Obrazy na stronie
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which we so naturally associate with Rome and her colossal empire.

Perhaps this feeling was not a little exaggerated by the contiguity of Pompeii to Naples, whose enormous buildings, sublime in their simplicity, developing their noble cubits, side by side as it were with the intricate gaudiness of her little sister, contribute so strikingly to this contrast between the ages of Heathenry and Christendom.

To the Theatres, however, the most perfect of the public edifices extant in this Apparition of the Past, these remarks are not equally applicable.

The great Tragic Theatre retains its chief lineaments, and its magnitude might well make it conspicuous even in the land of San Carlo, and La Scala. It was, I may say is capable of containing five thousand spectators, and its shape and symmetry exhibit a grandeur that would satisfy the most fastidious critic.

But the lesser theatre is an absolute jewel, every feature is so perfect, the tiers of wedgelike seats, the corridors, the orchestra, the platforms reserved for the proconsul and the vestal virgins, the proscenium, the stage with its three doors, the illusion is complete, and you might fancy you beheld the gory spectre of the murdered Polydore emerging from the centre portal and uttering that sepulchral exordium of the Hecuba :

“ Ηκω Νεκρῶν κευθμῶνα καὶ Σκότου Πύλας,
Λιπῶν ιν Αδης χωρις ώκιςται θεών.”

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The Amphitheatre is not inferior to its contemporaries of Verona and Nismes. Its circuit is of majestic amplitude, its form a beautiful oval, in length four hundred and thirty feet, in breadth three hundred and thirty five.

As I looked down upon its wild arena from the highest tier of seats, with a meridian sun blazing in the blue vault above me, vineyards and poplars mocking my burning brow with their naked branches and shadowless festoons, while my parched palate digested as it might the dust and ashes it had involuntarily gathered from Portici and Torre del Greco, a tantalizing breath of violets exhaled from the adjacent hedge banks; while the swift green lizards pottered about the stone steps, apparently the only living thing that thoroughly enjoyed this noontide broil. Oh! how did I pant for those gorgeous Velabra wont in this very place to stretch their variegated cieling between the glowing firmament above and that ocean of heads that once billowed below. How provokingly vivid was that splendid passage in Lucretius, where, speaking of the magical metamorphosis of Light transmitted through coloured bodies, he instances the luminous refractions of the yellow, violet, and carnation tinctures in the great Amphitheatric Vail.

"Et volgo faciunt id lutea, russaque Vela,
Et ferrugina, quom Magnis intenta Theatris
Per malos volgata, trabeisque trementia fluctant,

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THE MEDITERRANEAN.

Namque ibi Consessum Caveaï subter, et omnem
Scenaï speciem Patrum, Matrumque, Deorumque,
Inficiunt, coguntque suo fluitare colore;

Et quanto circum mage sunt inclusa Theatri
Moenia tam magis hæc intus perfusa lepore
Omnia conrident conreptâ luce diei."

Ir was on Friday, the third of May, that we landed at Civita Vecchia, and from thence posted to Rome. I was struck with the extreme loveliness, blooming on every side, from the Flora of that soft seabank, the Mediterranean Shore. The flowers of St. Mark wore their Tyrian purple raiment in its newest gloss; snowy white, the vestal hawthorn was enshrouded with blossoms, and the tall broom rose like pavilions of vegetable gold among clusters of the oleaster and wild fig, all festooned in common with the vine, which everywhere insinuated his tender and beautiful foliage.

Scarcely deigning any notice of the gentle airs which touched but did not agitate her waters, the Mediterranean, floating in sunbeams, approached the very wheels of the carriage. Towers and Castles, like wearied and lonely sentinels, started up at every half mile upon the shrubby margent of that illustrious Sea ;-that Elder-born of Oceans (to human ken) which hath survived her antient "the Great Sea," "the Utmost Sea," to

titles,

THE MEDITERRANEAN.

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behold herself superseded by the Atlantic and the Pacific, and to hear herself called the Mediterranean !

But nothing took my fancy so much, nor toned so pleasantly with these modulated colourings in turf and tree, as those fragments of architecture, those yellow arches of the broken bridge, whose timestained blocks remain to indicate the original direction of The Aurelian Road, athwart the little stream, which, irritated by masses of fallen masonry, we find ever and anon murmuring and scolding, and crossing our path. How true spoke the fervent and affectionate Julia :

"The current that with gentle murmur glides,

Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hinder'd,

He makes sweet music with the enamell'd stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;

And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport to the wild Ocean."

The amber coloured bridges, disclosing their ruins at intervals among the green knolls of wild thyme and trefoil, are in themselves most graceful; while the mellow tinctures of their massive stonework harmonize very delicately with that exuberant foliage, which, like enamoured Fauns, following obsequiously the caprices of some beloved nymph, divulge the deep and shadowy dell which forms the channel of the stream.

There was a misty moon, and by its light, with

36

PIAZZA DEL POPOLO.

out any previous notice of its neighbourhood, starting, like some sovereign phantom, with silent stare above the suburban villas and vineyards, the Dome of St. Peter's upheaved its venerable enormity.

While waiting in the Dogana, the stately forms of one or two columns in the Piazza saluted me, and, amidst the solemn pauses of that great temple Bell, striking eleven, my ear caught the enchanting ceaseless songs of its two Fountains. And thus we entered Rome.

It is scarcely possible to conceive a more magnificent frontispiece to the glories of Rome than the Piazza del Popolo. Exhibiting a stately square, with the Obelisque of Sesostris in its centre, fountains and gardens, church, monastery, and palace emulate each other in those embellishments of which the Piazza is entirely composed.

The Monte Pincio, with its balustraded ascents, and the Villa Medici, with its evergreen groves, look down upon it on one side, and you behold the grand Rotunda of St. Angelo, looming sublimely in the distance, upon the other. This beautiful area forms as it were the reservoir of three main streets, central of which the Corso shoots out of it between the twin Domes of Sta. Maria di Miracoli, and Sta. Maria di Monte Santo, amidst a solemn parade of Mansions and Fanes, whose august dimensions and gloomy majesty have surely no rivals in the world. After sweeping past the

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