ths of Constantine to the Quirinal Hill. The groundless
application of the names of Phidias and Praxiteles may perhaps be
excused: but these Grecian sculptors should not have been removed above
four hundred years from the age of Pericles to that of Tiberius; they
should not have been transformed into two philosophers or magicians,
whose nakedness was the symbol of truth or knowledge, who revealed to
the Emperor his most secret actions, and after refusing all pecuniary
recompense, solicited the honor of leaving this eternal monument of
themselves. Thus, awake to the power of magic, the Romans were
insensible to the beauties of art: no more than five statues were
visible to the eyes of Poggius; and of the multitudes which chance or
design had buried under the ruins, the resurrection was fortunately
delayed till a safer and more enlightened age. The Nile, which now
adorns the Vatican, had been explored by some laborers in digging a
vineyard near the temple, or convent, of the Minerva: but the impatient
proprietor, who was tormented by some visits of curiosity, restored the
unprofitable marble to its former grave. The discovery of the statue of
Pompey, ten feet in length, was the occasion of a lawsuit. It had been
found under a partition wall: the equitable judge had pronounced that
the head should be separated from the body to satisfy the claims of the
contiguous owners; and the sentence would have been executed if the
intercession of a cardinal and the liberality of a pope had not rescued
the Roman hero from the hands of his barbarous countrymen.

But the clouds of barbarism were gradually dispelled, and the peaceful
authority of Martin the Fifth and his successors restored the ornaments
of the city as well as the order of the ecclesiastical State. The
improvements of Rome since the fifteenth century have not been the
spontaneous produce of freedom and industry. The first and most natural
root of a great city is the labor and populousness of the adjacent
country, which supplies the materials of subsistence, of manufactures,
and of foreign trade. But the greater part of the Campagna of Rome is
reduced to a dreary and desolate wilderness; the overgrown estates of
the princes and the clergy are cultivated by the lazy hands of indigent
and hopeless vassals; and the scanty harvests are confined or exported
for the benefit of a monopoly. A second and more artificial cause of the
growth of a metropolis is the residence of a monar