us with such an uproar?" inquired Miriam.

In truth, the whole piazza had been filled with their idle vociferation;
the echoes from the surrounding houses reverberating the cry of
"Trajan," on all sides; as if there was a great search for that imperial
personage, and not so much as a handful of his ashes to be found.

"Why, it was a good opportunity to air our voices in this resounding
piazza," replied one of the artists. "Besides, we had really some hopes
of summoning Trajan to look at his column, which, you know, he never
saw in his lifetime. Here is your model (who, they say, lived and sinned
before Trajan's death) still wandering about Rome; and why not the
Emperor Trajan?"

"Dead emperors have very little delight in their columns, I am afraid,"
observed Kenyon. "All that rich sculpture of Trajan's bloody warfare,
twining from the base of the pillar to its capital, may be but an ugly
spectacle for his ghostly eyes, if he considers that this huge, storied
shaft must be laid before the judgment-seat, as a piece of the evidence
of what he did in the flesh. If ever I am employed to sculpture a hero's
monument, I shall think of this, as I put in the bas-reliefs of the
pedestal!"

"There are sermons in stones," said Hilda thoughtfully, smiling at
Kenyon's morality; "and especially in the stones of Rome."

The party moved on, but deviated a little from the straight way, in
order to glance at the ponderous remains of the temple of Mars Ultot,
within which a convent of nuns is now established,--a dove-cote, in the
war-god's mansion. At only a little distance, they passed the portico
of a Temple of Minerva, most rich and beautiful in architecture, but
woefully gnawed by time and shattered by violence, besides being buried
midway in the accumulation of soil, that rises over dead Rome like a
flood tide. Within this edifice of antique sanctity, a baker's shop
was now established, with an entrance on one side; for, everywhere, the
remnants of old grandeur and divinity have been made available for the
meanest necessities of today.

"The baker is just drawing his loaves out of the oven," remarked Kenyon.
"Do you smell how sour they are? I should fancy that Minerva (in revenge
for the desecration of her temple) had slyly poured vinegar into the
batch, if I did not know that the modern Romans prefer their bread in
the acetous fermentation."

They turned into the Via Alessandria, and thus gained the rear of the
Temple of Peace