There is something awful in this scene, to see on one side of the stair-case the conflagration well executed; on the other, strong marks of the very fire which burnt so many ages ago; for there can be no doubt, but that the Bronze plate then stood in the _Roman Hotel de Ville_, and was burnt down with it, because it was dug up among the refuse of the old city on the mountain called _Fourvire_, on the other side of the river, where the original city was built.--In cutting the letters on this large plate of Bronze, they have, to gain room, made no distance between the words, but shewn the division only by a little touch thus < with the graver; and where a word eroded with a C, or G, they have put the touch within the concavity of the letter, otherwise it is admirably well executed. Upon entering into the long gallery above stairs, you are shewn the late King and Queen's pictures at full length, surrounded with the heads of some hundred citizens; and in one corner of the room an ancient altar, the _Taurabolium_, dug up in 1704, near the same place where _Claudius's_ harangue was found; it is of common stone, well executed, about four feet high, and one foot and a half square; on the front of it is the bull's head, in demi relief, adorned with a garland of corn; on the right side is the _victimary_ knife[A] of a very singular form; and on the left the head of a ram, adorned as the bull's; near the point of the knife are the following words, _cujus factum est_; the top of the altar is hollowed out into the form of a shallow bason, in which, I suppose, incense was burnt and part of the victims. [A] The knife, which is cut in demi relief, on the _Taurobolium_, is crooked upon the back, exactly in the same manner, and form, as may be seen on some of the medals of the Kings of Macedonia. The Latin inscription under the bull's head, is very well cut, and very legible, by which it appears, that by the express order of CYBELE, the reputed mother of the Gods, for the honour and health of the Emperor _Antoninus Pius_, father of his country, and for the preservation of his children, children, _Lucius Æmilius Carpus_[B] received the horns of the bull, by the ministration of _Quintus Samius Secundus_, transported them to the Vatican, and consecrated, at his own expence, this altar and the head of the bull[C]; but I will send the inscription, and a model[D] of the altar, as soon as I can have it made, as I find here a very ingenious sculptor and modeller; who, to my great serprize, says no one has hitherto been taken from it. And here let me observe, lest I forget it, to say, that _Augustus_ lived three years in this city. [B] _Lucius Æmilius Carpus_ was a Priest, and a man of great riches: he was of the quality of _Sacrovir_, and probably one of the six Priests of the temple of Angustus.--_Sextumvir Augustalii_.