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 Chaf. xxxvi] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 21 The spectator, who casts a mournful view over the ruins of The r, edifices of ancient Eome, is tempted to accuse the memory ot the Goths Rome and Vandals, for the mischief which they had neither leisure, nor power, nor perhaps inclination, to perpetrate. The tempest of war might strike some lofty turrets to the ground ; but the destruction which undermined the foundations of those massy fabrics was prosecuted, slowly and silently, during a period of ten centuries ; and the motives of interest that afterwards operated without shame or control were severely checked by the taste and spirit of the emperor Majorian. The decay of the city had gradually impaired the value of the public works. The circus and theatres might still excite, but they seldom gratified, the desires of the people; the temples, which had escaped the zeal of the Christians, were no longer inhabited either by gods or men ; the diminished crowds of the Eomans were lost in the immense space of their baths and porticoes ; and the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed either by study or business. The monuments of consular, or Imperial, greatness were no longer revered as the immortal glory of the capital ; they were only esteemed as an inexhaust- ible mine of materials, cheaper and more convenient than the distant quarry. Specious petitions were continually addressed to the easy magistrates of Eome, which stated the want of stones or bricks for some necessary service ; the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced for the sake of some paltry, or pretended, repairs ; and the degenerate Eomans, who con- verted the spoil to their own emolument, demolished with sacrilegious hands the labours of their ancestors. Majorian, [Tit. 4] who had often sighed over the desolation of the city, applied a severe remedy to the growing evil. 5 ' 2 He reserved to the prince and senate the sole cognisance of the extreme cases which might justify the destruction of an ancient edifice ; 52 The whole edict (Novell. Majorian. tit. vi. p. 35) is curious. " Antiquarum ffidium dissipatur speciosa constructio ; et ut [earum] aliquid reparetur, magna diruuntur. Hinc jam occasio nascitur, ut etiam unusquisque privatum sedificium eonstruens, per gratiam judicum . . . prsesumere de publicis locis necessaria, et transferre non dubitet," &c. With equal zeal, but with less power, Petrarch, in the fourteenth century, repeated the same complaints (Vie de Petrarque, torn. i. p. 326, 327). If I prosecute this History, I shall not be unmindful of the decline and fall of the city of Rome ; an interesting object, to which my plan was originally confined. [See chap. Ixxi.]