You know that the Forum was originally established, in the time of Romulus and Tatius, when a hill was almost a country, as a market place between the hostile people. Here the two _nations_ met to traffic. Forums afterwards became common, and the remains and sites of several in the city are known; but this was _the_ Forum, _par excellence_. This Forum remained in a state of preservation as lately as the seventh century, sufficient to receive monuments; but since that time down to a period about the commencement of the present century, it was falling gradually into a worse and worse condition; though its severest blow is attributed to Robert Guiscard, about the year 1000. He burned and laid waste all this part of Rome, much to the damage of modern travelling. For several hundred years the Romans were in the practice of throwing rubbish in this spot, to which circumstance is ascribed the present elevation of its surface. To this cause, however, must be added the regular accumulation of materials from the crumbling ruins; for other parts of Rome prove that it is not the Forum alone which has been thus buried. You will be surprised to hear that, in disinterring many of the monuments that still remain, the pavement of the ancient Forum, and the bases of the works themselves, have been found at a depth varying from twenty to twenty-five feet below the actual surface. The Forum is said to have been surrounded by a colonnade of two stories, which gave to the whole a form and arrangement something like those of the Palais Royal at Paris. The Curia, or senate chamber, was under the Palatine; and the Comitium, or the place for the popular meetings, was near it. As the emperors lived above, here was a shadowing forth of that sublime mystification which has so long blinded and amused the world, in the way of a political device, which it is the fashion to term the “three estates.” I wonder if Nero said who should be his ministers, and the senate said who should not! The Arch of Septimius Severus still remains, one may say, perfect. It stands at the foot of the Capitoline, and its base is cleared away, and the vacancy is protected, as usual, by a wall. The digging around it is not very deep. It dates from the commencement of the second century.