'Rome will soon be but one house. Go to Veios, citizens! if you can be sure that this house will not include even Veios itself.' The Seven Hills are far less lofty now than when they deserved the title of steep mountains; modern Rome being forty feet higher than its predecessor, and the valleys which separated them almost filled up by ruins; but what is still more strange, two heaps of shattered vases have formed new hills, Cestario and Testacio. Thus, in time, the very refuse of civilization levels the rock with the plain, effacing, in the moral as in the material world, all the pleasing inequalities of nature. Three other hills, Janiculum, Vaticanus, and Mario, not comprised in the famous seven, give so picturesque an air to Rome; and afford such magnificent views from her interior, as perhaps no other city can command. There is so remarkable a mixture of ruins and new buildings, of fair fields and desert wastes, that one may contemplate Rome on all sides, and ever find fresh beauties. Oswald could not weary of feasting his gaze from the elevated point to which Corinne had led him. The study of history can never act on us like the sight of that scene itself. The eye reigns all powerfully over the soul. He now believed in the old Romans, as if he had lived amongst them. Mental recollections are acquired by reading; those of imagination are born of more immediate impressions, such as give life to thought, and seem to render us the witnesses of what we learn. Doubtless we are annoyed by the modern dwellings which intrude on these wrecks, yet a portico beside some humble roof, columns between which the little windows of a church peep out, or a tomb that serves for the abode of a rustic family, so blends the grand with the simple, and affords us so many agreeable discoveries, as to keep up continual interest. Everything is common-place and prosaic in the generality of European towns; and Rome, more frequently than any other, presents the sad aspect of misery and degradation; but all at once some broken column, or half-effaced bas-relief, or a few stones, bound together by indestructible cement, will remind you that there is in man an eternal power, a divine spark, which he ought never to weary of fanning in his own breast, and reluming in those of others. The Forum, whose narrow inclosure has been the scene of so many wondrous events, is a striking proof of man's moral greatness. When in the latter days of Rome, the world was subjected to inglorious rulers, centuries passed from which history could scarce extract a single feat. This Forum, the heart of a circumscribed town, whose natives fought around it against the invaders of its territories--this Forum, by the recollections it retraces, has been the theme of genius in every age. Eternal honors to the brave and free, who thus vanquish even the hearts of posterity!