Washington sentinel., 1854-01-10
Washingtnu Sentinel.
Correspondence Of the New York Observer.
s Irenaus In Rome.

To be in Rome is said to form an epoch in
the life Of man. There is a new sensation,
there is no doubt Of it, to which every
thinking man will confess, when he comes for
the first time to stand among these memorials
of departed world. We may have seen an
tiauities in the museums of modern cities, and
here and there met with ruin that dates some
where behind the death Of Cazar, but when we
plant our feet among the falling pillars, and
crumbling arches and ruined temples of Rome,
we feel that another world is around us,
and the vision Of its grandeur and its decay
comes up and fills the mind with awe.
Perhaps there is much Of this emotion to be
referred to ones early associations, and he who
has been more familiar from childhood with
the history of Greece and Rome, than with that
of England will naturally be more enthusiastic
when at last the longings of q lifetime are
gratified. and he finds himself one fine morning,
on the top of the tower Of the capitol, on
Caploline hill Here at last And this is
Romei This icas Rome. 1Toja .tuit, en-
gems glora Ieaicrorum." Alas, it is Rome no
more. These are her tombstones, that you see
ut your feet No letters record her story, but
these pillars have tongues, and these arches are
all eloquent of might and glory that have
found d grave The seven hills we first look
for and if the feeling is disappointment to find
that what has been so great in history is SO
small in reality, the history itself Of each one
Of them comes thronging on the mind, and
soon the idea takes strong possession OF the
soul that here sat the mistress of the world
victorious, imperial Eternal Rome.
How vain that word eternal with such evi-
dences of mortality as these around us! How
mean the mightiest monuments OF mans art
and power, when they are lying heaps on heaps
in the valley Of the shadow Of death. There is
fr laI, ctn0
were coming up, and that still stands memo
rial of treason, of vengeance, Of justice, place
of blood. The rock stands, and these hills
stand as God made them and what he builds
he only DESTROYS. But this forum with its
struggling columns, o few of them standing,
more of them strewed upon the ground, and
this ground itself fifteen feet below the level Of
the modern city, is to me melancholy sight,
and positively like Marius amid the ruins OF
Carthage was willing to weep over the fall
Of 50 much beauty and glory. Three columns
standing so stately and grand formed an angle
Of the temple of Jupiter Tonans, and those
eight magnificent granite pillars with their
crumbling cornice, formed the portico OF the
Temple Of Saturn; one of the noblest ruins OF
them all is the basement Of the Temple OF
Peace, stupendous in its proportions; and there
IS the arch of Septimus Severus, wonderfully
preserved from which begins the street that
led up to the citadel, the old pavement still
living there on which the armies of the empe-
+ rors trod. That solitary column" the name
less column with buried base'-is no longer
so, for an inscription has been found, proving
it to have been raised in honor OF Phocas, and
not far off is the site of the temple of Castor
and Pollux, and the three celebrated columns
over which antiquarians have disputed for a
century without settling the question Of their
origin. / prefer to call them with the older
critics, the remains of the Temple of Jupiter
Stator. How simple, yet how sublime. Three
Corinthian columns in line, with broken
cornice over them; vet how perfect in proper
tion-models to this day of the beautiful in
Corinthian architecture, and stirring vain re.
grets that what was once over and around
them, has passed away.
But look still farther off and see that magni
fcent arch of Titus, reared in the memory OF
his conquest of Jerusalem. IF we were near
enough we could see upon its front the en-
blems and the record of his bloody and cursed
triumph over the city of God. The golden
candlestick which was irrevocably lost in the
Tiber, as it was borne along in the battle OF
Constantine and Maxientius, is scuptured here
with other bas reliefs, the only reliable repre-
sentations of those Jewish symbols, and now
preserved on Pagan monuments OF Judeas
fall
I asked for the palace of the Caesars, and was
sad when the Palatine hill was pointed to, and
all the ruins there were scarcely sufficient to
make it creditable that Augustus, Tiberius, and
Caligula, had expended treasures in adorning
and fortifying this spot, which is now stable
and wretched garden. Nero built his golden
house on the slope of this hill, and other empe-
rors added as wealth and taste or caprice sug-
gested but now it is mingled mass of rub
bish, defying all attempts to define the limits of
the former piles Of marble that were once the
abode Of kings. Look again. There at our
left hand is the loftiest ruin in Rome, and you
need not tell me its name. We have known it
for thirty wears. It is the Colseum: there was
never but one such building; and pictures of
It have been spread the world over. It is
brave old ruin, standing up there as if defying
heaven and earth. And it always did. Yes
pasian began it, and Titus made its Jewish
captiyes complete it. and when its huge circle
was carried up with four successive galleries,
hundred thousand men and women sat down
within these walls, and' looked on while five
thousand wild beasts tore one another and their
human victims into tatters, amid the plaudits
of the admiring throng. In that arena the early
martyrs Of our faith were devoured by lions
whom hunger had made fierce, and the dens
are stip there which were once the cages OF the
beasts that tnlrSteu uuu uiauh tiO Shiio-
tian's blood. The prophecy Of the Anglo-Saxon
pilgrims, recorded by the venerable Bede, was
not fulfilled:
While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand;
When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall
And when Rome falls, the world"
Rome and her Coliseum have fallen, but their
fall is the rising again Of the world.
And when we have looked on till the soul
is panied with contemplation among these
monuments of departed greatness, turn to
Modern Rome, and behold the towers and
domes Of more than three hundred churches,
of which the sublmest is the one on which the
eve Of every traveller fingers, as the Moslem
gazes for the first time on the,minarets of Mec-
ca. There is the dome Of St. Peters the great
work Of Michael Angelo and with one excep-
tion, the most perfectdoM in all the world. How
il hangs there, making one to doubt whether
II rose there by its own buoyancy, or was let
down by an invisible chain from the blue dome
that hangs above it. And when we have stu
died all these and other objects Of interest and