ance to the great
Roman Forum.

Immediately at their left hand as they entered the archway, was the superb
Comitium, wherein the Senate were wont to give audience to foreign
embassies of suppliant nations, with the gigantic portico, three columns
of which may still be seen to testify to the splendor of the old city, in
the far days of the republic. Facing them were the steps of the Asylum,
with the Mamertine prison and the grand facade of the temple of Concord to
the right and left; and higher above these the portico of the gallery of
records, and higher yet the temple of the thundering Jupiter, and
glittering above all, against the dark blue sky, the golden dome, and
white marble columns of the great capitol itself. Around in all directions
were basilicae, or halls of justice; porticoes filled with busy lawyers;
bankers' shops glittering with their splendid wares, and bedecked with the
golden shields taken from the Samnites; statues of the renowned of ages,
Accius Naevius, who cut the whetstone with the razor; Horatius Cocles on
his thunderstricken pedestal, halting on one knee from the wound which had
not hindered him from swimming the swollen Tiber; Claelia the hostage on
her brazen steed; and many another, handed down inviolate from the days of
the ancient kings. Here was the rostrum, beaked with the prows of ships, a
fluent orator already haranguing the assembled people from its
platform--there, the seat of the city Praetor, better known as the _Puteal
Libonis_, with that officer in session on his curule chair, his six
lictors leaning on their fasces at his back, as he promulgated his
irrevocable edicts.

It was a grand sight, surely, and one to gaze on which men of the present
day would do and suffer much; and judge themselves most happy if blessed
with one momentary glance of the heart, as it were, of the old world's
mistress. But these young men, proud as they were, and boastful of the
glories of their native Rome, had looked too often on that busy scene to
be attracted by the gorgeousness of the place, crowded with buildings, the
like of which the modern world knows not, and thronged with nations of
every region of the earth, each in his proper dress, each seeking justice,
pleasure, profit, fame, as it pleased him, free, and fearless, and secure
of property and person. Casting a brief glance over it, they turned short
to the left, by a branch of the Sacred Way, which led, skirting the market
place, between the