To take the natural or lively Shape of an Herb. FROST ST take the leaf you would copy, and gently rub the veins on the ack-file of t, with a pece of leg rofne fuch like matter, fo as to rule them 2 lttle; afterWar's ver the fane ise gently with lineed oil, and ten prifs it hard upon a piece of the paper; and you wi have the, crfect à gure of the lea, with every vein in a joftly expreffed. This impreffion being afterwards coloured, will feem truly narol, and is a moft fetul methed for fuch as would wish to prefervé plants. に ANTI. ANTIQUITIES. Antiquities of Rome, containing, among other curious articles, an Hiftorical Differtation on the Common Sewers of that City. From Grofley's Obfervations on Italy. T every ftep in Rome, you or fome ruins, relative to facts the more interefting, as on them it was that the eyes of the mind became opened in its earliest studies. Rome is the firft world that was known to us, and a world to the embellishment of which hiftory, eloquence, poetry, and all the moft, ornamental arts, have emulously exerted themselves; civitas, in qua nemo hofpes nif Barbarus; a city, where they only are ftrangers who are ftrangers to literature, and to all knowledge, either ferious or polite; and who never heard di quelli omaccioni che vi habitarono, di quei Republiconi liberi, finceri e d'animo veremente Romano, of thofe great men, of thofe free, honeft, and bold republicans, whofe fouls were intirely Roman. Movemur enim, nefcio quo pacto, faid Cicero, locis ipfis in quibus eorum quos admiramur adfunt veftigia. Indeed, where is that imagination which is not affected at the first fight of that capital, fo long the feat of univerfal empire, to which were led in triumph the kings and fpoils of thofe nations who now think themfelves invincible, and which ftill, in many refpects, is poffeffed of the empire, and of the eternity, annexed to the deftiny of Rome! The modern capitol, in its prefent appearance, has been erected on the foundations of the ancient. Michael Angelo, the author of the plan, has spread all over the three bodies ments and avenues, that grandeur and majesty, by which fuch an edifice fhould be diftingufhed. The night which followed the poffeffo, I faw all the outward parts of thefe buildings illuminated in the Roman manner; that is, with flambeaux of white wax. The halls, the fquare, and its avenues, fwarmed with people from the city and the neighbouring country, whom the ceremony had drawn to Rome. The defcendants of the Sabines, of the Equi, of the Volici, &c. were there with their children and wives, in all their finery and peculiar dreffes, very becoming and fmart, and an infinite variety; all animated with that free open hilarity, little of which is to be found among people of Rome, nor in general among the inhabitants of cities; and making up to thofe whom they thought moft able to explain to them the fine things which they faw, and most of them for the first time; almoft all of a fine ftature, well fhaped, and in their air and carriage that pleasing ease and freedom, which, in the Italian ladies, is generally ftified by art, tametfi bona eft Natura. the By the illuminations, the two wings along the fquare of the capitol appeared to me not precifely perpendicular to the main body from which they are detached: it feemed as if, at their extremities facing the town, they inclined towards the fquare, thefe extremities intercepting the fight of the illumination. This flight irregularity I had not perceived by day-light. 'The architect, to be fure, was forced to it by the irregularity of the ground; or perhaps it might only be an optical deception. or I had heard, and had even read in fome accounts, that the capitoline mount is at prefent almoft on a level with the ground of Rome; and fo it is, as to that part which faces the Forum Romanum, Campo Vaccino. This part, which was made of the fubftructions attributed to Tarquin, has been lowered, and the ground of the forum greatly raised, fo that they now communicate by a very gentle flope. The true Tarpeian rock ftill retains a great part of its ancient fteepnefs: it forms the outlet from the fquare between the right wing of the modern capitol and the main body. This outlet leads to the banks of the Tiber by a rugged declivity, and fo fteep as fcarce to be afcended without the help of one's hands. In a word, though the ground at the bottom be raised, any one thrown down from it would have good luck to efcape with his life. AUGUSTUS'S MAUSOLEUM. That any part of Auguftus's maufoleum ftill remains vifible, is owing to its folidity: mole fuâ fat. In its circular form, and pofition with regard to the Tiber, it was like Adrian's maufoleum, now the caftle of St. Angelo. The pyramids of Egypt gave the Romans their firft ideas of thofe huge funeral monuments, in the greater part of which they had likewife adopted the pyramidical form: Auguftus, we may fuppofe, thought the circular more analogous to the majefty of the fovereigns of the universe. The rudera of this maufoleum fhew it to have been an edifice not lefs grand than folid. The whole carcafs is ftill exifting in a round tower about forty feet diameter; the walls of which, in a part of the external furface, are ftill incrufted with thofe ftones, placed lozenge-wife, which the ancients called Opus reticulatum. The infide of this tower is every where perpendicular and of a piece; whereas the outfide is ftill divided into two ftories, the firft with a double wall of a prodigious thickness. The projecture of this wall was unquestionably a foccle, or bafis to the columns appertaining to the fecond ftory, which perhaps was of a flighter conftruction, and only with pilafters, of which no manner of veftiges are now remaining. The wall of this fecond ftory, which is ftill of a confiderable height, is crowned with a continual arbour, and fhaded by fome vines planted within the monument. The grapes of this vineyard, which was originally planted with the mufcadel vines of Alexandria, were then completely ripe. On this terrace I ufed to go and entertain myself with the profpect of Rome, and the country under the cannon of St. Angelo, and whilft eating of this. excellent fruit I meditated on the vanity of human grandeur. It would be very difficult to decide from Quantos ille virûm magnam Mävor- Campus aget gemitus, vel quæ, cum bere ruentem! tumulum præterla from the prefent condition of the the tomb intended by Virgil in places, whether the infide of this in thefe beautiful lines in the fixth monument was diftributed into book of the Æneid: niches for the urns in which were to be depofited the ashes of a family, which Auguftus, to be fure, flattered himself was to partake of the fuppofed eternity of his empire: if fo, its inward difpofition must have been the fame as that of the Columbarium in the Appian road, which was the receptacle for the afhes of all the freedmen of the Auguftan family. I have already faid that the inward wall is, throughout its whole circumference, perpendicular and fmooth; but at the foot of this wall, and under its double thicknefs, were vaults, ftill entire, and every where varnished with a kind of cement or red maftic, which has loft nothing either in its folidity, or the glofs of its colour. Thefe vaults, once perhaps the dormitories of the Marcelli, the Germanici,' the Agrippe, the Drufi, the Liviæ, the Octavia, and the firft Cæfars, that is, of fome of the greatest perfonages ever known in the whole univerfe, now is a lay-ftall for the dung and all other filth ufed in manuring the garden which has been made within the monument. The artists in building the maufolem had, by way of diftinction, a tomb for them in its neighbourhood, where has been found this infcription: D. M. ULPIO MARTIALI, I am furprised that fome antiquaries fhould have been fo far mistaken, as to make any other monument than this maufoleum 'First, this maufoleum faced the Campus Martius, which in Auguftus's time was ftill without the circuit of Rome. Secondly, it was between the Tiber and the Flaminian road which croffed the Campus Martius. Thirdly, Auguftus, according to Suetonius, had begun it in his fixth confulship; and Marcellus died in the eleventh confulfhip of his uncle, who reckoned his intermediate confulfhips by the years: now, fuppofing the building of this maufoleum to have taken up four or five years, it had been just finished when Marcellus died. On beholding thefe auguft ruins, the place of the Scipios tomb, the remains of the funeral monuments of fo many heroes, who raised Rome to fuch power and glory, it is natural for the mind to fall into that reflection, which they produced in Lucretius. Tu vero dubitabis et indignabere Borth front of Santa Maria Majore: the other is faid to be fill buried in the rubbish by which the ground of Rome has been fo prodigiously raised, efpecially in this .part. They were without hieroglyphics, and doubtless the very fame which, as Pliny informs us, were by Auguftus's order cut in the quarries of Upper Egypt. The many nionuments of this kind brought from Egypt to Rome, but afterwards thrown down from their pedestals, and the greater part of them fince fet up again by Sextus V. are the moft fingular tokens of the grandeur of this ancient capital of the univerfe. I thought it very ftrange that most of them fhould have been placed in the lobbies of the largest edifices, the proximity of which buries them, and deftroys a great part of their effect. The only one retaining its proper place is that in the fquare Del Popolo: the like advantages lay open to others; they should have been diftributed in the feveral fquares of Rome. I have had a very close view of that obelifk which Auguftus, in the beginning of his reign, erected to the fun in the centre of the Campus Martius. Being thrown down together with its bafe, it had for feveral ages lain buried under ruins, and afterwards under houfes built among thofe ruins. To fome it was part of the foundation; to others it was the cellar wall; and in feveral it had been the chimney back or hearth, by which laft ufe, of courfe, all the parts expofed to the fire for ages have been defaced. At last, Benedict XIV. clearing it of all thefe incumbrances, had a defign of fetting it up again: it is broken in four places; a common misfortune to thofe which Sixtus V. reitored to their honour. To repair the calcined part is a difficulty which Sixtus the Vth's architect had not to deal with: this however may perhaps be answered by a new polish or veneering. The hieroglyphics ftill vifible on all the found parts are in relievo, though, at first fight, they feem intagliatas; the fpace taken up by each figure being fo grooved, that the mott prominent parts of the relievo are lower than the furface of the block in which they feem enchafed; an expedient, no doubt, contrived for fecuring thefe parts of the relievo from the frictions which thofe enormous maffes mult have undergone in the feveral operations for the tranfportation of them, raifing them on the pedeftals, &c. Thefe hieroglyphics, it muft be obferved, are of a most excellent workmanfhip. Near the obelisk of the Campus Martius lies its bafe, an enormous cube of the fame granite as the obelifk, and on it an infeription in Roman letters, in the moit exact proportion; but the infcription itfelf is quite plain and artless, faying little more than that Auguftus, AIGUPTO CAPTA, dedicated that monument to the fun. I felt a pleafure in viewing this bafis and its infeription, from confidering that Virgil, Horace, and all the great men and wits of Auguftus's court, had once been taken up with the fame object. |