of the Middle Age
and of the Renascence believed that Rome had been destroyed by the
Goths, they told strange stories of Gothmen who appeared suddenly in
disguise from the north, bringing with them ancient parchments in which
were preserved sure instructions for unearthing the gold hastily hidden
by their ancestors, because there had been too much of it to carry away.
Even in our own time such things have been done. In the latter days of
the reign of Pius the Ninth, some one discovered an old book or
manuscript, wherein it was pointed out that a vast treasure lay buried
on the northward side of the Colosseum within a few feet of the walls,
and it was told that if any man would dig there he should find, as he
dug deeper, certain signs, fragments of statues, and hewn tablets, and a
spring of water. So the Pope gave his permission, and the work began.
Every one who lived in Rome thirty years ago can remember it, and the
excited curiosity of the whole city while the digging went on. And,
strange to say, though the earth had evidently not been disturbed for
centuries, each object was found in succession, exactly as described, to
a great depth; but not the treasure, though the well was sunk down to
the primeval soil. It was all filled in again, and the mystery has never
been solved. Yet the mere fact that everything was found except the
gold, lends some possibility to the other stories of hidden wealth, told
and repeated from generation to generation.

The legend of the Capitol is too vast, too varied, too full of
tremendous contrasts to be briefly told or carelessly sketched.
Archaeologists have reconstructed it on paper, scholars have written out
its history, poets have said great things of it; yet if one goes up the
steps today and stands by the bronze statue in the middle of the square,
seeing nothing but a paved space enclosed on three sides by palaces of
the late Renascence, it is utterly impossible to call up the past.
Perhaps no point of ancient Rome seems less Roman and less individual
than that spot where Rienzi stood, silent and terrified, for a whole
hour before the old stone lion, waiting for the curious, pitiless rabble
to kill him. The big buildings shut out history, hide the Forum, the
Gemonian steps, and the Tarpeian rock, and in the very inmost centre of
the old city's heart they surround a man with the artificialities of an
uninteresting architecture. For though Michelangelo planned the
reconstruction he d