Corinne and Nevil employed two days in wandering over the Seven Hills. The Romans formerly held a fête in their honor: it is one of Rome's original beauties to be thus embraced, and patriotism naturally loved to celebrate such a peculiarity. Oswald and Corinne having already viewed the Capitoline Hill recommenced their course at Mount Palatinus. The palace of the Cæsars, called the Golden Palace, once occupied it entirely. Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero, built its four sides: a heap of stones, overgrown with shrubs, is all that now remains. Nature reclaimed her empire over the works of man; and her fair flowers atone for the fall of a palace. In the regal and republican eras, grandly as towered their public buildings, private houses were extremely small and simple. Cicero, Hortensius, and the Grachii, dwelt on this eminence, which hardly sufficed, in the decline of Rome, for the abode of a single man. In the latter ages the nation was but a nameless mass, designated solely by the eras of its masters. The laurels of war and that of the arts cultivated by peace, which were planted at the gate of Augustus, have both disappeared. Some of Livia's baths are left. You are shown the places wherein were set the precious stones, then lavished on walls or ceilings, and paintings of which the colors are still fresh: their delicacy rendering this yet more surprising. If it be true that Livia caused the death of Augustus, it was in one of these chambers that the outrage must have been conceived. How often may his gaze have been arrested by these pictures, whose tasteful garlands still survive? The master of the world betrayed in his nearest affections! what thought his old age of life and its vain pomps? Did he reflect on his glory, or its victims? Hoped he or feared a future world? Might not the last thought, which reveals all to man, stray back to these halls, the scenes of his past power?[1] Mount Aventinus affords more traces of Rome's early day than any of its sister hills. Exactly facing the palace constructed by Tiberius is seen a wreck of the temple to Liberty, built by the father of the Grachii; and at the foot of this ascent stood that dedicated to the Fortune of Men, by Servius Tullius, to thank the gods that, though born a slave, he had become a king. Without the walls of Rome another edifice rose to the Fortune of woman, commemorating the influence exerted by Venturia over Coriolanus.