There has been, indeed, a partial resurrection of the buried Rome; the city lying beneath the heaped-up excrescences of a degenerate age has been unearthed. We can now dimly picture the glories of the noble Forum, with its temples and statues, the long stretch of the Appian Way, and the vast and almost illimitable proportions of the Circus Maximus, with its belt of distant mountains, and over all the cloudless sky, which seemed, on this glowing autumn day, to be hanging like one great canopy of celestial blue over the city set upon her seven hills. The good Caius had taken the tired boy and girl to his mother’s house, as he had promised, with their two attendants. The stately old Roman matron received her son with a smile of welcome; and as they stood in the little atrium, uncertain what to do, she advanced to Casca and Hyacintha, and bade them welcome to enter, and rest for a season. Caius, in a few words, related the events of the past few weeks; and when he came to the encounter with the pirates, and the deliverance of the small galley under his command, Clœlia clasped her hands, and said-- “Neptune has been pleased to receive my offerings, made daily for you, my son, since you left me for the region of the barbarian, now three years ago.” “Nay, good mother, we speak not of barbarians now in Britain. Verulam is a little Rome, and as fair a daughter of our great mother as you can picture. The villa of Severus, which is the home of this fair maiden and her brother, is scarcely to be excelled here in all its furnishings and appointments, though, of course, less in size and extent.” Clœlia led Hyacintha and her attendant to a small chamber, separated from her own by a curtain, and Caius took Casca, who was still weakened by the effects of his wound, to his own apartments, which in his absence were always prepared for his return at any moment. Caius’s position answered to that of a naval officer of our time; he was sent out with the troops for foreign service when a galley was required, and he was, as we have seen, an able commander of a vessel in time of danger. Casca and Hyacintha remained two days in the home of Clœlia, and it was agreed that Clœlia should accompany Hyacintha to the house of the vestals on the third day. The child’s heart was filled with wonder as she passed through the streets of Rome with her new friend. All her worldly possessions had been carried off by the pirates, and there was therefore nothing for her to carry to the Vestals’ house. It was a grand event in Clœlia’s life to think of presenting herself there, and inquiring for the Vestal Maxima. For these vestals were looked upon as beings of a superior order, and far above the usual rank of Roman women.