in our own times botanical works have been
composed on the plants which have made this noble wreck their home. "The
Flora of the Coliseum" contains four hundred and twenty species.
Among the ruins of classical buildings might be seen broken columns,
cypresses, and mouldy frescoes, dropping from the walls. Even the
vegetable world participated in the melancholy change: the myrtle, which
once flourished on the Aventine, had nearly become extinct; the laurel,
which once gave its leaves to encircle the brows of emperors, had been
replaced by ivy--the companion of death.

But perhaps it may be said the popes were not responsible for all this.
Let it be remembered that in less than one hundred and forty years the
city had been successively taken by Alaric, Genseric, Rieimer, Vitiges,
Totila; that many of its great edifices had been converted into
defensive works. The aqueducts were destroyed by Vitiges, who ruined the
Campagna; the palace of the Caesars was ravaged by Totila; then there
had been the Lombard sieges; then Robert Guiscard and his Normans had
burnt the city from the Antonine Column to the Flaminian Gate, from
the Lateran to the Capitol; then it was sacked and mutilated by the
Constable Bourbon; again and again it was flooded by inundations of the
Tiber and shattered by earthquakes. We must, however, bear in mind the
accusation of Machiavelli, who says, in his "History of Florence," that
nearly all the barbarian invasions of Italy were by the invitations of
the pontiffs, who called in those hordes! It was not the Goth, nor
the Vandal, nor the Norman, nor the Saracen, but the popes and their
nephews, who produced the dilapidation of Rome! Lime-kilns had been fed
from the ruins, classical buildings had become stone-quarries for the
palaces of Italian princes, and churches were decorated from the old
temples.

Churches decorated from the temples! It is for this and such as this
that the popes must be held responsible. Superb Corinthian columns bad
been chiseled into images of the saints. Magnificent Egyptian obelisks
had been dishonored by papal inscriptions. The Septizonium of Severus
had been demolished to furnish materials for the building of St.
Peter's; the bronze roof of the Pantheon had been melted into columns to
ornament the apostle's tomb.

The great bell of Viterbo, in the tower of the Capitol, had announced
the death of many a pope, and still desecration of the buildings
and demoralization of the peop