272 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



phase of Roman life. The grounds are most beautiful, adorned 

 with many kinds of trees, and shrubs, and flowers. Fountains 

 spring from marble basins, in the midst of clumps of acacias and 

 pines, roses and laurels, while the statues of the great men of 

 Rome, like Scipio, Pompey, Caesar, Cicero and Tacitus, and the 

 more modern Dante, Ariosto, Galileo and others, adorn the walks. 

 This Pincian mount was once the garden of Sallust, and here 

 stood the villa of Lucullus, and from a heap of ruins. Napoleon 

 the Great transformed it into a most delightful park, from which 

 we look down upon the Tiber, the temple of Vesta, and many 

 other objects, around which cluster the crowded memories of 

 the past. 



" There goes the princess Colonna," said our guide, as he 

 pointed to an elegantly dressed lady in her carriage. The car- 

 dinals were out for an afternoon walk, and many other high 

 dignitaries of the church. 



•We mounted to the dome of Saint Peter's and lingered long 

 gazing over this wide region, and then descended to the interior 

 of the dome and tried the wonderful echo, where the slightest 

 whisper can be heard on the opposite side, a distance of many 

 feet. The Vatican contains vast collections of antique statuary, 

 found among the ruins of ancient Rome, as well as the paintings 

 of the great masters, but I cannot dwell upon them here. 



The Pantheon is older than the Colosseum itself, and still 

 retains its ancient splendor, though robbed of much that once 

 distinguished it. Tiiis pagan temple was built by Agrippa, and 

 presented by him to Augustus. Its walls are nearly twenty 

 feet in thickness, and that accounts for their having withstood 

 so well the great conflagration of Nero and the numerous others 

 of a more recent date, during the invasions from the north. It 

 stands now very much as it stood when the consuls, the empe- 

 rors, and the scholars of ancient Rome beheld it, though one of 

 the Christian popes tore down the thousand statues in brass 

 which stood on the great circumference of the cornice and the 

 brazen gates, to decorate Saint Peter's, and to cast into cannon 

 for the castle of Saint Angelo. But more than two thousand 

 years have tried in vain, with all the aid of the destructive 

 elements and the ruthless hands of man, to destroy it. 



The Colosseum has furnished the marble for many a palace of 

 modern Rome, but it still stands the most impressive monument 



