I think it contains the concentrated essence of spirit and of power. Let any one think of Rome, piled up in greatness, and grandeur, and glory--and a Wall round about--and in a moment his imagination is filled. What sort of a Wall? A garden wall to keep out orchard thieves--or a modern wall of a French or Italian town to keep out wine and meat, that they may come in at the gate and pay toll? I trow not. But a Wall against the World armed and assailing! Remember that Virgil saw Rome--and that his hearers did--and that in his eyes and theirs she was Empress of the inhabited Earth. She held and called herself such--it was written in her face and on her forehead. The visible, tangible splendour and magnificence meant this, or they meant nothing. The stone and lime said this--and Virgil's line says it, sedately and in plain, simple phrase, which yet is a Climax. SEWARD. As the dreaded Semiramis was flesh and blood--corporeal--made of the four elements--yet her soul and her empiry spake out of her--so spake they from the Face of Rome. NORTH. Ay, Seward--put these two things together--the Aspect that speaks Domination of the World, and the Wall that girds her with strength impregnable--and what more could you possibly demand from her Great Poet? SEWARD. Arx is a Citadel--we may say an Acropolis. Athens had one Arx--so had Corinth. One Arx is enough to one Queenly City. But this Queen, within her one Wall, has enclosed Seven Arces--as if she were Seven Queens. NORTH. Well said, Seward. The Seven Hills appeared--and to this day do--to characterise the Supremacy of Rome. The Seven-Hilled City! You seem to have said everything--the Seven Hills are as a seven-pillared Throne--and all that is in one line--given by Virgil. Delete it--no not for a thousand gold crowns. BULLER. Not for the Pigot Diamond--not for the Sea of Light. NORTH. Imagine Romulus tracing the circuit on which the walls were to rise of his little Rome--the walls ominously lustrated with a brother's blood. War after war humbles neighbouring town after town, till the seas that bathe, and the mountains that guard Italy, enclose the confederated Republic. It is a step--a beginning. East and West, North and South, flies the Eagle, dipping its beak in the blood of battle-fields. Where it swoops, there fanning away the pride, and fame, and freedom of nations, with the wafture of its wings. Kingdoms and Empires that were, are no more than Provinces; till the haughty Roman, stretching out the fact to the limits of his ambitious desires, can with some plausibility deceive himself, and call the edges of the Earth the boundaries of his unmeasured Dominion. SEWARD. "O Italy! Italy! would Thou wert stronger or less beautiful!"--was the mournful apostrophe of an Italian Poet, who saw, in the latter ages, his refined but enervated countrymen trampled under the foot of a more martial people from far beyond the Alps. NORTH.