Ashtabula telegraph. (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1874-1880, 1874-05-23

Empire by their wees, cruelty ana
profiigacy. This was a period of
war, pestilence and famine. They
are followed by Claudius, Aurelian
and Probus, whose busts are in the
procession of Emperors. Aurelian is
one of the great and fortunate EN-
perors, scarcely second to julius Ca-
sar in warlike ability, and like him,
he depended altogether too much on
the sword to maintain himself in
power. He was ''the useful, though
severe, reformer of a degenerate
State" Then follow the bustS of the
great Diocletian, and of Galerius,
Maximian, and Constantius, with
whom he divided the command of.
the legions, and the Government of
the overgrown Empire. The head
of Diocletian is one of the most
striking and commanding of the
whole collection.
We now reach the elimination of
the long rank of great Emperors in
the statue of
CONSTANTINE, THE GREAT,
who proclaimed the Christian reig-
ion as the future worship of the EN-
pire. A. D. S24, and from which date
the ancient religion rapidly fell into
decay and passed away forever.
One of his acts was the erection of
tho first Church of St. Peter, close
to the Circus of Nero, where dubious
tradition affirmed that St. Peter had
been crucifed, head downwards.
Twelve hundred years afterwards it
was inclosed within the enormous
walls of the modern Basilica, or
Church of St. Peter, and then pulled
down and removed.
The remainder of the list of En-
perors whose busts are preserved is
short. There is Julian, called the
Apostate; then Jovian, who restored
the Christian worship; then one of
the Valentinians; next TheodOsius
the Great, who gave the death blow
to the ancient NEUROLOGICAL religion
of the Romans; then Arcadius, Zeno
and one or two others, close the long
procession, bringing us past the time
when the barbarian Alaric and his
Goths ravaged Italy and sacked I'm
perial Rome itself; and past the
time when the ferocious Attila, with
his Hungarian savages, so burnt, raw
aged and destroyed the provinces of
Italy, that it became a saying of af-
ter generations that the grass never
grew on the spot where Attila's horse
had trod. Great Rome was now in
the valley of humiliation and tears.
The decay of art is shown in the ex-
treme degradation which sculpture
had reached in the last eight or ten
busts of the Emperors-the execu-
ton of each becoming worse than its
predecessor.
Pass now into the next room, and
you are in the presence of a long line
of the renowned and
INDUSTRIOUS CHARACTERS
of Grecian and Roman history. Here
are generals, poets, historians, states
men, orators, philosophers, and men
of science. The busts are executed
almost without exception in the best
style of Greek art, and look so nat
ural and life like that the visitor al
most expects to hear them speak to
him as he gazes in their faces,
Strange feelings of reverential awe
creep over the mind in the presence
of this array of the great dead, re,
produced in marble. What an as.
sembIage is here! There before you
Eeyes are Homer, Socrates, Aristides
Sophocles, Plato, Pythagoras, De.
mosthenes, Eschines, Archilaedes
Euclid, Hsculapius, Diogenes, the
Cynic, Alexander the Great, Hsop
Euripides, Hippocrates, Thucydides
Alcibiads, Cato, the Censor, ScipiC
Africanus, the conquorer of Hanni
bal, Cicero, SaIlust, Virgil, Homer
Terence, Seneca, Ovid, Brutus, Mari
Antony, Martial, Plutarch, Pliny thu
Younger, Pompey, Stilicho, and ma
nv others less renowned. Most o.
these busts were scuiptured in tn,
lifetime of the originals, or mad'
from casts while their memorie
were still fresh and green.
But / observed that most of th'
visitors who came into the halls OF
the Emperors and of illustrious mel
merely gave them a passing glance
between careless and vacant star
and then moved on, perfectly in
different to them and their actions
perhaps ignorant of them; but aroun,
the statute of
THE DYING GLADIATOR,
there was always a crowd, intentl
gazing with serious sorrowful faces
as one sees at funerals. The fig
ure is not ideal, nor the head intel
lectual. 1t is simply the figure Q
a professional prize-fghter, of Wig
orous frame and stalwart limb, VIII
has received a mortal stab in tn
side, in the arena of a Roman am
, phitheatre, and sunk down in a re
clining posture, his head droopln!
gradually low as he leans on hi
hand -"consenting to death, bu
conouering agony" The last drops
: ebbing slowly from the red gast
"fall heavy one by one" The are
ma swims around him-he is gone,
ere ceased the "inhuman shou
which hailed the wretch VIII
won" The artist gives us all tn
, pathos and tragedy of death, will
out its ghastliness and horror Th
scene is depicted in a way tbs
: equally arrests the eye and hold
spellbound the attention of the III
lettered rustic and the practiced ar
: ist. The anatomy of the figure
= perfect. The delineation of tn
i veins on the limbs, hands, feet an
= neck; the tracing of the mus Gle
! the short hair, matted by the per'
! piration of the death struggle; I'll
! wrinkled brow; the lips distende
: : with pain; and the sinking langu'
{ { of the whole frame, exhibit the II
" spiration of genious, and leave