um by moonlight.
The great charm of the ruin under this condition is, that the
imagination is substituted for sight; and the mind for the eye. The
essential character of moonlight is hard rather than soft. The line
between light and shadow is sharply defined, and there is no gradation
of color. Blocks and walls of silver are bordered by, and spring out of,
chasms of blackness. But moonlight shrouds the Coliseum in mystery. It
opens deep vaults of gloom where the eye meets only an ebon wall, upon
which the fancy paints innumerable pictures in solemn, splendid, and
tragic colors. Shadowy forms of emperor and lictor and vestal virgin and
gladiator and martyr come out of the darkness, and pass before us in
long and silent procession. The breezes which blow through the broken
arches are changed into voices, and recall the shouts and cries of a
vast audience. By day, the Coliseum is an impressive fact; by night, it
is a stately vision. By day, it is a lifeless form; by night, a vital
thought.

The Coliseum should by all means be seen by a bright starlight, or under
the growing sickle of a young moon. The fainter ray and deeper gloom
bring out more strongly its visionary and ideal character. When the full
moon has blotted out the stars, it fills the vast gulf of the building
with a flood of spectral light, which falls with a chilling touch upon
the spirit; for then the ruin is like a "corpse in its shroud of snow,"
and the moon is a pale watcher by its side. But when the walls, veiled
in deep shadow, seem a part of the darkness in which they are lost--when
the stars are seen through their chasms and breaks, and sparkle along
the broken line of the battlements--the scene becomes another, tho the
same; more indistinct, yet not so mournful; contracting the sphere of
sight, but enlarging that of thought; less burdening, but more
suggestive.

But under all aspects, in the blaze of noon, at sunset, by the light of
the moon or stars--the Coliseum stands alone and unapproached. It is the
monarch of ruins. It is a great tragedy in stone, and it softens and
subdues the mind like a drama of Aeschylus or Shakespeare. It is a
colossal type of those struggles of humanity against an irresistible
destiny, in which the tragic poet finds the elements of his art. The
calamities which crusht the house of Atreus are symbolized in its broken
arches and shattered walls. Built of the most durable materials, and
seemingly for eternity--of a size, ma