Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/220

230 good dinner at a reasonable price, and advise them, as we did, to season their dinner with foaming orvieto, which is, according to our opinion, superior to champagne, and a genuine aqua vitæ.

The table was spread for our coffee by the temples of Vesta, and the Sibyl, which lay close together on the edge of the rock. Below them flow the Falls, with their white foam. The temple of Vesta still retains its beautiful circle of fluted columns, in excellent preservation. One can still see a portion of the cells and the place for the altar, on which the sacred fire was kept burning. The Corinthian columns of the temple of the Sibyl are now included in the wall of a little Christian church, which is devoid of beauty. It would have been better to have allowed them to stand or fall in the rock beneath the lofty heaven from which the Sibyl derived her inspiration. The temple of Vesta, and the sacred fire, which must be kept ever-burning there, guarded by sacred hands, in order that the life of the state might continue happy and full of glory—is an idea which is not lost to our time, though it may not be fully accepted. That of the Sibyl is less understood. The Sibyls of antiquity have become dark, half mythical figures, spite of all which a Father of the church, Lactantius, tells us about them. But tradition and art present them, nevertheless, as ancient evidences of woman's capacity for an immediate inner contemplation of the highest truths, and of her courage in expressing them. The Sibylline books are burned, but the declaration of the Sibyls, “God is one” and their prophecy of the judgment of the world, still sound to us, down the