Of Trajan and Antonine’s Pillars what can one say?  That St. Peter and St. Paul stand on the tops of each, setting forth that uncertainty of human affairs which they preached in their life-time, and shewing that they, who were once the objects of contempt and abhorrence, are now become literally the head stones of the corner; being but too profoundly venerated in that very city, which once cruelly persecuted, and unjustly put them to death.  Let us then who look on them recollect their advice, and set our affections on a place of greater stability.  The columns are of very unequal excellence, that of Trajan’s confessedly the best; one grieves to think he never saw it himself, as few princes were less puffed up by well-deserved praise than he; but dying at Seleucia of a dysenteric fever, his ashes were brought home, and kept on the top of his own pillar in a gilt vase; which Sextus Quintus with more zeal than taste took down, I fear destroyed, and placed St. Peter there.  Apollodorus was the architect of the elegant structure, on which, says Ammianus Marcellinus, the Gods themselves gazed with wonder, seeing that nothing but heaven itself was finer. “Singularem sub omni caelo structuram etiam numinum ascensione mirabilem.”

I know not whether this is the proper place to mention that the good Pope Gregory, who added to the possession of every cardinal virtue the exertion of every Christian one, having looked one day with peculiar stedfastness at this column, and being naturally led to reflect on his character to whose honour it was erected, felt just admiration of a mind so noble; and retiring to his devotions in a church not far off, began praying earnestly for Trajan’s soul:  till a preternatural voice, accompanied with rays of light round the altar he knelt at, commanded his forbearance of further solicitation; assuring him that Trajan’s soul was secure in the care of his Creator.  Strange! that those who record, and give credit to such a story, can yet continue as a duty their intercessions for the dead!

But I have seen the Coliseo, which would swallow that of pretty Verona; it is four times as large I am told, and would hold fourscore thousand spectators.  After all the depredations of all the Goths, and afterwards of the Farnese family, the ruin is gloriously beautiful; possibly more beautiful than when it was quite whole; there is enough left now for Truth to repose upon, and a perch for Fancy beside, to fly out from, and fetch in more.

The orders of its architecture are easily discerned, though the height of the upper story is truly tremendous; I climbed it once, not to the top indeed, but till I was afraid to look down from the place I was in, and penetrated many of its recesses.  The modern Italians have not lost their taste of a prodigious theatre; were they once more a single nation, they would rebuild this I fancy; for here are all the conveniencies in grande, as they call it,