“So after all my misgivings, doubts, and hesitations, here I am really in Rome, and already profoundly interested in the place. We arrived on Friday evening and put up at a new hotel opposite the Russie, where alone we could find a resting-place; and to-day we have moved into some lodgings at the top of one of the highest houses on the top of the highest hill in Rome. We have been triumphing in the thought of our fresh air, but the conceit of some of us has been a little diminished this morning by being told that there is nothing so unwholesome in Rome, that nothing is so healthy there as a low and crowded situation, and that no Roman would accept our privileges for love or money; but this we keep to ourselves. “On Saturday K— and I went to St. Peter’s, and my expectations were more than realised by the magnificent area and perfect proportions. There is something most solemnising in the magnitude and vast open space perfectly uninterrupted by any arrangement for worshippers, and a second visit this afternoon has only confirmed my first impressions. I thought to-day that it appeared to have grown since I saw it on Saturday. “Then we went to the Forum, which I have been feasting upon again to-day. I imagine that the excavations have been extended since you were here, but I doubt whether in the Forum much has been discovered. And really nothing is wanting. But how strange that the villain Phocas, whose edict has led to so much discussion, should be the one whose one column should stand out by itself in the best preservation of them all! But all one’s ideas of human greatness are dwarfed by the Coliseum. What must the place have been when crowded with people! It must have contained all the inhabitants of the city, and a good many over, and must have illustrated St. Paul’s expression ‘so great a cloud of witnesses.’ I suppose that Christian martyrs did not much care for lookers-on, but had their minds wholly absorbed by their God and the wild beasts which were to devour them, but it must have been an awful ordeal to face such a host of enemies, and how inconceivable it is that such thousands could be brought together for the pleasure of seeing their fellow-men torn to pieces! Truly man is a fallen creature, born far above the beasts, but fallen far below them! “I was greatly entertained by an American gentleman, who said to me that as they had gone so far in America as to give the suffrage to every man, they had better go a little further and give it to all the horses, for intelligent persons might drive them to the poll, which they could not do with ignorant men.” To his eldest daughter:— “ROME, _March_ 16_th_, 1873.