40 THE PANTHEON. fold its lovely leaves over a statelier grove of capitals, than those that flourish here. To this graceful Vestibule the Rotunda seems an ill assorted companion: still the surprising symmetry of its height and breadth, together with the native sublimity of that orbicular outline so beloved by Vitruvius, far more than atone for its harsh and rugged exterior. When it possessed its panoply of bronze and gold, it must indeed have been ΤΗΛΑΥΓΕΣ ! Whoever wishes to see the Pantheon to advantage, should visit its interior, as we did last night, just after the twilight had withdrawn, and before the brazen lamps above its Seven Altars had attained their power of dispelling its gloom. It is a fine thing, that confusion of light and darkness, and we enjoyed it here to the full. The only time I had been here before, was beneath an April sun, whose bewildering glare, preventing the eye from appreciating that incomparable circlet, served only to detect the riven and worn state of its sumptuous marbles. But at this hour, all was invested with that doubtful gloom, which, at once reverential and compassionate, shadowed forth all its original magnificence, while it veiled the ravages of its old age. The gigantic pillars of Giallo, fluted and crowned with their deathless Acanthus, towered beyond the toiling eye, as if to demonstrate the truth of the old adage, and teach us to seek in uncertainty at least one THE PANTHEON. 41 source of the sublime : and that stupendous Dome, meet emblem of the Universe, overvaulted, in darkness, the proud old pile, a firmament without its stars! Man doth indeed here both look and feel himself an insect; and it is good to encourage the thought, that, in erecting such colossal fabrics to the glory of the Deity, he meant, at the same time, to convey a lesson of humiliation to himself. It was then from hence, it was from this vast quarry of marble, from this mine of antique brass, that those snaky pillars of St. Peters Baldechin were derived! It was from hence the peaceful successors of the Fisherman moulded the dread artillery of St. Angelo! Ay, and but for the spoliations of that prince of robbers, the Barberini Pontiff, Agrippa's dome would still have worn the dusky glories of its bronze coffer work. Patience! Patience! those old metalline gates, that have sustained the storms, defied the spoilers, and welcomed the worshippers of a Thousand Years, are still spared to the Pantheon; still does that grand Corinthian Portico at once protect and sanctify its approach; still the celestial sweep of its Rotunda, suggest all that should be grand and graceful in a temple; and still do the Ashes of Raffaelle and Annibale bestow upon its walls the immortality of their own great Names, which will survive to consecrate the spot, when Tradition alone can say, "Here stood the Pantheon." 42 THE TOMBS OF THE SCIPIOS. To-day we have been upon a pilgrimage to the Tombs of the Scipios. From my schoolboy days, I have always loved that illustrious, amiable, upright, and (of course) ill-requited Family of Republican Rome. It was a dreary dripping day; and the rain became a torrent as I entered the vineyard leading to those old intricate caverns, melancholy survivors of all their sepulchral trophies. In these mean and mouldering vaults, miserably lighted by a smoky taper, my old "Lunes" quickly seized. me, and I beheld the Founder of the House, supplying to his blind and ancient Sire the office of a Staff; (ΣKHITPON) and by this act of filial piety bequeathing the name of Scipio to his family. I saw the Elder Africanus, the hero of Zama, that Waterloo of other days, where Scipio and Hannibal, like Wellington and Napoleon, fought army to army,-dying in his indignant seclusion at Liternum. I thought of Æmilius, whom as the conqueror of king Perseus, Rome honoured with a Triumph; and of his son, the second Africanus, (the ill-starred rival of his Grandsire's exploits) taken off by domestic treason. In my "phrenesy sublime," those wild and melancholy Caves became illuminated with imageries of integrity, of THE TOMBS OF THE SCIPIOS. 43 valour, of tender friendship, saint-like continence, and childlike love. "And richly were my solemn trances hung That beautiful sarcophagus of Peperino marble, with which England is now so familiar, from the models constantly brought over from Italy, adorns the Vatican. It commemorates a comparatively obscure individual of the family. No matter! never did marbles and bronzes appear so valueless, never was the utter insignificance of tombs, statues, arches, and columns so obvious, as in these rude and murky recesses, illuminated only by a WORD! I went away murmuring to myself that eloquent declaration in Cicero's " Dream :" "Omnibus qui Patriam conservarint, adjuverint, auxerint, certum esse in Cælo definitum locum ubi Beati ævo sempiterno fruentur." THOUGH not new to me, I had little conception of the intrinsic loveliness of the Villa Borghese till to-day. Picture to yourself a large village of the most variegated and romantic character; Church, Casino Albergo, and Farm, scattered amidst the turfy glades of a forest; and that forest composed of such trees as the beech, the elm, the ilex, and 44 VILLA BORGHESE. above all, the sovereign pinaster, whose enormous trunks seem to have condescended to arrange themselves into avenues; the most charmingly artificial glades of the glossiest verdure, and vistas haunted by legions of dim waning statues; Hero, or Demigod, Nymph or Faun, for ever intermingling but never interfering with each other; their various places of rendezvous emblazed with flowers of a thousand colours, and flashing with fountains of the most graceful fancies possible; while every vista discloses some antique portico, or rotunda, or vestibule of those gems that men call Temples! Picture these scenes on some such May-day as this: "When God hath shower'd the earth," the dark evergreens rejoicing in the rain-drops, and the new-born leaves of silky green, transparent with the moisture, which had reluctantly ceased to shine on their delicate tapestries. Crown all this with a country palace, of lofty Italian magnificence, a treasure house of Antiquity, Painting, and Sculpture, disclosing the statues, frescoes, and gilding of its noble façade, and massive campaniles, at the extremity of its darkest grove of evergreens, glittering in this rainbow sunlight, and you may have some impression of the Villa Borghese. Even such a delicious seclusion Bocaccio would have narrated and Tasso sung. Yea, such |