entered their carriage and drove to its great dilapidated rival--the
Coliseum.

"No dome here but the wide heavens," said Winston, as they approached
the vast circular ruin rising arch above arch into the air. "How it
scales, and would embrace the sky! Verily these old Romans seemed to
have no idea that any thing was to come after them; they lived and built
upon the earth as if they were the last types of the human species."

"Mutability and progress are modern ideas; they had not attained to
them," said Mildred.

They walked partly round the interior, looking through the deep arches,
overhung with verdure, and regretting the patches here and there too
perceptible of modern masonry, and still more the ridiculous attempt, by
the introduction of some contemptible pictures, or altar pieces, in the
arena, to _christianise_ the old heathen structure. They then ascended
to the summit to enjoy the prospect it commands, both of the distant
country, the beautiful hills of Italy, and of the neighbouring ruins of
ancient Rome.

"How plainly it is the change of religion," said Winston, "which gives
its true antiquity to the past! All that we see of ancient Rome bears
the impress of Paganism; every thing in the modern city, of Catholicism.
It is this which puts the great gulf between the two, and makes the old
Roman to have lived, as it seems to us, in a world so different from our
own. Strange! that what in each age is looked upon as pre-eminently
unchangeable and eternal, should by its transformations mark out the
several eras of mankind. Ay, and this religion which now fills the city
with its temples--which I do not honour with the name of
Christianity--will one day, by its departure from the scene, have made
St Peter's as complete an antiquity as the ruins we are now sitting on."

"I notice," said Mildred, "you are somewhat bitter against Catholicism."

"I was tolerant when at a distance from it, and when again at a distance
I shall perhaps grow tolerant again. But a priesthood, not teaching but
ruling, governing men in their civil relations, seizing all education
into its own hand, training the thinking part of the community to
hypocrisy, and the unthinking to gross credulity--it is a spectacle that
exasperates. I used in England to be a staunch advocate for educating
and endowing the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland. I shall never, I
think, advocate that cause again. To educate this priesthood,--what is
it but to per