Not far from this arch, there stood, previously, to the year 1813, a solitary column, with nearly half its shaft buried in the earth, the capitol being perfect. This column, it was then believed, belonged to a temple, or, if not to a temple, at least to the bridge of Caligula; but, in 1813, the earth was removed from its base, and it was then found to stand on a pedestal, on which there is an inscription that proves the column was erected in honour of Phocas, and as lately as the year 608. I believe it is one of the last things of the sort ever placed in the Forum. The column itself, however, is supposed to be much older, and to have been taken from some ancient and ruined temple. It may have been truly one of those that supported the bridge. The name of Phocas, it would seem, had been partially erased, after his fall: a circumstance which shows that men have the same envious stone-defacing propensities under all circumstances. There are many other remains in and about the Forum, some of which are of more interest than those mentioned; but I have taken these, as my object is to offer you a picture of Rome as it is, rather than to pretend to any great antiquarian knowledge. You know I am no antiquary. I do not think many of these constructions equal expectation, with the exception of the Coliseum, and perhaps I ought to add, the remains that give us notions of the vastness of the palaces. By following a road up a sharp acclivity, we reach the summit of the Capitol Hill, or rather its square, for the land is higher on both sides of it than in the area itself. The surface has undergone a good deal of change; though it is thought still easy to trace the sites of the ancient constructions. The Capitol of Rome and the Capitol of Washington were as different as the two countries to which they belonged. The former, originally, was a town; then a fortress, or a citadel; and, in the end, it became a collection of different objects of high interest, principally devoted to religious rites. If any particular _building_ was called the Capitol, it was the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which is described as not being very large, though very magnificent; not large as a _building_, though large as a _temple_; for few of the Roman temples appear to have been of any great size. The senate assembled in the Curia, which was on the Forum, as you know, and not in the Capitol at all.