Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/69

Rh immense grave, and out of the grave rose a city of monuments, in ruins, columns, triumphal arches, temples, and palaces,—broken, ruinous, but still beautiful and grand,—with a mournful, solemn beauty. It was the giant apparition of ancient Rome. Here was the Forum, where the Gracchi, those first great tribunes of the people, spoke for the rights of the people; up yonder the Capitol, where Cicero awoke the fervor of the Roman Senate for the true greatness of Rome—plans of which I had read so much in my youth—plans of contests and achievements which early kindled in my heart the fire of patriotism, which has burned ever since, although upon another hearth. Here were temples and triumphal arches, the names of which I did not as yet know, and finally, to the left, a gigantic building or ruin, well known to me from engravings. Thither I directed my steps. On my way, I read on the ruins of a beautiful temple, A Divo Antonio et Divœ Faustina, and a little further, above a massive triumphal arch, through which the road passed, A Divo Vespasiano, and saw there represented, in well-preserved bas-reliefs, the triumphal procession of Titus after the destruction of Jerusalem, with the captive Jews, the seven-branched candlesticks, and many other treasures, from the temple of Solomon. I went forward, along the Via Sacra, where the stones, large, and worn by time, still lie as they lay when the triumphal processions of the Roman Cæsars passed along it, on their way to the Capitol, leaving to the right the triumphal arch of Constantine, and came at length through immense ruins and portions of fallen columns, to the Colosseum. Here a