It required an early dinner, and a long siesta afterwards, in our darkened, water-sprinkled rooms, to resuscitate us to any fresh exertion; but as the Ave Maria approached, we were sufficiently refreshed to climb the Quirinal Mount, in order to witness one of our few remaining Roman sunsets from its summit. We pass, to reach it, down the Via Felice, across the Piazza Barberini, and up the steepest hill in Rome, by the Via Quatro Fontani; from its brow, we look momentarily down on the Viminal side, to Santa Maria Maggiore, with all the other objects that present themselves to view from this spot; and presently find ourselves at the end of that long street of convents and churches, which issues at its other extremity in the Porta Pia, forming a straight line of nearly a mile and a half in length; and here we are in that well-known Piazza, which is bounded on one side by the Papal Palace and its gardens; on the opposite by the Colonna and its ruin-scattered grounds; backed by the palaces Ruspigliosi and Guardi Nobile, and an open view of the Campagna in front. No position could have been better chosen than this, for the display of the two finest colossal statues in the world; they stand in the midst, with the Theban Obelisk and the Roman Fountain between them, all blending into a matchless group. As we look from this lofty vantage ground, high over the roofs of Rome, we see the sun preparing to take farewell of us, behind the ridge of Monte Mario; but the convent walls on the height where we stand enjoy his beams a few minutes longer, though they have ceased to strike upon the city at its foot. Soon, however, he touches the horizon and begins to dip; the palace windows behind us blaze away as if for an illumination; and when the last golden speck has disappeared from the ridge, the whole landscape changes colour; the yellow tint is instantaneously transformed into a rosy light, deepening, and becoming more and more beautiful every minute, till the short southern twilight is over; the somewhat harsh outline of the obelisk is softened during this brief point of time; a gentle air, (the breath of evening,) fans our cheek; fire-flies light their lamps all around, and night suddenly overtakes us,--"_ruit nox_." Scarcely ten minutes have elapsed since we stood here, and already the dilated nostril and meaning eye of the restive coursers, then so strikingly exhibited, are scarcely any longer distinguishable; while the dark curvilinear outline of their bodies, and the towering forms of "the great Twin Brethren" at their heads, gain not only in stature, but in grandeur too, by this very indistinctness,--the obscure being a well-known element of the sublime,--and the eye becomes more and more conscious of their vast proportions the less it is enabled to enter minutely into details. HIGHLAND DESTITUTION.