soil artificially carried into them, but this may be founded on some misunderstanding. The _mausoleum of Hadrian_, at present the Castel S. Angelo, was even a much larger structure. Its restoration, which we see in drawings, is anything but trustworthy; but there are drawings of the fifteenth century, in which a small portion, which was then still uninjured, is represented. At present we still see an immense pile impregnable and inaccessible, into which there was only one entrance like that of a cave, with a passage leading to the burial place. There Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Antoninus the philosopher were buried. Inscriptions about it are still found in the Itinerary of Einsiedeln, which belongs to the seventh or eighth century. This building was used as a fort at a very early period; Belisarius there defended himself against the Goths: the Roman garrison consisted of Huns who hurled the statues with which the building was adorned against the enemies. It is possible that the Barberini Faun was on that occasion thrown down, as it was found there at the time when Urban VIII. built the fortifications. During subsequent wars the Castel S. Angelo was often defended, as for example, when under Crescentius the city refused to surrender to Otho III. The greatest devastations took place in the fourteenth century, when the Romans, who were then little better than barbarians, wanted to level the whole structure with the ground, because it had occasioned them great annoyance: at that time many more inscriptions were preserved than at present. For weeks and months they laboured in tearing away the marble coating and the outward ornaments, but not being able to get through they gave it up at last. Pope Alexander VI. built some towers as means of defence, and on that occasion the destruction was carried still further. But after that time, three inscriptions still remained in the sixteenth century. The present condition, which is still imposing, is the work of Urban VIII. who made a regular fortress of it. In order to provide it with artillery, he caused the bronze of the vestibule of the Pantheon to be melted and eighty cannons to be made of it, which, during the French revolution, were carried by Murat to Naples. The costly sarcophagi of porphyry, which belonged to the mausoleum of Hadrian are dispersed; one of them still exists in the palace Borghese, and another, generally called the sarcophagus of Agrippa, probably also belonged to it. Trajan’s ashes were contained in an urn which stood on his column. Hence the opinion that the gilt ball on the obelisk in front of the Circus contained the ashes of Augustus; but this is only an erroneous opinion of the middle ages; it was opened under Sixtus V. when the obelisk was removed, and nothing but dust was found in it; but how this dust had got into it, no one can tell, perhaps it was introduced by rain. It certainly was not the ashes of Augustus, for we know distinctly where Augustus and