LEAVE OF ABSENCE. 113 



on what, to expend his sixpence. Well, let us take things as 

 they turn up without consideration. I have just come from a 

 moonlight stroll to the Colosseum, down the Corso, through the 

 Via del Foro ; then by the base of the Capitoline Hill, through 

 the Forum Romanum, under the Arch of Titus ; walking on the 

 Via Sacra, passing the Caesars' Palace and the Temple of Peace, 

 and so coming at last to the Gladiators' Bloody Circus. The 

 night was everything that one could wish, perfectly still — the 

 moon nearly full and dazzlingly bright, the sky Roman, and 

 the city silent as the desert. Just as we passed the Forum, an 

 owl on the Temple of Peace began hooting to another perched 

 amid the confused piles of ruins, where the Caesars' Palace stood, 

 " who to him made answer meet." How fortunate ! enough to 

 make us compose, had we the romance of our young days ! 

 There were no other sounds. Eome at night is perfectly still, 

 and the streets nearly empty, save of tourists. The Colosseum 

 has far surpassed all my preconceived notions — its vastness, and 

 the perfect beauty of its present ruined state, combined with the 

 recollection of its former grandeur, render it most imposing. 

 About half the outer walls, which are of cut stone of a reddish 

 brown colour, has been carted away to build palaces and 

 churches ; but what remains is wonderfully perfect and fresh, 

 and the dismantled part is now so beautifully clothed with 

 shrubs, mosses, and flowers, that it perhaps adds to the beauty 

 of the whole. The late popes have taken much care to preserve 

 what remains by building buttresses and repairing broken 

 arches. This has been done without at all disfiguring the 

 building ; these modern props being of the same stone and 

 architecture as the ancient. And what be the shrubs and kinds 

 of flowers that act the part of the robins in the " Babes in the 

 Wood," &c. ? — shining-leaved laurustinus, ivy, cypress, acanthus 

 (looking more beautiful than I ever saw it ; it makes a glorious 

 old-wall plant), wallflower, a beautiful purple anemone, and a 

 great variety of smaller plants, many unknown to me. But I 

 have omitted one of which there is great abundance under the 

 arches — Adiantum-cap-veneris, which makes a most lovely 

 drapery. With such softening as these plants give to the 

 decayed walls, the unsightliness of the ruin completely vanishes, 

 and one heartily subscribes to Byron's expression, " ruinous 

 perfection." The more you see of it, the more you are struck 



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