An intelligent Swiss who is now here, and who frequently accompanies me in these morning rides, exclaimed triumphantly the other day, “You will find, on examining Rome in detail, that all the works of luxury and of a ferocious barbarity belonged to the Empire, and those of use to the Republic. The latter, moreover, are the only works that seem to be imperishablé.” After allowing for the zeal of a republican, there is some truth in this; though the works of the republic, by their nature, being drains and aqueducts, &c., are more durable than those above ground. Still it is a good deal to have left an impression of lasting usefulness, to be contrasted with the memorials and barbarity of vain temples and bloody arenas. Of the Coliseum it is unnecessary to speak, beyond the effect it will produce on us both. For me, unlike the effect of St. Peter’s, some time was necessary to become fully conscious of its vastness. When one comes deliberately to contemplate this edifice, its beauty of detail and of material, the perfect preservation of its northern half, in the exterior at least, it must be a dull imagination indeed that does not proceed to people its arches and passages, and to form some pictures of the scenes that, for near five hundred years, were enacted within its walls. This noble structure, noble in extent in architecture, if not in its uses, was occupied in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries as a strong place, by the contending factions of Rome. This period, however, longer than that of the existence of our American community, is but a speck in the history of the building, as a short retrospect will show. Vespasian died in 79, Titus in 81, and Domitian in 96. The first commenced, the last is said to have finished, this edifice. For three hundred years it was used for the exhibitions of the gladiators, and, down to the year 523, for battles of wild beasts. For five hundred years more there is little account of it; but it was probably too vast for the purposes of the people who then dwelt among the ruins of Rome. Then came the civil contentions, and near three centuries of military occupation. In 1381, it is said to have been much dilapidated, particularly on the southern side, when it was converted into a hospital. After this, the popes and their favourites began to pull it to pieces, for the stone. Several of the largest palaces of modern Rome have certainly been erected out of its materials; that of the Farnese, in particular. The quay of the Ripetta, or the port, is also enriched from this classical quarry. It is only within a few years—less than thirty, I believe—that any serious attempts have been made to preserve what is left; and, to the credit of the papal government be it said, these attempts are likely to be successful. The walls require little but the “let us alone” policy, for they seem to defy time and the seasons. As there was a possibility of their crumbling, however, at the broken extremities of