roman nobility.  The kings of the East resorted to the palaces of Mount Palatine for favors or safety; the governors of Syria and Egypt, reigning in the palaces of ancient kings, returned to Rome to squander the riches they had accumulated.  Senators and nobles took their turn as sovereign rulers of all the known countries of the world.  The halls in which Darius and Alexander and Pericles and Croesus and Solomon and Cleopatra had feasted, became the witness of the banquets of Roman proconsuls.  Babylon, Thebes, and Athens were only what Delhi and Calcutta are to the English of our day,—­cities to be ruled by the delegates of the imperial Senate.  Rome was the only “home” of the proud governors who reigned on the banks of the Thames, of the Seine, of the Rhine, of the Nile, of the Tigris.  After they had enriched themselves with the spoils of the ancient monarchies they returned to their estates in Italy, or to their palaces on the Aventine.  What a concentration of works of art on the hills, and around the Forum, and in the Campus Martius, and other celebrated quarters!  There were temples rivalling those of Athens and Ephesus; baths covering more ground than the Pyramids, surrounded with Corinthian columns, and filled with the choicest treasures ransacked from the cities of Greece and Asia; palaces in comparison with which the Tuileries and Versailles are small; theatres which seated a larger audience than any present public buildings in Europe; amphitheatres more extensive and costly than Cologne, Milan, and York Minster cathedrals combined, and seating eight times as many spectators as could be crowded into St. Peter’s Church; circuses where, it is said, three hundred and eighty-five thousand persons could witness the games and chariot-races at a time; bridges, still standing, which have furnished models for the most beautiful at Paris and London; aqueducts carried over arches one hundred feet in height, through which flowed the surplus water of distant lakes; drains of solid masonry in which large boats could float; pillars more than one hundred feet in height, coated with precious marbles or plates of brass, and covered with bas-reliefs; obelisks brought from Egypt; fora and basilicas connected together, and extending more than three thousand feet in length, every part of which was filled with “animated busts” of conquerors, kings, statesmen, poets, publicists, and philosophers; mausoleums greater and more splendid than that Artemisia erected to the memory of her husband; triumphal arches under which marched in stately procession the victorious armies of the Eternal City, preceded by the spoils and trophies of conquered empires.