The wretched Emperor was surprised among | titude from his eyes, did he remain staring helpis poultry by that dreaded intelligence. He, lessly upon the fading landscape, in a stupor of too, hastened to the windows; and, looking forth, astonishment and dread; and, for the first time saw the army of avengers passing in contempt since he had possessed them, his flock of fowls his solitary fortress, and moving swiftly onward were left for that night untended by their mas toward defenseless Rome. Long after the dark-ter's hand. Bess had hidden the masses of that mighty mul

which we now write. But here, all analogy between the ancient and modern city ends. The houses that these walls were once scarcely wide enough to inclose, have long since vanished, and their modern successors occupy but a third of the space once allotted to the capital of the Empire.

THE perusal of the title to this chapter will, we fear, excite emotions of apprehension, rather than of curiosity, in the breasts of experienced readers. They will doubtless imagine that it is portentous of long rhapsodies on those wonders of Beyond the walls, immense suburbs stretched antiquity, the description of which has long since forth in the days of old. Gorgeous villas, luxubecome absolutely nauseous to them by incessant rious groves, temples, theaters, baths-interiteration. They will foresee wailings over the spersed by colonies of dwellings belonging to the Palace of the Caesars, and meditations among the lower orders of the people-surrounded the arches of the Colosseum, loading a long series of mighty city. Of these innumerable abodes, weary paragraphs to the very chapter's end; and, hardly a trace remains. The modern traveler, considerately anxious to spare their attention a as he looks forth over the site of the famous sub task from which it recoils, they will unanimously urbs, beholds, here and there, a ruined aqueduct, hurry past the dreaded desert of conventional re- or a crumbling tomb, tottering on the surface of fection, to alight on the first oasis that may pre-a pestilential marsh.

Flaminian Gate. Three great streets now lead from it toward the southern extremity of the city, and form with their tributaries the principal portion of modern Rome. On one side they are bounded by the Pincian Hill, on the other by the Tiber. Of these streets, those nearest the river occupy the position of the famous Campus Martius, those on the other side the ancient approaches to the gardens of Sallust and Lucullus, on the Pincian Mount.

sent itself, whether it be formed by a new division The present entrance to Rome by the Porta of the story, or suddenly indicated by the appear- del Popolo, occupies the same site as the ancient ance of a dialogue. Animated, therefore, by apprehensions such as these, we hasten to assure them, that in no instance will the localities of our story trench upon the limits of the well-worn Forum, or mount the arches of the exhausted Colosseum. It is with the beings, and not the buildings of old Rome, that their attention is to be occupied. We desire to present them with a picture of the inmost emotions of the times, of the living, breathing actions and passions of the people of the doomed Empire. Antiquarian topography and classical architecture we leave to abler pens, and resign to other readers.

It is, however necessary that the sphere in which the personages of our story are about to act, should be in some measure indicated, in order to facilitate the comprehension of their respective movements. That portion of the extinct city which we design to revive has left few traces of its existence in the modern town. Its sites are traditionary-its buildings are dust. The church rises where the temple once stood; and the wineshop now lures the passing idler where the bath invited his ancestor of old.

The walls of Rome are in extent, at the present day, the same as they were at the period of

On the opposite bank of the Tiber (gained by the Ponte St. Angelo, formerly the Pons Elius,) two streets pierced through an irregular and populous neighborhood, conduct to the modern Church of St. Peter. At the period of our story this part of the city was of much greater conse quence, both in size and appearance than it is at present, and led directly to the ancient Basilica of St. Peter, which stood on the same site as that now occupied by the modern edifice.

The events about to be narrated, occur entirely in the parts of the city just described. From the Pincian Hill, across the Campus Martius, over the Pons Elius, and on to the Basilica of St. Peter, the reader may be often invited to accompany us, but he will be spared all necessity of

penetrating familiar ruins, or mourning over the sepulchers of departed patriots.

Ere. however, we revert to former actors, or proceed to new characters, it will be requisite to people the streets that we here attempt to revive. By this process, it is hoped that the reader will gain that familiarity with the manners and customs of the Romans of the fifth century, on which the influence of this story mainly depends, and which we despair of being able to instil by a philosophical disquisition on the features of the age. A few pages of illustration will serve our purpose better, perhaps, than volumes of historical description. There is no more unerring index to the character of a people, than the streets of their cities.

It is near evening. In the widest part of the Campus Martius crowds of people are assembled before the gates of a palace. They are congregated to receive several baskets of provisions, distributed with ostentatious charity by the owner of the mansion. The incessant clamor and agitation of the impatient multitude, form a strange contrast to the stately serenity of the natural and artificial objects by which they are inclosed on all sides.

ship for which they were built, the hand of re form has as yet not ventured to doom them to ruin, or adapt them to Christian purposes. None venture to tread their once crowded colonnades No priest appears to give the oracles from thei doors-no sacrifices reek upon their naked altars Under their roofs, visited only by the light_that steals through their narrow entrances, stand unnoticed, unworshiped, unmoved, the mighty idols of old Rome. Human emotion, which made them Omnipotence once, has left them but stone now. The "Star in the East" has already dimmed the fearful halo which the devotion of bloodshed once wreathed round their forms. Forsaken and alone they stand but as the gloomy monuments of the greatest delusion ever organized by the ingenuity of man.

We have now, so to express it, exhibited the frame surrounding the moving picture, which we shall next attempt to present to the reader by mixing with the multitude before the palace gates.

This assembly resolved itself into three divisions: that collected before the palace steps, that loitering about the public baths, and that reposing in the shade of the groves. The first was of the most consequence in numbers, and of the The space they occupy is oblong in shape and greatest variety in appearance. Composed of of great extent in size. Part of it is formed by a rogues of the worst order from every quarter of turf walk shaded with trees, part by the paved the world, it might be said to present, in its genapproaches to the palace and the public baths eral aspect of numerical importance, the very which stand in its immediate neighborhood. sublime of degradation. Confident in their rude These two edifices are remarkable by their mag-union of common avidity, these worthy citizens nificent outward adornments of statues, and the vented their insolence on all objects, and in every elegance and number of the flights of steps, by direction, with a careless impartiality which would which they are respectively entered. With the have shamed the most victorious efforts of modern inferior buildings, the market-places and the gar- mobs. The hubbub of voices was perfectly feardens attached to them, they are sufficiently ex-ful. The coarse execrations of drunken Gauls, tensive to form the boundary of one side of the the licentious witticisms of effeminate Greeks, immediate view. The appearance of monotony the noisy satisfaction of native Romans, the clawhich might at other times be remarked in the morous indignation of irritable Jews; all sounded vastness and regularity of their white fronts, is, at together in one incessant chorus of discordant this moment, agreeably broken by several gaily-noises. Nor were the senses of sight and smell colored awnings, stretched over their doors and more agreeably assailed than the faculty of hearbalconies. The sun is now shining on them with ing, by this anomalous congregation. Immodest overpowering brightness; the metallic ornaments on their windows glitter like gems of fire; even the trees which form their groves, partake of the universal flow of light, and fail like the objects around them to offer to the weary eye either refreshment or repose.

Toward the north, the Mausoleum of Augustus, towering proudly up into the brilliant sky, at once attracts the attention. From its position, parts of this noble building are already in shade. Not a human being is visible on any part of its mighty galleries-it stands solitary and sublime, an impressive embodiment of the emotions which it was raised to represent.

On the side opposite the Palace and the Baths is the turf walk already mentioned. Trees, thickly planted and interlaced by vines, cast a luxurious shade over this spot. In their interstices, viewed from a distance, appear glimpses of gay dresses, groups of figures in repose, stands loaded with fruit and flowers, and innumerable white marble statues of fawns and wood-nymphs. From this delicious retreat the rippling of fountains is to be heard, occasionally interrupted by the rustling of leaves, or the plaintive cadences of the Roman flute.

youth and irreverent age; woman savage, man cowardly; the swarthy Ethiopian beslabbered with stinking oil; the stolid Briton begrimed with dirt; these, and a hundred other varying combinations, to be imagined rather than expressed, met the attention in every direction. To describe the odors exhaled by the heat, from this seething mixture of many pollutions, would be to force the reader to close the book; we prefer to return to the distribution which was the cause of this degrading tumult, and which consisted of small baskets of roasted meat, packed with common fruits and vegetables, and handed, or rather flung down to the mob by the servants of the nobleman who gave the feast. The people reveled in the abundance thus presented to them. They threw themselves upon it like wild beasts; they devoured it like hogs, or bore it off like plunderers; while secure in the eminence on which they were placed, the purveyors of this public banquet expressed their contempt for its noisy recipients, by holding their noses, stopping their ears, turning their backs, and other pantomimic

"Such was the respect which the Christian Emperors paid even to the prejudices of the Romans, that idols, when proscribed in the provinces, were still tole.

Southward, two Pagan temples stand in lonely rated in the capital, and allowed to occupy their rich grandeur among a host of monuments and tro- shrines, and sit enthroned in their deserted temples," phies. Although the laws now forbid the wor--Eustace's Classical Tour.

demonstrations of lofty and excessive disgust. These actions did not escape the attention of those members of the assembly who, having eaten their fill, were at leisure to make use of their tongues; and who showered an incessant storm of abuse on the heads of their benefactor's

retainers.

-See those fellows!" cried one; "they are the waiters at our feast, and they mock us to our faces! Down with the filthy kitchen thieves!" -Excellently well said, Davus!-but who is to approach them? They stink at this distance !?

-The rotten-bodied knaves have the noses of dogs and the carcases of goats."

Then came a chorus of voices-“ Down with them! Down with them!" In the midst of which an indignant freed-man advanced to rebake the mob, receiving, as the reward of his temerity, a shower of missiles and a volley of curses; after which he was thus addressed by a huge greasy butcher, hoisted on his companions' shoulders:

By the soul of the Emperor, could I get near you-you rogue !-I would quarter you with my ingers alone!-A grinning scoundrel that jeers a: others! A filthy flatterer that dirts the very ground he walks on. By the blood of the martyrs, should I fling the sweepings of the slaughter-house at him, he knows not where to get himself dried!”

-Thou rag of a man," roared a neighbor of the indignant butcher's, "dost thou frown upon the guests of thy master, the very scrapings of whose skin are worth more than thy whole cartase! It is easier to make a drinking vessel of the skull of a flea, than to make an honest man af such a villanous night-walker as thou art!" - Health and prosperity to our noble entertainer ! shouted one section of the grateful crowd as the last speaker paused for breath.

Death to all knaves of parasites !" chimed in another.

tion, one of the most important of the internal causes of the downfall of Rome.

The steps of the public baths were almost as crowded as the space before the neighboring building. Incessant streams of people, either entering or departing, poured over the broad flagstones of its marble colonnades. This concourse although composed in some parts of the sam class of people as that assembled before the pal. ace, presented a certain appearance of respecta bility. Here and there checkering the dusty monotony of masses of dirty tunics-might be discerned the refreshing vision of a clean robe, or the grateful indication of a handsome person. Little groups, removed as far as possible from the neighborhood of the noisy plebeians, were scattered about, either engaged in animated conversation, or listlessly succumbing to the lassitude induced by a recent bath. An instant's attention to the subject of discourse among the more active of those individuals, will aid us in pursuing our social revelations.

The loudest voice among the speakers at this particular moment, proceeded from a tall thin sinister-looking man, who was haranguing a little group of listeners with great vehemence and fluency.

"I tell you, Socius," said he, turning suddenly upon one of his companions, "that unless new slave-laws are made, my calling is at an end. My patron's estate requires incessant supplies of these wretches. I do my best to satisfy the demand, and the only result of my labor is, that the miscreants either endanger my life, or fly with impunity to the gangs of robbers infesting our woods."

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Truly I am sorry for you, but what alteration would you have made in the slave-laws?"

"I would empower bailiffs to slay upon th spot all slaves whom they thought disorderly, as an example to the rest!"

"What would such a permission avail you? These creatures are necessary, and such a law -Honor to the citizens of Rome !" roared a would exterminate them in a few months. Can third party with modest enthusiasm.

- Give that freed-man our bones to pick!" screamed an urchin from the outskirts of the crowd.

This ingenious piece of advice was immediately followed; and the populace gave vent to a shout of triumph as the unfortunate freed-man, scared by a new volley of missiles, retreated with ignominious expedition to the shelter of his patron's

halls.

you not break their spirit with labor, bind their strength with chains, and vanquish their obstinacy with dungeons?"

"All this I have done, but they die under the discipline or escape from their prisons. I have now three hundred slaves on my patron's estates. Against those born on my lands I have little to urge. Many of them, it is true, begin the day with weeping and end it with death; but for the most part, thanks to their diurnal allowance of In the slight and purified specimen of the "ta- stripes, they are tolerably submissive. It is ble talk" of a Roman mob, which we have here with the wretches that I have been obliged to ventured to exhibit, the reader will perceive that purchase from prisoners of war and the people of extraordinary mixture of servility and insolence revolted towns, that I am so dissatisfied. Punishwhich characterized not only the conversation, ments have no effect on them, they are incessantly but the actions of the lower orders of society, at indolent, sulky, desperate. It was but the other the period of which we write. Oppressed and day that ten of them poisoned themselves while degraded on the one hand, to a point of misery at work in the fields, and fifty more after setting scarcely conceivable to the public of the present day; the poorer classes in Rome were, on the other, invested with such a degree of moral license, and permitted such an extent of political privilege, as flattered their vanity into blinding their sense of indignation. Slaves in their season of servitude, masters in their hours of recreation, they presented as a class one of the most amazing social anomalies ever existing in any nation; and formed, in their dangerous and artificial posi-it

fire to a farm-house while my back was turned, escaped to join a gang of their companions who are now robbers in the woods. These fellows, however, are the last of the troop who will perpetrate such offenses. With the concurrence of my patron, I have adopted a plan that will henceforth tame them efficiently !”

"Are you at liberty to communicate it?"

By the keys of St. Peter, I wish I could see practiced on every estate in the land! It is

this--Near a sulphur lake at some distance from | you so ardently hope for. Think of the degra my farm-house, is a tract of marshy land, over- dation of being conquered by barbarians!" spread here and there by the ruins of an ancient "I am the exile of my country's privileges, slaughter-house. I propose to dig in this place what interest have I in upholding her honor?several subterranean caverns, each of which if honor she really has!" replied the first shall be capable of holding twenty men. Here speaker. my mutinous slaves shall sleep after their day's labor. The entrances shall be closed until morning with a large stone, on which I will have engraven this inscription:- These are the dormitories invented by Gordian, bailiff of Saturninus, a nobleman, for the reception of refractory slaves."

"Your plan is ingenious; but I suspect your slaves, so insensible to hardships are the brutal herd, will sleep as unconcernedly in their new dormitories as in their old."

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Sleep! It will be a most original species of repose that they will taste there! The stench of the sulphur lake will breathe Sabean odors for them over a couch of mud! Their anointing oil will be the slime of attendant reptiles! Their liquid perfumes will be the stagnant oozings from their chamber roof! Their music will be the croaking of frogs and the humming of gnats; and as for their adornments, why they will be decked forth with head garlands of twining worms, and movable brooches of cockchafers and toads! Tell me now, most sagacious Socius, do you still think that amidst such luxuries as these, my slaves will sleep?"

No; they will die."

"Nay! Your expressions are too severe. You are too discontented to be just.”

"Am I? Hear me for a moment, and you will change your opinion. You see me now by my bearing and appearance superior to yonder plebeian herd. You doubtless think that I live at my ease in the world, that I can feel no anxiety for the future about my bodily necessities. What would you say were I to tell you that if I want another meal, a lodging for to-night, a fresh robe for to-morrow, I must rob or flatter some great man to gain them. Yet so it is. I am hopeless, friendless, destitute. In the whole of the empire there is not an honest calling in which I can take refuge. I must become a pander or a parasite,— a hired tyrant over slaves, or a chartered groveler beneath nobles, if I would not starve miserably in the streets, or rob openly in the woods! This is what I am. Now listen to what I was. I was born free. I inherited from my father a farm, which he had successfully defended from the encroachments of the rich, at the expense of his comfort, his health, and his life. When I succeeded to his lands, I determined to protect them in my time, as studiously as he had defended them in his. I worked unintermittingly: I enlarged my house, I improved my fields, I increased my flocks. One after another, I despised the threats, and defeated the wiles, of my noble neighbors, who desired possession of my estate to swell their own territorial grandeur. In process of time 1 married, and had a child. I believed that I was picked out from my race as a fortunate man,when one night I was attacked by robbers: slaves made desperate by the cruelty of their wealthy masters. They ravaged my corn-fields, they deprived me of my flocks. When I demanded redress, I was told to sell my lands to those who could defend them,-to those rich nobles whose tyranny had organized the band of wretches who As the worthy Gordian stalked off, big with had spoiled me of my possessions, and to whose the dignity of his new projects, the gestures and fraud-gotten treasures the government were well tones of a man who formed one of a little group pleased to grant that protection which they had collected in a remote part of the portico he was denied to my honest hoards. In my pride I deabout to quit, attracted his attention. Curiosity termined that I would still be independent. formed as conspicuous an ingredient in this man's planted new crops. With the little remnant of character as cruelty. He stole behind the base my money I hired fresh servants, and bought of a neighboring pillar; and as the frequent re- more flocks. I had just recovered from my first petition of the word "Goths" struck his ear, disaster, when I became the victim of a second. (the report of that nation's impending invasion I was again attacked. This time we had arms, having by this time reached Rome,) he carefully and we attempted to defend ourselves. My wife disposed himself to listen with the most implicit was slain before my eyes; my house was burnt attention to the speaker's voice.

"You are again wrong. They will curse and rave perhaps, but that is of no consequence. They will work the longer above ground to shorten the term of their repose beneath. They will wake at an instant's notice, and come forth at a moment's signal. I have no fear of their dying!"

"Do you leave Rome soon?"

"I go this evening, taking with me such a supply of trustworthy assistants as will enable me to execute my plan without delay. Farewell, Socius !"

"Most ingenious of bailiffs, I bid you farewell!"

to the ground; I myself only escaped, mutilated "Goths!" cried the man in the stern, concen- with wounds; my child soon afterward pined trated accents of despair. "Is there one among and died. I had no wife, no offspring, no house, us to whom this report of their advance upon no money. My fields still stretched round me, but Rome does not speak of hope rather than of I had none to cultivate them. My walls still dread? Have we a chance of rising from the tottered at my feet, but I had none to rear them degradation forced on us by our superiors until again, none to inhabit them if they were reared. this den of heartless triflers and shameless cow- My father's lands were now become a wilderness ards is swept from the very earth that it pol- to me. I was too proud to sell them to my rich lutes ?" neighbor; I preferred to leave them before I saw them the prey of a tyrant, whose rank had triumphed over my industry, and who is now able to boast that he can travel over ten leagues of se natorial property, untainted by the propinquity o

"Your sentiments on the evils of our condition are undoubtedly most just," observed a fat, pompous man, to whom the preceding remarks had been addressed, but I cannot desire the reform

husbandman's farm. Houseless, homeless, bailiff. The cries of the multitude had scarcely friendless, I have come to Rome alone in my af- died away in the distance, as they followed the fiction, helpless in my degradation! Do you departing carriage, when the voices of two men, wonder now that I am careless about the honor pitched to a low, confidential tone, reached his of my country? I would have served her with ear from the opposite side of the pillar. He my life and my possessions when she was worthy peeped cautiously round and saw that they were of my service, but she has cast me off, and I care priests. not who conquers her. I say to the Goths-with thousands who suffer the same tribulation that I now undergo-Enter our gates! Level our palaces to the ground! Confound, if you will, in one common slaughter, us that are victims, with those who are tyrants! Your invasion will bring new lords to the land, they cannot crush it more, they may oppress it less. Our posterity may gain their rights by the sacrifice of lives that our country has made worthless. Romans though we are, we are ready to suffer and submit!"

He stopped; for by this time he had lashed himself into fury. His eyes glared, his cheeks flushed, his voice rose. Could he then have seen the faintest vision of the destiny that future ages had in store for the posterity of the race that now suffered throughout civilized Europe, like himcould he have imagined how, in after years, the *middle class,” despised in his day, was to rise to privilege and power; to hold in its just hands the balance of the prosperity of nations; to crush oppression and regulate rule; to soar in its mighty fight above thrones and principalities, and ranks and riches, apparently obedient, but really commanding could he but have foreboded this, what a light must have burst upon his gloom, what a hope must have soothed him in his despair!

To what further extremities his anger might have carried him, to what proceedings the indignant Gordian, who still listened from his concealment, might have had recourse, it is difficult to say; for the complaints of the ill-fated landholder and the cogitations of the authoritative bailiff were alike suddenly suspended, by an uproar raging at this moment round a carriage which had just emerged from the palace we have elsewhere described.

"What an eternal jester is that Pomponius," said one voice, "he is going to receive absolution, and he journeys in his chariot of state, as if he were preparing to celebrate his triumph, instead of to confess his sins!"

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"Has he committed then a fresh imprudence?" Alas, yes! For a senator he is dreadfally wanting in caution! A few days since in a fit of passion, he flung a drinking cup at one of his female slaves. The girl died on the spot, and her brother, who is also in his service, threatened immediate vengeance. To prevent disagreeable consequences to his body, Pomponius has sent the fellow to his estates in Egypt; and now, from the same precaution for the welfare of his soul, he goes to demand absolution from our holy and beneficent Church."

"I am afraid these incessant absolutions granted to men who are too careless even to make a show of repentance for their crimes, will prejudice us with the people at large."

"Or what consequence are the sentiments of the people while we have their rulers on our side! Absolution is the sorcery that binds these libertines of Rome to our will. We know what converted Constantine-politic flattery and ready absolution; the people will tell you it was the sign of the Cross."

"It is true this Pomponius is rich, and may increase our revenues, but still I fear the indig nation of the people."

"Fear nothing, think how long their old institutions imposed on them, and then doubt, if you can, that we may shape them to our wishes as we will. Any deceptions will be successful with a mob, if the instrument employed to forward them be a religion."

This vehicle looked one mass of silver. Em- The voices ceased. Gordian, who still cherished broidered silk curtains fluttered from its windows, a vague intention of denouncing the fugitive landgold ornaments studded its polished sides, and it holder to the senatorial authorities, employed the held no less a person than the nobleman who had liberty afforded to his attention by the silence of feasted the people with baskets of meat. This the priests in turning to look after his intended fact had become known to the rabble before the victim. To his surprise he saw that the mau palace gates. Such an opportunity of showing had left the auditors to whom he had before their exultation in their bondage, their real ser- addressed himself, and was engaged in earnest vility in their imaginary independence, was not conversation in another part of the portico, with to be lost, and accordingly they let loose such a an individual who seemed to have recently torrent of clamorous gratitude on their enter- joined him, and whose appearance was so retainer's appearance, that a stranger in Rome markable that the bailiff had moved a few steps would have thought the city in revolt. They forward to gain a nearer view of him, when he leapt, they ran, they danced round the prancing was once more arrested by the voices of the horses, they flung their empty baskets into the air and patted approvingly their "fair round Irresolute for an instant to which party to bellies." From every side, as the carriage moved devote his unscrupulous attention, he returned on, they gained fresh recruits and acquired new mechanically to his old position. Ere long, how importance. The timid fled before them, the ever, his anxiety to hear the mysterious communoisy shouted with them, the bold plunged into nications proceeding between the landholder and their ranks, and the constant burden of their re- his friend overbalanced his delight in penetrating joicing chorus was-" Health to the noble Pom- the theological secrets of the priests. He turned ponius! Prosperity to the senators of Rome, who once more, but, to his astonishment, the objects feast us with their food and give us the freedom of his curiosity had disappeared. He stepped to of their theaters! Glory to Pomponius! Glory the outside of the portico and looked for them in to the senators!" every direction, but they were nowhere to be Fate seemed on this day to take pleasure in seen. Peevish and disappointed, he returned as pampering the insatiable curiosity of Gordian, the a last resource to the pillar where he had left the

priests.