To him that hath shall be given, however; and to those that have not shall be taken away even the little that they have. And so it is that Rome fairly suffocates with its endless variety of artistic perfection--one glory almost dimming the other--while the rest of the world yearns for a crust of artistic beauty and has nothing. It is like the Milky Way for jewels as contrasted with those vast starless spaces that give no evidence of sidereal life. I wandered in this region of wonders attended by my motherly friend until it was late in the afternoon, and then we went for lunch. Being new to Rome, I was not satisfied with what I had seen, but struck forth again--coming next into the region of Santa Maria Maggiore and up an old stairway that had formed a part of a Medici palace now dismantled--only to find myself shortly thereafter and quite by accident in the vicinity of the Colosseum. I really had not known that I was coming to it, for I was not looking for it. I was following idly the lines of an old wall that lay in the vicinity of San Pietro in Vincoli when suddenly it appeared, lying in a hollow at the foot of a hill--the Esquiline. I was rejoicing in having discovered an old well that I knew must be of very ancient date, and a group of cypresses that showed over an ancient wall, when I looked--and there it was. It was exactly as the pictures have represented it--oval, many-arched, a thoroughly ponderous ruin. I really did not gain a suggestion of the astonishing size of it until I came down the hill, past tin cans that were lying on the grass--a sign of the modernity that possesses Rome--and entered through one of the many arches. Then it came on me--the amazing thickness of the walls, the imposing size and weight of the fragments, the vast dignity of the uprising flights of seats, and the great space now properly cleared, devoted to the arena. All that I ever knew or heard of it came back as I sat on the cool stones and looked about me while other tourists walked leisurely about, their Baedekers in their hands. It was a splendid afternoon. The sun was shining down in here; and it was as warm as though it were May in Indiana. Small patches of grass and moss were detectable everywhere, growing soft and green between the stones. The five thousand wild beasts slaughtered in the arena at its dedication, which remained as a thought from my high-school days, were all with me. I read up as much as I could, watching several workmen lowering themselves by ropes from the top of the walls, the while they picked out little tufts of grass and weeds beginning to flourish in the earthy niches. Its amazing transformations from being a quarry for greedy popes by whom most of its magnificent marbles were removed, to its narrow escape from becoming a woolen-mill operated by Sixtus V, were all brooded over here. It was impossible not to be impressed by the thought of the emperors sitting on their especial balcony; the thousands upon