At length, after a painful journey under the burning sky of Italy in the beginning of summer, he drew near to the city of the seven hills. His heart was moved, and his eyes looked for the queen of the world, and of the Church. As soon as he obtained a distant view of the eternal city, the city of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the metropolis of Catholicism, he threw himself on the ground, exclaiming, "Holy Rome, I salute thee." Luther is in Rome; the professor of Wittemberg is in the midst of the eloquent ruins of the Rome of the consuls and emperors--the Rome of the confessors and martyrs. Here lived that Plautus and Virgil, whose works he had taken with him into the cloister, and all those great men whose exploits had always caused his heart to beat. He perceives their statues, and the wrecks of monuments which attest their glory. But all this glory and all this power are past, and his foot treads on their dust. At every step he calls to mind the sad forebodings of Scipio shedding tears at the sight of Carthage in ruins, its burned palaces and broken walls, and exclaiming, "Thus, too, will it be with Rome!" "And in fact," says Luther, "the Rome of the Scipios and Cæsars has been changed into a corpse. Such is the quantity of ruins, that the foundations of the modern houses rest upon the roofs of the old. "There," added he, casting a melancholy look on the ruins, "there were the riches and treasures of the world."[202] All this rubbish, which he strikes with his foot, tells Luther, within the walls of Rome herself, that what is strongest in the eyes of men is easily destroyed by the breath of the Lord. [202] Op. (W.) xxii, pp. 2374, 2377. But he remembers that with profane ashes holy ashes are mingled. The burial-place of the martyrs is not far from that of the generals and triumphing heroes of Rome, and Christian Rome, with her sufferings, has more power over the heart of the Saxon monk than Pagan Rome with her glory. It was here the letter arrived in which Paul wrote, "_The just is justified by faith_," and not far off is the Appii Forum and the Three Taverns. There was the house of Narcissus--here the palace of Cæsar, where the Lord delivered the apostle from the mouth of the lion. Oh, what fortitude these recollections give to the heart of the monk of Wittemberg!