242 ANCIENT PAINTING AS AMONG THE LOST ARTS. 



Then famine and pestilence took hold on the doomed city, and 

 the malaria of the marshes, from neglect of drainage, crept up 

 from the low grounds, and seized the stragglers of the ever con- 

 tracting populace, until from the proud and teeming capitol of a 

 world, it came at last to contain only the miserable remnant of 

 twenty thousand inhabitants. In this fact alone is largely 

 explained the vast and wonderful ruins of Rome. For ages 

 there were not inhabitants enough to occupy the hundredth part 

 of the buildings that had been reared. Of course they fell into 

 decay. The falling roofs and walls of the upper half buried 

 and preserved the lower. The work of time and decay leveled 

 the surface and disintegrated the soft materials, till eventually 

 the needy descendants of Roman conquerors planted their vine- 

 yards or herded their cattle over the ruins of Forums and Palaces. 



Like many another pilgrim to the great cemetery of a past 

 civilization, I have followed the tourist's track to the ruins of 

 Rome. I have wandered among the gloomy and wasting remains 

 of a power and a culture that flourished nineteen centuries 

 before. I have gone down into the excavations, and seen marble 

 relics disentombed from beneath thirty feet of the accumulated 

 debris of ages. I have groped my way under ground through 

 dark and dripping passages that were once the gay and airy halls 

 of a palace. But I must confess to you that I have failed to be 

 impressed as I ought with the mighty changes, the awful de- 

 struction which these ruins would indicate. They are so encom- 

 passed and crowded upon by modern improvements, so carefully 

 repaired and abutted by recent masonry, so evidently kept for 

 show T , that my imagination could not get beyond the eager lives 

 and the begging hands that are ever reaching down from the 

 New Rome into the Old Rome. I do not say this to find fault. 

 It is commendable to preserve, by all means and at any sacrifice, 

 treasures as unique as these. But it is none the less true that 

 the modern surroundings and appliances, and papal tablets, and 

 the devices of the artful showmen, destroy the illusion of 

 antiquity and the impression of overwhelming vicissitudes. 



To get away from this influence, I have climbed the Capitol 

 Hill, and stood on the brow of the lonely Tarpeian ledge, the 



