Consolations in Travel | Page 4

enable them to conquer
the world. They appear always to have formed their plans and made
their combinations as if their power were beyond the reach of chance,
independent of the influence of time, and founded for unlimited
duration--for eternity!"
Ambrosio took up the discourse of Onuphrio, and said, "The aspect of
this wonderful heap of ruins is so picturesque that it is impossible to
regret its decay; and at this season of the year the colours of the
vegetation are in harmony with those of the falling ruins, and how
perfectly the whole landscape is in tone! The remains of the palace of
the Caesars and of the golden halls of Nero appear in the distance, their
gray and tottering turrets and their moss-stained arches reposing, as it
were, upon the decaying vegetation: and there is nothing that marks the
existence of life except the few pious devotees, who wander from
station to station in the arena below, kneeling before the cross, and
demonstrating the triumph of a religion, which received in this very
spot in the early period of its existence one of its most severe
persecutions, and which, nevertheless, has preserved what remains of
that building, where attempts were made to stifle it almost at its birth;
for, without the influence of Christianity, these majestic ruins would
have been dispersed or levelled to the dust. Plundered of their lead and
iron by the barbarians, Goths, and Vandals, and robbed even of their

stones by Roman princes, the Barberini, they owe what remains of their
relics to the sanctifying influence of that faith which has preserved for
the world all that was worth preserving, not merely arts and literature
but likewise that which constitutes the progressive nature of intellect
and the institutions which afford to us happiness in this world and
hopes of a blessed immortality in the next. And, being of the faith of
Rome, I may say, that the preservation of this pile by the sanctifying
effect of a few crosses planted round it, is almost a miraculous event.
And what a contrast the present application of this building, connected
with holy feelings and exalted hopes, is to that of the ancient one, when
it was used for exhibiting to the Roman people the destruction of men
by wild beasts, or of men, more savage than wild beasts, by each other,
to gratify a horrible appetite for cruelty, founded upon a still more
detestable lust, that of universal domination! And who would have
supposed, in the time of Titus, that a faith, despised in its insignificant
origin, and persecuted from the supposed obscurity of its founder and
its principles, should have reared a dome to the memory of one of its
humblest teachers, more glorious than was ever framed for Jupiter or
Apollo in the ancient world, and have preserved even the ruins of the
temples of the pagan deities, and have burst forth in splendour and
majesty, consecrating truth amidst the shrines of error, employing the
idols of the Roman superstition for the most holy purposes and rising a
bright and constant light amidst the dark and starless night which
followed the destruction of the Roman empire!"
Onuphrio now resumed the discourse. He said, "I have not the same
exalted views on the subject which our friend Ambrosio has so
eloquently expressed. Some little of the perfect state in which these
ruins exist may have been owing to causes which he has described; but
these causes have only lately begun to operate, and the mischief was
done before Christianity was established at Rome. Feeling differently
on these subjects, I admire this venerable ruin rather as a record of the
destruction of the power of the greatest people that ever existed, than as
a proof of the triumph of Christianity; and I am carried forward in
melancholy anticipation to the period when even the magnificent dome
of St. Peter's will be in a similar state to that in which the Colosaeum
now is, and when its ruins may be preserved by the sanctifying

influence of some new and unknown faith; when, perhaps, the statue of
Jupiter, which at present receives the kiss of the devotee, as the image
of St. Peter, may be employed for another holy use, as the
personification of a future saint or divinity; and when the monuments
of the papal magnificence shall be mixed with the same dust as that
which now covers the tombs of the Caesars. Such, I am sorry to say, is
the general history of all the works and institutions belonging to
humanity. They rise, flourish, and then decay and fall; and the period of
their decline is generally proportional to that of their elevation. In
ancient Thebes or Memphis the peculiar genius of the people has left us
monuments