fely to the other side. It was the guilt of Rome, no
doubt, that caused this gulf to open; and Curtius filled it up with his
heroic self-sacrifice and patriotism, which was the best virtue that the
old Romans knew. Every wrong thing makes the gulf deeper; every right
one helps to fill it up. As the evil of Rome was far more than its good,
the whole commonwealth finally sank into it, indeed, but of no original
necessity."

"Well, Hilda, it came to the same thing at last," answered Miriam
despondingly.

"Doubtless, too," resumed the sculptor (for his imagination was greatly
excited by the idea of this wondrous chasm), "all the blood that the
Romans shed, whether on battlefields, or in the Coliseum, or on the
cross,--in whatever public or private murder,--ran into this fatal gulf,
and formed a mighty subterranean lake of gore, right beneath our feet.
The blood from the thirty wounds in Caesar's breast flowed hitherward,
and that pure little rivulet from Virginia's bosom, too! Virginia,
beyond all question, was stabbed by her father, precisely where we are
standing."

"Then the spot is hallowed forever!" said Hilda.

"Is there such blessed potency in bloodshed?" asked Miriam. "Nay, Hilda,
do not protest! I take your meaning rightly."

They again moved forward. And still, from the Forum and the Via Sacra,
from beneath the arches of the Temple of Peace on one side, and the
acclivity of the Palace of the Caesars on the other, there arose singing
voices of parties that were strolling through the moonlight. Thus,
the air was full of kindred melodies that encountered one another, and
twined themselves into a broad, vague music, out of which no single
strain could be disentangled. These good examples, as well as the
harmonious influences of the hour, incited our artist friends to make
proof of their own vocal powers. With what skill and breath they had,
they set up a choral strain,--"Hail, Columbia!" we believe, which
those old Roman echoes must have found it exceeding difficult to repeat
aright. Even Hilda poured the slender sweetness of her note into her
country's song. Miriam was at first silent, being perhaps unfamiliar
with the air and burden. But suddenly she threw out such a swell and
gush of sound, that it seemed to pervade the whole choir of other
voices, and then to rise above them all, and become audible in what
would else have been thee silence of an upper region. That volume of
melodious voice was one of the tok