nt Palatine, then by the walls of Servius Tullius, which enclose the
Seven Hills; lastly by the walls of Aurelian, which still serve as an
enclosure to the greatest part of Rome. Corinne recalled to mind the
verses of Tibullus and Propertius[12], who are proud of the weak
beginnings whence has sprung the mistress of the world. Mount Palatine
was in itself the whole of Rome for some time, but afterwards the palace
of the Emperors filled the space which had before sufficed for a nation.
A poet, in the time of Nero, made the following epigram upon this
occasion.[13] _Rome will soon be only a palace. Go to Veii Romans, if
this palace does not now occupy Veii itself._

The Seven Hills are infinitely less elevated than formerly when they
deserved the name of the Steep Mountains. Modern Rome is raised forty
feet above the ancient city. The valleys which separated the hills are
almost filled up by time with the ruins of edifices; but what is more
singular yet, a heap of broken vases has raised two new hills;[14] and
we almost discover an image of modern times, in this progress, or rather
this wreck of civilisation, levelling mountains with valleys, effacing
in the moral as well as the physical world all those beautiful
inequalities produced by nature.

Three other hills,[15] not comprised in the seven famous ones, give
something picturesque to the city of Rome, which perhaps is the only
city that of itself, and in its own boundaries, offers the most
magnificent points of observation. It presents such a remarkable mixture
of ruins, edifices, fields and deserts, that we may contemplate Rome on
all sides, and always find a striking picture in the opposite
perspective.

Oswald could never feel tired of viewing the traces of ancient Rome from
the elevated point of the Capitol to which Corinne had conducted him.
The reading of history, and the reflections which it excites, produce a
less powerful effect upon the soul than those heaps of stones, those
ruins mingled with new habitations. So strongly do our eyes carry
conviction to the mind, that after having beheld these ruins of Rome we
believe the history of the ancient Romans as if we had been cotemporary
with them. The recollections of the mind are acquired by study; the
recollections of the imagination are born of a more immediate and
intimate impression, which gives body to thought, and renders us, if I
may so express it, witnesses of what we have learnt. Undoubtedly one is
ve