Oswald could never feel tired of viewing the traces of ancient Rome from the elevated point of the Capitol to which Corinne had conducted him.  The reading of history, and the reflections which it excites, produce a less powerful effect upon the soul than those heaps of stones, those ruins mingled with new habitations.  So strongly do our eyes carry conviction to the mind, that after having beheld these ruins of Rome we believe the history of the ancient Romans as if we had been cotemporary with them.  The recollections of the mind are acquired by study; the recollections of the imagination are born of a more immediate and intimate impression, which gives body to thought, and renders us, if I may so express it, witnesses of what we have learnt.  Undoubtedly one is vexed sometimes at those modern buildings which intrude themselves among the venerable spoils of antiquity.  But a portico by the side of a humble cottage, pillars, between which appear the little windows of a church, a tomb affording an asylum to a whole rustic family, produce an indescribable mixture of great and simple ideas, a newly-discovered pleasure which inspires a continual interest.  The greater part of our European cities have externally a common and prosaic appearance; and Rome, oftener than any other, presents the melancholy aspect of misery and degradation; but all of a sudden a broken column, a bas-relief half-destroyed, stones knit together in the indestructible manner of the ancient architects, remind us that there is in man an eternal power, a divine spark, which he must never cease to excite in himself and revive in others.

This Forum, whose enclosure is so narrow in compass, and which has witnessed so many astonishing things, is a striking proof of the moral greatness of man.  When the universe, in the latter times of Rome, was subjected to inglorious masters, we find whole centuries, of which history has scarcely preserved any events; and this Forum, this little space in the centre of a city, at that time very circumscribed, whose inhabitants were fighting all around them for their territory, has it not occupied by the memories which it recalls, the most sublime geniuses of every age!  Honour then, eternal honour, to nations, courageous and free, since they thus captivate the admiration of posterity!

Corinne observed to Lord Nelville that there were very few remains of the Republican age to be found at Rome.  The aqueducts, the canals formed under ground, for the distribution of water, were the only luxury of the Republic and the kings who preceded it.  They have only left us useful edifices:  tombs raised to the memory of their great men, and some temples of brick, which still subsist.  It was not until after the conquest of Sicily that the Romans for the first time made use of marble for their monuments; but it is sufficient to behold places where great actions have occurred, to experience an indefinable emotion.  It is to this disposition of the soul that we must attribute the religious power of pilgrimages.  Celebrated countries of every kind, even when stripped of their great men and of their monuments, preserve their effect upon the imagination.  What struck our sight no longer exists, but the charm of recollection remains.