hiana of Orvieto and the Pontine Marsh
were drained. Encouragement was extended, not only to agriculture, but
also to industries and manufactures. The country towns obtained wise
financial concessions, and the unpopular resumption of lapsed lands and
fiefs was discontinued. Rome meanwhile began to assume her present
aspect as a city, by the extensive architectural undertakings which
Sixtus set on foot. He loved building; but he was no lover of antiquity.
For pagan monuments of art he showed a monastic animosity, dispersing or
mutilating the statues of the Vatican and Capitol; turning a Minerva
into an image of the Faith by putting a cross in her hand; surmounting
the columns of Trajan and Antonine with figures of Peter and Paul;
destroying the Septizonium of Severus, and wishing to lay sacrilegious
hands on Caecilia Metella's tomb. To mediaeval relics he was hardly less
indifferent. The old buildings of the Lateran were thrown down to make
room for the heavy modern palace. But, to atone in some measure for
these acts of vandalism, Sixtus placed the cupola upon S. Peter's and
raised the obelisk in the great piazza which was destined to be circled
with Bernini's colonnades. This obelisk he tapped with a cross.
Christian inscriptions, signalizing the triumph of the Pontiff over
infidel emperors, the victory of Calvary over Olympus, the superiority
of Rome's saints and martyrs to Rome's old deities and heroes, left no
doubt that what remained of the imperial city had been subdued to Christ
and purged of paganism. Wandering through Rome at the present time, we
feel in every part the spirit of the Catholic Revival, and murmur to
ourselves those lines of Clough:

O ye mighty and strange, ye ancient divine ones of Hellas!
Are ye Christian too? To convert and redeem and renew you,
Will the brief form have sufficed, that a Pope has sat up on the apex
Of the Egyptian stone that o'ertops you, the Christian symbol?
And ye, silent, supreme in serene and victorious marble,
Ye that encircle the walls of the stately Vatican chambers,
Are ye also baptized; are ye of the Kingdom of Heaven?
Utter, O some one, the word that shall reconcile Ancient and Modern.

[Footnote 71: See Giov. Gritti, _op. cit._ p. 333.]

Nothing was more absent from the mind of Sixtus than any attempt to
reconcile Ancient and Modern. He was bent on proclaiming the ultimate
triumph of Catholicism, not only over antiquity, but also ov