the choicest or the
most plentiful remains of antiquity. Sometimes the cities themselves
are of modern foundation; in other cases the cities themselves, as
habitations of men and seats of commerce, are of the hoariest antiquity,
but the remains of their early days have perished through their very
prosperity. Massalia,[4] with her long history, with her double wreath
of freedom, the city which withstood Caesar and which withstood Charles
of Anjou, is bare of monuments of her early days. She has been the
victim of her abiding good fortune. We can look down from the height on
the Phokaian harbor; but for actual memorials of the men who fled from
the Persian, of the men who defied the Roman and the Angevin, we might
look as well at Liverpool or at Havre.

Genoa, Venice herself, are hardly real exceptions; they were indeed
commercial cities, but they were ruling cities also, and, as ruling
cities, they reared monuments which could hardly pass away. What are we
to say to the modern rival of Venice, the upstart rebel, one is tempted
to say, against the supremacy of the Hadriatic Queen? Trieste, at the
head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven, with the
snowy mountains which seem to guard the approach from the other side of
her inland sea, with her harbor full of the ships of every nation, her
streets echoing with every tongue, is she to be reckoned as an example
of the rule or an exception to it?

No city at first sight seems more thoroughly modern; old town and
new, wide streets and narrow, we search them in vain for any of those
vestiges of past times which in some cities meet us at every step.
Compare Trieste with Ancona;[5] we miss the arch of Trajan on the haven;
we miss the cupola of Saint Cyriacus soaring in triumph above the
triumphal monument of the heathen. We pass through the stately streets
of the newer town, we thread the steep ascents which lead us to the
older town above, and we nowhere light on any of those little scraps of
ornamental architecture, a window, a doorway, a column, which meet us at
every step in so many of the cities of Italy.

Yet the monumental wealth of Trieste is all but equal to the monumental
wealth of Ancona. At Ancona we have the cathedral church and the
triumphal arch; so we have at Trieste; tho' at Trieste we have nothing
to set against the grand front of the lower and smaller church of
Ancona. But at Ancona arch and duomo both stand out before all eyes;
at Trieste bo