fabric of arcades, high over all the remains of that forest of elms and sycamores, by which Nero had once dared to replace the unhoused tenants of the Palatine. Behind me, the Flavian Amphitheatre, the newest and the most majestic of all Roman edifices, detained the eye for a space from all that lay beyond it-the whole splendid mass, namely, of the Esquiline-and those innumerable aqueducts which lie stretched out, arch after arch, and pillar after pillar, quite over the peopled champaign to the very ridge of the mountains. But why should I vainly essay to give to you, by cold words of description, any idea of the peerless prospect that every where surrounded me! Lost amidst the pomp of this unimagined human greatness, I was glad to rest my sight, ever and anon, upon the cool waters of old Tiber, in whose face nothing of all this was truly depicted, except the serene and cloudless beauty of that Italian sky; temple and tower, and every monument of art, being mellowed down into a softer and more tolerable grandeur." There is a love story even in this early part of the novel, and Valerius is made the confidant of young Sextus, whom he accompanies to the Forum. The pleadings in this celebrated place have strong attraction for the new curiosity of the stranger. Licinius displays all his powers; is impassioned, touching, sarcastic; and Valerius receives, for the first time, the full conviction of the supremacy of eloquence. His feelings suggest some striking observations on the means and objects of this noble accomplishment. But his companion has a deeper interest at stake than is to be found in the periods of the orator, and he draws Valerius away to the Suburban Villa, where "smiles his lady and his love."

"A sharp walk of about an hour and a half brought us within sight of the Suburban of Capitol. A lofty wall protected the fields of this retirement from the intrusive eyes of passengers on the public road, over whose summit nothing could be discovered but the tall green boughs of planes and sycamores waving to and fro in the gentle agitation of the western breeze. We entered by a small side-door, and immediately found ourselves, as if by some magical delusion, transported from the glare of a Roman highway, and the hum of men, into the depth and silence of some primeval forest. No nicely trimmed path conducted our feet through the mazes of this venerable place. Every thing had at least the appearance of being left as nature had formed it. The tall fern rustled beneath us as we moved; the untaught ivy was seen spreading its careless tresses from tree to tree overhead; the fawn bounded from the thicket, and the scared owl screamed on the pine top. By degrees,

however, the gloom lessened around us as we approached the mansion itself, till at length, over an open space of lawn, we perceived the simple but elegant porch of entrance, and the line of colonnade that extended all along that front of the building. We passed under the porch, and across a paved court, in which a fountain was playing, into the great hall, the windows of which commanded all the other side of the place-a most noble prospect of elaborate gardens gradually rising into shady hills, and lost in a distance of impenetrable wood. Here a freedinan attended us, who informed us that Capito had retired from the house into a sequestrated part of the grounds with some friends from the city; but that if we chose we could easily join him there. We assented, and, following his guidance, ere long traversed no narrow space of luxuriant cultivation. From one perfumed terrace we descended to another; till, having at last reached a certain green and mossy walk, darkened all its length by a natural arching of vines and mulberries, the freedman pointed to a statue at the further end of it, and of his master's summer-house. When we told us it stood over against the entrance reached the statue, however, we could not at first perceive any traces of a summerhouse. The shaded avenue terminated in face of a precipitous rock, from which there fell a small stream that was received beneath in a massive basin, where its waters foamed into spray without transgressing the margin. A thousand delicious plants and farsought flowers clustered around the base of the rock and the brink of the fountain, and the humming of innumerable bees mingled with the whispers of the stream. We stood

for a moment uncertain whether we should move on or retire, when we heard some one calling to us from the centre of the rock; and presently, passing to the other side of the basin, descried, between the rock and the falling water, a low entrance into what seemed to be a natural cave or grotto. We stooped, and passing its threshold found ourselves within one of the most luxurious retirements that was ever haunted by the foot of Dryad. A sparry roof hung like a canopy of gems and crystals over a group of sculptured Nymphs and Fawns, which were placed on a rustic pedestal within a circular bath, shaped out of the living stone. Around the edge of the waveless waters that slumbered in this green recess, were spread carpets rich with the dyes of Tyrian art, whereon Capito was reposing with his friends. He received Sextus with the warmest kindness, and me with distinguished politeness, introducing us both to his companions, who were three in number-all of them, like himself, advanced in years, and two of them wearing long beards, though their demeanour was destitute of any thing like the affected stateliness of our friend Xerophrastes. These two, as our host informed us, were Greeks and Rhetoricians--the third, a Pa

trician of the house of Pontii, devoted, like himself, to the pursuits of philosophy, and the pleasures of a literary retirement." The young Briton here first sees the arbiter of his fate.

"We advanced to meet the young ladies, who were walking slowly down the avenue, and their uncles having tenderly saluted them, soon presented us to their notice. Sextus blushed deeply when he found himself introduced to Sempronia, while, in her smile, although she looked at him, as if to say she had never seen him before, I thought I could detect a certain half-suppressed expression of half-disdainful archness-the colour in her cheeks at the same time being not entirely unmoved. She was, indeed, a very lovely girl, and in looking on her light dancing play of beautiful features, I could easily sympathize with the young raptures of my friend. Her dress was such as to set off her charms to the utmost advantage, for the bright green of her Byssine robe, although it would have been a severe trial to any ordinary complexion, served only to heighten the delicious brillancy of hers. A veil, of the same substance and colour, was richly embroidered all over with flowers of silver tissue, and fell in flowing drapery well nigh down to her knees. Her hair was almost entirely concealed by this part of her dress, but a single braid of the brighest nut-brown was visible low down on her polished forehead. Her eyes were black as jet, and full, as I have already hinted, of a nymph-like or Arcadian vivacity-altogether, indeed, she was such a creature as the Tempe of the poets need not have been ashamed to shelter beneath the most luxurious of its bowers.

"The other young lady-it is Athanasia of whom I speak-she was not a dazzling beauty like Sempronia, but beautiful in such a manner as I shall never be able to describe. Taller than her cousin, and darker haired than she, but with eyes rather light than otherwise, of a clear, soft, somewhat melancholy grey-and with a complexion for the most part paler than is usual in Italy, and with a demeanour hovering between cheerfulness and innocent gravity, and attired with a vestal simplicity in the old Roman tunic, and cloak of white cloth-it is possible that most men might have regarded her less than the other; but for my part, I found her aspect the more engaging the longer I surveyed it. A single broad star of diamonds, planted high up among her black hair, was the only ornament of jewelry she wore, and it shone there in solitary brightness, like the planet of evening. Alas! I smile at my self that I should take notice of such trifles, in describing the first time I ever gazed on Athanasia."

With this stately beauty, Valerius falls in love. A brilliant contrast to her beauty, gravity, and dignity of heart, is given in the portrait of a Ro

man widow, with whom Valerius and his friends sup.

On his return from the luxurious supper of this handsome and opulent entertainer, his Prætorian companion, Sabinus, visits the prison of an old Christian convert, who is to be exposed next day in the bloody sports of the Amphitheatre. Valerius attends him to the dungeon, and is overwhelmed with surprise at the discovery that Athanasia has visited the old man, and prayed with him. This clears up the mystery of that embarrassed sadness, which had made all her movements so inexplicable to the lover's eye. She is a concealed Christian. Her zeal, her feminine fear, and her divine courage, impress her countenance with perplexing and powerful emotion. He recognizes her at the dungeon-gate, and excited by the resistless feeling which he cannot define, visits the old mar tyr. He finds him resigned and resolute, prepared to die, and rejoicing that his death is for Christianity. Oppressed by awe, pity, and wonder, Valerius returns, and sees that the night has passed away in the cell

"I had a pretty accurate notion of the way from that grand edifice to the house of Licinius, and therefore moved towards it immediately, intending to pass straight down from thence into the Sacred Way. But when I came close to the Amphitheatre, I found that, surrounded on all sides by a city of sleep and silence, that region was already filled with all manner of noise and tumult, in consequence of the preparations which had begun to be made for the spectacles of the succeeding day. The east was just beginning to be streaked with the first faint blushes of morning; but the torches and innumerable lanterns, in the hands of the different workmen and artificers employed there, threw more light than was sufficient to give me an idea of all that was going forwards. On one side, the whole way was blocked up with a countless throng of waggons; the conductors of which, almost all of them Ethiopians and Numidians, were lashing each other's horses, and exchanging, in their barbarous tongues, violent outcries of, I doubt not, more barbarous wrath and execration. The fearful bellowings that resounded from any of the waggons, which happened to be set in motion amidst the choaking throng, intimated that savage beasts were confined within them; and when I had discovered this, and then regarded the prodigious mulhorror came over me at thinking what cruel titude of the waggons, I cannot say what sights, and how lavish in cruelty, were become the favourite pastimes of the most refined of peoples. I recognized the well.

known short deep snort of the wild boar, and the long hollow bark of the wolf; but a thousand fierce sounds, mingled with these, were equally new and terrific to my ears. One voice, however, was so grand in its notes of sullen rage, that I could not help asking a soldier, who sate on horseback near me, from what wild beast it proceed ed. The man answered, that it was a Lion; but then what laughter arose among some of the rabble, that had overheard my interrogation; and what contemptuous looks were thrown upon me by the naked negroes, who sate grinning in the torch-light, on the top of their carriages! Then one or two of the soldiers would be compelled to ride into the midst of the confusion, to separate some of these wretches, fighting with their whips about precedence in the approaching entrance to the Amphitheatre; and then it seemed to me that the horses could not away with the strong sickly smell of some of the beasts that were carried there, for they would prance, and caper, and rear on end, and snort as if panic-struck, and dart themselves towards the other side; while some of the riders were thrown off in the midst of the tumult, and others, with fierce and strong bits, compelled the frightened or infuriated animals to endure the thing they abhorred in their wrath and pride forcing them even nearer than was necessary to the hated waggons. In another quarter, this close-mingled pile of carts and horses was surmounted by the enormous heads of elephants, thrust high up into the air, some of them with the huge lithe trunks lashing and beating (for they too, as you have heard, would rather die than snuff in the breath of these monsters of the woods,) while the tiara'd heads of their leaders would be seen tossed to and fro by the contortions of those high necks, whereon for the most part they had their sitting-places. There was such a cry of cursing, and such a sound of whips and cords, and such blowing of horns, and whistling and screaming; and all this mixed with such roaring, and bellowing, and howling from the savage creatures within the caged waggons, that I stood, as it were, aghast and terrified, by reason of the tumult that was round about me."

But an exhibition of more fearful interest follows. He is taken in Rubellia's chariot to the Amphitheatre, the Coliseum; that place in which the grandeur of imperial opulence, and the horrors of Heathenism, seem to have met in one unequalled consummation. The passage is very eloquent, picturesque, and touching. The author treads upon untried ground, and he treads with a learned and manly step. "Behold me, therefore, in the midst of the Flavian Amphitheatre, and seated, unVOL. XI.

der the wing of this luxurious lady, in one of the best situations which the range of benches set apart for the females and their company, afforded. There was a general silence in the place at the time we entered and seated ourselves, because proclamation had just been made that the gladiators, with whose combats the exhibition of the day was appointed to commence, were about to enter upon the arena, and shew themselves in order to the people. As yet, however, they had not come forth from that place of concealment to which so many of their number were, of necessity, destined never to return; so that I had leisure to collect my thoughts, and to survey for a moment, without disturbance, the mighty and most motley multitude, piled above, below, and on every side around me, from the lordly senators, on their silken couches, along the parapet of the arena, up to the impenetrable mass of plebeian heads which skirted the horizon, above the topmost wall of the Amphitheatre itself. Such was the enormous crowd of human beings, high and low, assembled therein, that when any motion went through their assembly, the noise of their rising up or sitting down could be likened to nothing, except, perhaps, the far-off sullen roaring of the illimitable sea, or the rushing of a great night-wind amongst the boughs of a forest. It was the first time that I had ever seen a peopled amphitheatre

nay, it was the first time that I had ever seen any very great multitude of men assembled together, within any fabric of human erection; so that you cannot doubt there was, in the scene before me, enough to impress my mind with a very serious feeling of astonishment-not to say of veneration. Not less than eighty thousand human beings, (for such they told me was the stupendous capacity of the building,) were here met together. Such a multitude can nowhere be regarded, without inspiring a certain indefinite indefinable sense of majesty; least of all, when congregated within the wide sweep of such a glorious edifice as this, and surrounded on all sides with every circumstance of ornament and splendour, befitting an everlasting monument of Roman victories, the munificence of Roman princes, and the imperial luxury of universal Rome. Judge then, with what eyes of wonder all yesterday, as it were, emerged from the sothis was surveyed by me, who had but of litary stillness of a British galley-who had been accustomed all my life to consider as among the most impressive of human spectacles, the casual passage of a few scores of legionaries, through some dark alley of a wood, or awe-struck village of barbarians.

"Trajan himself was already present, but in nowise, except from the canopy over other Consul that sate over against him; his ivory chair, to be distinguished from the tall, nevertheless, and of a surety very ma jestic in his demeanour; grave, sedate, and

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benign in countenance, even according to the likeness which you have seen upon his medals and statues. He was arrayed in a plain gown, and appeared to converse quite familiarly, and without the least affectation of condescension, with such Patricians as had their places near him; among whom Sextus and Rubellia pointed out many remarkable personages to my notice; as for example, Adrian, who afterwards became emperor; Pliny, the orator, a man of very courtly presence, and lively, agreeable aspect; and, above all, the historian Tacitus, the worthy son-in-law of our Agricola, in whose pale countenance I thought I could easily recognize the depth, but sought in vain to discover any traces of the sternness of his genius. Of all the then proud names that were whispered into my ear, could I recollect or repeat them now, how few would awaken any interest in your minds! Those, indeed, which I have mentioned, have an interest that will never die. Would that the greatest and the best of them all were to be remembered only for deeds of greatness and goodness!

"The proclamation being repeated a second time, a door on the right hand of the arena was laid open, and a single trumpet sounded, as it seemed to me, mournfully, while the gladiators marched in with slow steps, each man-naked, except being girt with a cloth about his loins-bearing on his left arm a small buckler, and having a short straight sword suspended by a cord around his neck They marched, as I have said, slowly and steadily; so that the whole assembly had full leisure to contemplate the forms of the men; while those who were, or who imagined themselves to be skilled in the business of the arena, were fixing, in their own minds, on such as they thought most likely to be victorious, and laying wagers concerning their chances of success, with as much unconcern as if they had been contemplating so many irrational animals, or rather, indeed, I should say, so many senseless pieces of ingenious mechanism. The wide diversity of complexion and feature exhibited among these devoted athletes, afforded at once a majestic idea of the extent of the Roman empire, and a terrible one of the purposes to which that wide sway had too often been made subservient. The beautiful Greek, with a countenance of noble serenity, and limbs after which the sculptors of his country might have model led their god-like symbols of graceful power, walked side by side with the yellowbearded savage, whose gigantic muscles had been nerved in the freezing waves of the Elbe or the Danube, or whose thick strong hair was congealed and shagged on his brow with the breath of Scythian or Scandinavian winters. Many fierce Moors and Arabs, and curled Ethiopians, were there, with the beams of the southern sun burnt in every various shade of swarthiness

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upon their skins. Nor did our own remote island want their representatives in the deadly procession, for I saw among the armed multitude and that not altogether without some feelings of more peculiar interesttwo or three gaunt barbarians, whose breasts and shoulders bore uncouth marks of blue and purple, so vivid in the tints, that I thought many months could not have elapsed since they must have been wandering in wild freedom along the native ridges of some Silurian or Caledonian forest. they moved around the arena, some of these men were saluted by the whole multitude with noisy acclamations, in token, I supposed, of the approbation wherewith the feats of some former festival had deserved to be remembered. On the appearance of others, groans and hisses were heard from some parts of the Amphitheatre, mixed with contending cheers and huzzas from others of the spectators. But by far the greater part were suffered to pass on in silence;this being in all likelihood the first-alas! who could tell whether it might not also be the last day of their sharing in that fearful exhibition!

"Their masters paired them shortly, and in succession they began to make proof of their fatal skill. At first, Scythian was matched against Scythian-Greek against Greek-Ethiopian against EthiopianSpaniard against Spaniard; and I saw the sand dyed beneath their feet with blood streaming from the wounds of kindred hands. But these combats, although abundantly bloody and terrible, were regarded only as preludes to the serious business of the day, which consisted of duels between Europeans on the one side, and Africans on the other; wherein it was the well-nigh intransgressible law of the Amphitheatre, that at least one out of every pair of combatants should die on the arena before the eyes of the multitude. Instead of shrinking from the more desperate brutalities of these latter conflicts, the almost certainty of their fatal termination seemed only to make the assembly gaze on them with a more intense curiosity, and a more inhuman measure of delight. Methinks I feel as if it were but of yesterday, when,—sickened with the protracted terrors of a conflict, that seemed as if it were never to have an end, although both the combatants were already covered all over with hideous gashes,-I at last bowed down my head, and clasped my hands upon my eyes, to save them from the torture of gazing there on farther: And I had scarce done so, when Rubellia laid her hand upon my elbow, whispering, Look, look, now look,' in a voice of low steady impatience. I did look, but not to the arena: No; it was upon the beautiful features of that woman's face that I looked, and truly it seemed to me as if they presented a spectacle almost as fearful as that from which I had just averted