Hearing that it was better to visit the ruins by evening or moonlight, (alas! there is no moon now) we started out to hunt St. Peter’s.  Going in the direction of the Corso, we passed the ruined front of the magnificent Temple of Antoninus, now used as the Papal Custom House.  We turned to the right on entering the Corso, expecting to have a view of the city from the hill at its southern end.  It is a magnificent street, lined with palaces and splendid edifices of every kind, and always filled with crowds of carriages and people.  On leaving it, however, we became bewildered among the narrow streets—­passed through a market of vegetables, crowded with beggars and contadini—­threaded many by-ways between dark old buildings—­saw one or two antique fountains and many modern churches, and finally arrived at a hill.

We ascended many steps, and then descending a little towards the other side, saw suddenly below us the Roman Forum!  I knew it at once—­and those three Corinthian columns that stood near us—­what could they be but the remains of the temple of Jupiter Stator?  We stood on the Capitoline Hill; at the foot was the Arch of Septimus Severus, brown with age and shattered; near it stood the majestic front of the Temple of Fortune, its pillars of polished granite glistening in the sun, as if they had been erected yesterday, while on the left the rank grass was waving from the arches and mighty walls of the Palace of the Caesars!  In front, ruin upon ruin lined the way for half a mile, where the Coliseum towered grandly through the blue morning mist, at the base of the Esquiline Hill!

Good heavens, what a scene!  Grandeur, such as the world never saw, once rose through that blue atmosphere; splendor inconceivable, the spoils of a world, the triumphs of a thousand armies had passed over that earth; minds which for ages moved the ancient world had thought there, and words of power and glory, from the lips of immortal men, had been syllabled on that hallowed air.  To call back all this on the very spot, while the wreck of what once was, rose mouldering and desolate around, aroused a sublimity of thought and feeling too powerful for words.

Returning at hazard through the streets, we came suddenly upon the column of Trajan, standing in an excavated square below the level of the city, amid a number of broken granite columns, which formed part of the Forum dedicated to him by Rome, after the conquest of Dacia.  The column is one hundred and thirty-two feet high, entirely covered with bas-reliefs representing his victories, winding about it in a spiral line to the top.  The number of figures is computed at two thousand five hundred, and they were of such excellence that Raphael used many of them for his models.  They are now much defaced, and the column is surmounted by a statue of some saint.  The inscription on the pedestal has been erased, and the name of Sixtus V. substituted.  Nothing can exceed the ridiculous vanity of the old popes in thus mutilating the finest monuments of ancient art.  You cannot look upon any relic of antiquity in Rome, but your eyes are assailed by the words “PONTIFEX MAXIMUS,” in staring modern letters.  Even the magnificent bronzes of the Pantheon were stripped to make the baldachin under the dome of St. Peter’s.