The Colosseum, commenced by Vespasian in A.D. 72 and finished by Titus eight years later, is a grand old ruin.  It is an open theater six hundred and twelve feet long, five hundred and fifteen feet wide, and one hundred and sixty-five feet high.  This structure, capable of seating eighty-seven thousand people, stands near the bounds of the Forum.  It is the largest of its kind, and is one of the best preserved and most interesting ruins in the world.  When it was dedicated, the games lasted one hundred days, and five thousand wild beasts were slain.  During the persecution of the Christians it is said to have been the scene of fearful barbarities.

On the second day I entered the Pantheon, “the best preserved monument of ancient Rome,” built by Marcus Agrippa, and consecrated to Mars, Venus, and others.  It was burned in the reign of Titus and rebuilt by Hadrian, and in A.D. 608 Pope Boniface consecrated it as a church.  The interior is shaped like a vast dome, and the only opening for light is a round hole in the top.  Raphael, “reckoned by almost universal opinion as the greatest of painters,” lies buried in the Pantheon behind one of the altars.  I went to Hadrian’s Tomb, now the Castle of St. Angelo, and on to St. Peter’s.  Before this great church-building there is a large open space containing an obelisk and two fountains, said to be the finest in the city, with a semi-circular colonnade on two sides containing two hundred and eighty-four columns in four rows, and on the top of the entablature there are ninety-six large statues.  There are large figures on the top of the church, representing Christ and the apostles.  The interior is magnificent.  There are three aisles five hundred and seventy-five feet long, and the middle one is eighty-two feet wide.  The beautifully ornamented ceiling is one hundred and forty-two feet high.  In this building, which was completed three hundred and fifty years after it was begun, is the reputed tomb of the Apostle Peter, and many large marble statues.  There are figures representing boy angels that are as large as a full-grown man.  The Vatican is not far from St. Peter’s, and I went up to see the Museum, but got there just as it was being closed for the day.  I had a glimpse of the garden, and saw some of the Pope’s carriages, which were fine indeed.

One of the most interesting places that I visited about Rome was the old underground cemetery called the Catacombs of St. Calixtus.  The visitors go down a stairway with a guide, who leads them about the chambers, which are but dimly lighted by the small candles they carry.  The passages, cut in the earth or soft rock, vary both in width and height, and have been explored in modern times to the aggregate length of six miles.  Some of the bodies were placed in small recesses in the walls, but I saw none there as I went through, but there were two in marble coffins under glass.  In one of the small chambers the party sang in some foreign language, probably