The Mother of Empires—Weeps and Will not be Comforted—Nero’s Golden Palace—Ruined Greatness—Time, the Tomb-Builder—Papal Rome—The Last Siege—Self-Congratulations—Better Out-Look—The Seven-Hilled City—Vanity of Vanities—The Pantheon—Nature Slew Him—The Shrine of All Saints. CAESER and Cicero, Horace and Hadrian Claudius and Cataline, have all passed away, but “the mother of empires” is still enthroned upon her seven hill. “Still enthroned?” Yes, but her regal brow is no longer crowned with glory. From her right hand has fallen that golden scepter which once ruled the world, and from her left, the palm branch of victory which she once proudly waved on high. The luster has faded from her eyes. She sits to-day upon her seven hills, not as a queen, but as a mourner. She is as a widow in her weeds, as a mother broken-hearted and sad. Like Rachel of old she weeps for her children, she weeps and will not be comforted, for they are not. No, “they are not.” In vain the traveler searches for Julius Caesar and Augustus. He finds where the one fell at the base of Pompey’s statue, and where the ashes of the other were laid to rest in that splendid mausoleum. Nothing more. Only enough of that precious metal was rescued from “Nero’s golden palace” to gild one page of history; that is all. Modern Rome, compared with the imperial city, is nothing but a confused mass of “ruined greatness” thrown into the deep, dark chasm lying between the past and the present. “If we consider the present city as at all connected with the famous one of old,” says Hawthorne, “it is only because it is built over its grave.” Imperial Rome was a corpse that no survivor was mighty enough to bury. But Time—“Time the tomb-builder”—did not despair. Age after age passed by, each shaking the dust of his feet upon the ruined city, until now the “Rome of ancient days” is thirty feet below surface. Time silently boasts of his triumphs, but the day is coming when even Time himself will be swallowed up by eternity! Gibbon can tell you more about ancient Rome than I can. I shall therefore deal with the past only in so far as “the very dust of Rome is historic,” and that dust inevitably settles down upon my page and mixes with my ink. Until seventeen years ago Rome was an independent city; it belonged to no government and formed a part of no country; it was “Papal Rome.” In other words, it wholly belonged to, and was entirely controlled by, the Pope of Rome—the spiritual head—I had almost said the “spiritless head”—of the Catholic church. Thirty thousand French soldiers were stationed in Rome to protect the Pope and defend the city. When, in 1870, the Franco-German war broke out Napoleon the Third was compelled to recall his troops from Rome, that they might join the army against Germany. As soon as the French withdrew, Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, marched an army against the Papal city, saying, “Again, I swear the Eternal City shall be free!” [Illustration: THE COLOSSEUM, ROME.]