perhaps the most ancient
monument in the world--an obelisk cotemporary with the Trojan war!--an
obelisk which the barbarous Cambyses respected so much that in honour of
it he put a stop to the conflagration of a city!--an obelisk for which a
king pledged the life of his only son!--The Romans have, miraculously,
brought this pillar to Italy from the lowest part of Egypt.--They turned
the Nile from its course in order that it might seek it, and transport
it to the sea. This obelisk is still covered with hieroglyphics which
have preserved their secret during so many ages, and which to this day
defy the most learned researches. The Indians, the Egyptians, the
antiquity of antiquity, might perhaps be revealed to us by these
signs.--The wonderful charm of Rome is not only the real beauty of its
monuments; but the interest which it inspires by exciting thought; and
this kind of interest increases every day with each new study.

One of the most singular churches of Rome, is that of St Paul: its
exterior is like a badly built barn, and the interior is ornamented with
eighty pillars of so fine a marble and so exquisite a make, that one
would believe they belonged to an Athenian temple described by
Pausanias. Cicero said--_We are surrounded by the vestiges of
history_,--if he said so then, what shall we say now?

The pillars, the statues, the bas-reliefs of ancient Rome, are so
lavished in the churches of the modern city, that there is one (St
Agnes) where bas-reliefs, turned, serve for the steps of a stair-case,
without any one having taken the trouble to examine what they
represented. What an astonishing aspect would ancient Rome offer now, if
the marble pillars and the statues had been left in the same place where
they were found! The ancient city would still have remained standing
almost entire--but would the men of our day dare to walk in it?

The palaces of the great lords are extremely vast, of an architecture
often very fine, and always imposing: but the interior ornaments are
rarely tasteful; we do not find in them even an idea of those elegant
apartments which the finished enjoyments of social life have given rise
to elsewhere. These vast abodes of the Roman princes are empty and
silent; the lazy inhabitants of these superb palaces retire into a few
small chambers unperceived, and leave strangers to survey their
magnificent galleries where the finest pictures of the age of Leo X. are
collected together. The great Roma