Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/702

694 and Mary into Egypt. We were disappointed by this intensely modern aspect. It was not the Rome we came to see. But the disappointment was temporary, and happily enough the first impression heightened the effect of the subsequent happy realization of what we had expected. With the light of day, the Eternal City, seated on its throne of seven hills, fully gave us all it had promised, banished every feeling of disappointment, and filled our minds with ever-increasing wonder and amazement. In all directions were disclosed those indications of her ancient greatness for which we were looking, and of her fitness to be the seat of the most powerful empire that man had ever seen—truly the mistress of the known world and for a thousand years the recognized metropolis of the Christian faith and the head still of the largest organized church in the world. Here can be seen together the symbols of both Christian and pagan Rome; the temples of discarded gods and those of the accepted Saviour of the world, the Son of the Virgin Mary. Empires, principalities, powers, and dominions have perished; altars and their gods have mingled with the dust; a religion which made men virtuous in peace and invincible in war has perished or been supplanted, yet the Eternal City itself remains. It speaks from the spacious Forum, yet studded with graceful but time-worn columns, where Cicero poured out his burning eloquence against Catiline and against Antony, for which latter speech he lost his head; from the Palatine, from whose summit the palaces of the Cæsars overlooked a large part of the ancient city; and from the Pantheon, built twenty-seven years before the songs of the angels were heard on the plains of Bethlehem, and of which Byron says:—

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime, Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods,