The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-03-07
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The most interesting spot to the majority
 of educated people in our Western civilization is Rome. To, go to Rome is to go home.
 We visit other cities to see what they are like, we journey to Rome to revisit our
 dreams. Montague says T was acquainted with the history of Rome before that of my
 own country. Iknew the capitol and it's plan
 before I knew the Louvre, and the Tiber before the Seine" Rome is the home city of the laws, governments, customs, civilization
 and religion of the Western world.
 Rome is rich with every element of human
 interests. She has gathered unto herself
 every greatness and every weakness of man.
 kind. In Rome you see your own soul writ
 large. There projected upon the vast screen of history, you may view your own hidden
 lust and holy longing, see ,yourIevery shameful dream of luxury outd0ne, your most wildly
 absurd ambition realized. She is the super
 man among cities. Other nations have had
 their victories and defeats, but no victories so splendid nor defeats so appallingn Other
 races boast their great men in one or another
 field of human endeavor, but the streets of no city have been trodden by so many great men aof so many types. On the school desks of millions of children today. lie the poems of Virgil and Horace, the orations of Cicero. sthe histry of Livy, and the note book of 'Julius Caesar, 2,00O years after these que sthors are dead. What other country, except.
 ing Greece, has so laid it's hands upon the education of the world /. As for artists none greater have risen than. Michael Angelo and
 Raphael Sanzo, and Rome was the scene of their greatest activities. Regulus and Cin- cinnatus are still models of patriotism. No
 monsters of vice have been more monstrous than Nero and Caligula. No extravagance ;has outstripped the villa of iHadrian at Tri- vola. No theatre so huge as the C0llosseum was ever built, and it's ruins are to this day the most impressive of all the ruins of mems work No temple has ever been, none will eyer be, more imposing than St. .Peters. No city square upon the globe has been so splen- did, has witnessed such mighty triumphs, has suffered so sweeping a desolstion, and is now so pitifnl yet grand and stirring to mans soul, as the Forum, that marble wilderness' of q shattered frieze and column, that wal ley of the shadow of death," sentinelled by the broken palaces of the Caesars upon the adjoining Palatine. tl
 There have been other conquerors, as Alex ander and Napoleon and Tamerlane, who have imposed themselves upon the habitahle world but no other world d-figure ever com .bined so many clements of genius or extended the. rule of his ideas so far into the future as Julius Caesar, who in his time, "bestrode the earth like Colossus whose name as 6 kaiser, czar or emperor Che was the first imperator) still stands for the summit of worldly honors whose ideas of government still dominate the nations of Europe. s34 N spiritual organization has ever been. none ever will be, so perfect and effective as, that of the church which grew up in the city of Rome as the powers of the Caesars were ebbing. s as Goethe, Neihbuhr Balzac Hawthorne and Dickens have paid tribute to the peculiar fas- cination of the Eternal City. Bryon wrote 70 Rome my country! City of the soul.
 The orphans of the heart must turn to thee. Lone mother of dead empires ]"