CURIA HOSTILIA. 45 a paradise did Metastasio image, when he poured those delicious verses from the lips of Venus, descending from her chariot in his "Orti Esperide :" "Fermete, ormai fermete, Amorose Colombe, il vostro volo ! Gia, del roseato freno Seguitando la legge, Dal odorato Oriental soggiorno, Tutta l'Eterea Mole Abbastanza scorreste, emule del Sole." Such silence and solemnity, that you would never dream you were near the busy haunt of men, were it not, that a long linked diapason of bells, modulated by every possible inflection of their lofty language, convinced you that you were basking, amidst all this voluptuous quiet, beneath the walls of a concealed city, and that cityROME! On this bright and sultry afternoon, what a glorious effect had the broad masses of shadow and sunlight upon that prodigious range of arches, the Curia Hostilia! As I paused beneath its uncouth arcades of monstrous granite blocks, which crown with their ruddy grandeur the Cælian Hill, not even that prodigality of architecture, which the City unveiled to my view, (although the Arch of Constantine, the Palace of the Cæsars, the Tower of 46 CURIA HOSTILIA. Nero, the Colosseum, and that marvel of old age, the Colonna Pine, disputed my regards,)—could dissipate that rapture of reverie, whereby this darkly storied building engrossed my mind. For this was that Senate House rebuilt by Sylla, on the ruins of the original fabric, of Tullus Hostilius, and burned to ashes by the Roman mob, with the gory corpse of the ruffian Clodius. What a feast for fancy does it furnish! What exciting pictures does it invoke! The calm loveliness of an Italian evening, the waving pinegroves of a Roman Villa, the Hostelry by the highway, where "Was naught around but images of rest," over which the purple Appenines presided as the tutelary Genii, all on a sudden disturbed by the approach, from opposite quarters, of the two. Patrician antagonists with their train of vassals; the collision, the conflict, the assassination, the popular explosion over the corpse, and that sublime Insanity which dedicated to its mangled remains, no meaner funeral pyre than the Senate House itself! Well might Tully exclaim, "Quid miserius, quid acerbius, quid luctuosius vidimus? Templum Sanctitatis, Amplitudinis, Mentis, Consilii publici, Caput Urbis, Aram Sociorum, Portum omnium Gentium, Sedem ab universo Populo Romano concessum uno Ordini, inflammari, exscindi, funestari!" TEMPLE OF VESTA. 47 The Temple of Vesta is, to say the least, as attractive as it is conspicuous among the romantic melange of streets, gardens, and towered walls which embroider the banks of the Tiber. It possesses, moreover, the charm of singularity; for while every other object, whether ancient or modern, seems to have been built upon the Brobdignag scale, this lovely little toy of a temple might have been designed as a domicile for her pet Gulliver, by Glumdalclich herself. Framed in the most delicate symmetry, and surrounded by a zone of Corinthian columns, which, like a file of guardian Vestals, encircle the Cell, this beauteous Fane looks down upon the Roman river whose yellow waters might well wish themselves more transparent than they are, were it only for the pleasure of becoming a mirror to so graceful an Image. It is a perfect love, and seems built to be transferred, as, through its bronze and cork models, it so commonly is, to the tables of the museum, the library, and the boudoir, there to be the paragon of marqueterie, as it is here the cynosure of all those gracious ruins which the Tiber worships still. Its Christian title, Santa Maria di Sole, is as appropriate as pleasing: for the sun loves to salute its peristyle with his earliest and his latest look, and the soft breezes of the Gianicolo are for ever wafting fragrance and whispering affection from the pine woods and parterres of the Pamfili, to its virgin colonnade. 48 PYRAMID OF CESTIUS. The Sepulchre of Caius Cestius is a very remarkable object among the multifarious forms in which Architecture once adorned, and by which Ruin still consecrates, the soil of the Eternal City. Its great Pyramis contrasts well with the ruddy brickwork of that stately labour of Belisarius, the Porta San Paolo, to which it is contiguous; and that immense Pine, rearing its trunk like a guardian Genius at its side, does by the sedate verdure of its thick tabular branches, contribute most favourably to the harmonious tone of colour, produced by the surrounding piles. The interior is as damp and dismal as a Burial Vault need be. Hoarded amid the treasures of the Capitoline Museum, a single Foot alone remains of that colossal Bronze Statue, which Pride, stronger than Death, did not blush to erect above the Dust and Ashes, which it meant to immortalize, but only mocked. The gorgeous frescoes which originally adorned the murky walls and cieling of this chamber of death, denoting by their subject, (the Lectisternia) the rank of Cestius, as one of the Epulones, or Religious Decemviri, are now all but effaced; and one gladly hurries from the doleful frivolity of a Pagan's obsequies, to the fresh airs, delicate turf, and bowers of plants, which wave over the lowly urns and sepulchres of the English Cemetery. The haughty intolerance which impels the Church of Rome to spurn her Anglican Sister from was, ENGLISH CEMETERY. 49 her emblazoned Aisles into this tranquil seclusion, in effect, as kind, as contumelious in Motive. Who would not prefer (if preference there be) the turf, dewy and rich with Nature's bounteous visitings, and protected by the Awful Shadow of that Gray House of Ages, where the voice of the nightingale is their requiem, the coo of the turtle their dirge; their shroud the red leaves of autumn, and tapestries of violets their pall; rather than the damp abyss ripped open in the pavement of some gloomy Church, the smoky glare of torches, the atmosphere heavy with frankincense, and the chant (anything but celestial) of droning monks. Surely, when the Spirit has returned to God who gave it, 'tis to such earth as this that it would most willingly bequeath its empty tabernacle. While wandering, the other day, among the groves and gravestones of this fair field of the Dead, I was affected even to tears by the pathetic inscription on poor Miss Bathurst's monument. The mysterious fate of her father, who disappeared so strangely on his way to Vienna, and her own miserable and instantaneous abruption, from amidst a company of joyous friends, into the tenacious gulfs of the Tiber, compose such a hideous aggravation of Calamity, as might well defy the pen of the most ready writer to depict. And yet in that long and beautiful Italian Epitaph, there is at once such exquisite feeling and such consummate taste, the piteous Story so for E |