Mount Quirinal and Mount Viminal are so near each other that it is difficult to distinguish them:  it was here that the houses of Sallust and of Pompey, formerly stood; it is here also that the Pope has now fixed his abode.  We cannot take one step in Rome without bringing the present near to the past, and different periods of the past near to each other.  But we learn to reconcile ourselves to the events of our own time, in beholding the eternal mutability of the history of man; and we feel ashamed of letting our own lot disturb us in the presence of so many ages, which have all overthrown the work of the preceding ones.

By the side of the Seven Hills, on their declivities or on their summits, are seen a multitude of steeples, and of obelisks; Trajan’s column, the column of Antoninus, the Tower of Conti (whence it is said Nero beheld the conflagration of Rome), and the Dome of St Peter’s, whose commanding grandeur eclipses that of every other object.  It appears as if the air were peopled with all these monuments, which extend towards Heaven, and as if an aerial city were majestically hovering over the terrestrial one.

On entering Rome again Corinne made Oswald pass under the portico of Octavia, she who loved so well, and suffered so much; then they traversed the Path of Infamy, by which the infamous Tullia passed, trampling her father’s corpse beneath the feet of her horses.  At a distance from this spot is seen the temple raised by Agrippina in honour of Claudius whom she caused to be poisoned.  And lastly we pass the tomb of Augustus, whose enclosure now serves as an amphitheatre for the combats of beasts.

“I have caused you to run over very rapidly,” said Corinne to Lord Nelville, “some traces of ancient history; but you will comprehend the pleasure to be found in these researches, at once learned and poetic, which speak to the imagination as well as to the mind.  There are in Rome many distinguished men whose only occupation is to discover some new relation between history and the ruins.”  “I know no study that would more captivate and interest me,” replied Lord Nelville, “if I felt sufficiently at rest to give my mind to it:  this species of erudition is much more animated than that which is acquired from books:  one would say that we make what we discover to live again, and that the past re-appears from beneath the dust in which it has been buried.”  “Undoubtedly,” said Corinne, “this passion for antiquity is not a vain prejudice.  We live in an age when personal interest seems to be the only principle of all the actions of men, and what sympathy, what emotion, what enthusiasm, can ever result from such a principle?  It is sweeter to dream of those days of devotion, of personal sacrifice and heroism, which however, have existed, and of which the earth still bears some honourable testimonies.”

FOOTNOTE: 

[16] Augustus died at Nola, on his way to the waters of Brindisi, which had been prescribed him; but he left Rome in a dying state.