RANCE AND THE
MONUMENTS OF THE FORUM.--THE ANTIQUE TEMPLE.--THE PAGAN EX-VOTO
OFFERINGS.--THE MERCHANTS' CITY EXCHANGE AND THE PETTY
EXCHANGE.--THE PANTHEON, OR WAS IT A TEMPLE, A SLAUGHTER-HOUSE, OR
A TAVERN?--THE STYLE OF COOKING AND THE FORM OF RELIGION.--THE
TEMPLE OF VENUS.--- THE BASILICA.--THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PASSERS-BY
UPON THE WALLS.--THE FORUM REBUILT.

As you alight at the station, in the first place breakfast at the
_popina_ of Diomed. It is a tavern of our own day, which has assumed an
antique title to please travellers. You may there drink Falernian wine
manufactured by Scala, the Neapolitan chemist, and, should you ask for
some _jentaculum_ in the Roman style--_aliquid scitamentorum_,
_glandionidum suillam taridum_, _pernonidem_, _sinciput aut omenta
porcina_, _aut aliquid ad eum modum_--they will serve you a beefsteak
and potatoes. Your strength refreshed, you will scale the sloping
hillock of ashes and rubbish that conceals the ruins from your view; you
will pay your two francs at the office and you will pass the
gate-keeper's turnstile, astonished, as it is, to find itself in such a
place. These formalities once concluded you have nothing more that is
modern to go through unless it be the companionship of a guide in
military uniform who escorts you, in reality to _watch_, you (especially
if you belong to the country of Lord Elgin), but not to mulct you in the
least. Placards in all the known languages forbid you to offer him so
much as an _obolus_. You make your _entree_, in a word, into the antique
life, and you are as free as a Pompeian.

The first thing one sees is an arcade and such a niche as might serve
for an image of the Madonna; but be reassured, for the niche contains a
Minerva. It is no longer the superstition of our own time that strikes
our gaze. Under the arcade open extensive store-houses that probably
served as a place of deposit for merchandise. You then enter an
ascending paved street, pass by the temple of Venus and the Basilica,
and arrive at the Forum. There, one should pause.

At first glance, the observer distinguishes nothing but a long square
space closed at the further extremity by a regular-shaped mound rising
between two arcades; lateral alleys extend lengthwise on the right and
the left between shafts of columns and dilapidated architectural
work. Here and there some compound masses of stone-work indicate altars
or the pedestals of statues