The Essays, vol 1 | Page 9

commanded greater reverence-it was nothing but her sepulchre. The
world, jealous of her, prolonged empire, had in the first place broken to
pieces that admirable body, and then, when they perceived that the
remains attracted worship and awe, had buried the very wreck
itself.--[Compare a passage in one of Horace Walpole's letters to
Richard West, 22 March 1740 (Cunningham's edit. i. 41), where
Walpole, speaking of Rome, describes her very ruins as ruined.]--As to
those small fragments which were still to be seen on the surface,
notwithstanding the assaults of time and all other attacks, again and
again repeated, they had been favoured by fortune to be some slight
evidence of that infinite grandeur which nothing could entirely
extingish. But it was likely that these disfigured remains were the least
entitled to attention, and that the enemies of that immortal renown, in
their fury, had addressed themselves in the first instance to the
destruction of what was most beautiful and worthiest of preservation;
and that the buildings of this bastard Rome, raised upon the ancient
productions, although they might excite the admiration of the present
age, reminded him of the crows' and sparrows' nests built in the walls
and arches of the old churches, destroyed by the Huguenots. Again, he
was apprehensive, seeing the space which this grave occupied, that the
whole might not have been recovered, and that the burial itself had
been buried. And, moreover, to see a wretched heap of rubbish, as
pieces of tile and pottery, grow (as it had ages since) to a height equal
to that of Mount Gurson,--[In Perigord.]--and thrice the width of it,
appeared to show a conspiracy of destiny against the glory and
pre-eminence of that city, affording at the same time a novel and
extraordinary proof of its departed greatness. He (Montaigne) observed
that it was difficult to believe considering the limited area taken up by

any of her seven hills and particularly the two most favoured ones, the
Capitoline and the Palatine, that so many buildings stood on the site.
Judging only from what is left of the Temple of Concord, along the
'Forum Romanum', of which the fall seems quite recent, like that of
some huge mountain split into horrible crags, it does not look as if
more than two such edifices could have found room on the Capitoline,
on which there were at one period from five-and-twenty to thirty
temples, besides private dwellings. But, in point of fact, there is
scarcely any probability of the views which we take of the city being
correct, its plan and form having changed infinitely; for instance, the
'Velabrum', which on account of its depressed level, received the
sewage of the city, and had a lake, has been raised by artificial
accumulation to a height with the other hills, and Mount Savello has, in
truth, grown simply out of the ruins of the theatre of Marcellus. He
believed that an ancient Roman would not recognise the place again. It
often happened that in digging down into earth the workmen came
upon the crown of some lofty column, which, though thus buried, was
still standing upright. The people there have no recourse to other
foundations than the vaults and arches of the old houses, upon which,
as on slabs of rock, they raise their modern palaces. It is easy to see that
several of the ancient streets are thirty feet below those at present in
use."
Sceptical as Montaigne shows himself in his books, yet during his
sojourn at Rome he manifested a great regard for religion. He solicited
the honour of being admitted to kiss the feet of the Holy Father,
Gregory XIII.; and the Pontiff exhorted him always to continue in the
devotion which he had hitherto exhibited to the Church and the service
of the Most Christian King.
"After this, one sees," says the editor of the Journal, "Montaigne
employing all his time in making excursions bout the neighbourhood
on horseback or on foot, in visits, in observations of every kind. The
churches, the stations, the processions even, the sermons; then the
palaces, the vineyards, the gardens, the public amusements, as the
Carnival, &c.--nothing was overlooked. He saw a Jewish child
circumcised, and wrote down a most minute account of the operation.
He met at San Sisto a Muscovite ambassador, the second who had
come to Rome since the pontificate of Paul III. This minister had

despatches from his court for Venice, addressed to the 'Grand Governor
of the Signory'. The court of Muscovy had at that time such limited
relations with the other powers of Europe, and it was so imperfect in its
information, that it thought Venice to be a dependency of the Holy
See."
Of all the particulars with which he has furnished us during his stay at