When Oswald and Corinne had reached the top of the tower of the Capitol, she showed him the Seven Hills; the city of Rome bounded at first by Mount Palatine, then by the walls of Servius Tullius, which enclose the Seven Hills; lastly by the walls of Aurelian, which still serve as an enclosure to the greatest part of Rome. Corinne recalled to mind the verses of Tibullus and Propertius[12], who are proud of the weak beginnings whence has sprung the mistress of the world. Mount Palatine was in itself the whole of Rome for some time, but afterwards the palace of the Emperors filled the space which had before sufficed for a nation. A poet, in the time of Nero, made the following epigram upon this occasion.[13] _Rome will soon be only a palace. Go to Veii Romans, if this palace does not now occupy Veii itself._ The Seven Hills are infinitely less elevated than formerly when they deserved the name of the Steep Mountains. Modern Rome is raised forty feet above the ancient city. The valleys which separated the hills are almost filled up by time with the ruins of edifices; but what is more singular yet, a heap of broken vases has raised two new hills;[14] and we almost discover an image of modern times, in this progress, or rather this wreck of civilisation, levelling mountains with valleys, effacing in the moral as well as the physical world all those beautiful inequalities produced by nature. Three other hills,[15] not comprised in the seven famous ones, give something picturesque to the city of Rome, which perhaps is the only city that of itself, and in its own boundaries, offers the most magnificent points of observation. It presents such a remarkable mixture of ruins, edifices, fields and deserts, that we may contemplate Rome on all sides, and always find a striking picture in the opposite perspective.