se, this fatal Circean spell, has come upon these
beautiful grounds in common with all the neighbourhood of Rome because
of ages of human waste and wrong-doing. How striking a picture do they
present of all earth's beauties and possessions, which promise what
they cannot fully accomplish, which give no rest for the head or home
for the heart, and in which, when disposed to place our trust, we hear
ever and anon the warning cry, "Arise and depart, for this is not your
rest, for it is polluted, for it will destroy you with a sore
destruction." And not without significance is the circumstance that
such a lesson on the vanity of all earthly things should be suggested
by what one sees over against the house of prayer. It illustrates and
emphasises the precept which bids the worshipper set his affections on
things above, so that the house of God may become to him the very gate
of heaven.

From the entrance of the church, through a long suburb, you trace the
old Flaminian road till it crosses the Tiber at the Ponte Molle, the
famous Milvian Bridge. It is strange to think of this hoary road of
many memories being now laid down with modern tramway rails, along
which cars like those in any of our great manufacturing towns
continually run. This is one of the many striking instances in which
the past and the present are incongruously united in Rome. You see on
the right side of the road a picturesque ridge of cliffs clothed with
shaggy ilexes and underwood, overhanging at intervals the walls and
buildings. It was formed by lava ejected from some ancient volcano in
the neighbourhood; and over it was deposited, by the action of
acidulated waters rising through the volcanic rock, a stratum of
travertine or fresh-water limestone. Not far off is a mineral spring
called Acqua Acetosa, much frequented by the inhabitants on summer
mornings, which may be considered one of the expiring efforts of
volcanic action in the neighbourhood. The Milvian Bridge is associated
with most interesting and important historical events. The Roman
citizens, two hundred years before Christ, met here the messengers who
announced the defeat of Asdrubal on the Metaurus at the end of the
second Punic war. Here the ambassadors of the Allobroges implicated in
Catiline's conspiracy were arrested by order of Cicero. And from the
parapets of the bridge the body of Maxentius, the rival pagan emperor,
was hurled into the Tiber, after his defeat by Constantine in the
gre