The baths of Rome, both public and private, had accommodations for 62,800 citizens at a single time, and also every Roman house was provided with bathing facilities. Beautiful porticoes enabled one to cross under shelter the whole plain of the Campus Martius, a space of between two and three miles; and similar structures connected all the great buildings of the city, serving for markets and exchanges and picture-galleries, and ministering to a thousand different wants. Lovely gardens, with thickets of box, laurel, and myrtle, with lakes and fountains, were enclosed by these porticoes, which were in themselves architectural creations of rare marbles, the floors often being inlaid with jasper and porphyry. The surrounding hills and the valleys between, once the dumping-place of the city’s refuse, were converted into magnificent gardens, forming stretches of verdure in length sometimes exceeding two miles in a single composition. To-day, after centuries of destruction and decay, Rome is taking on new life. Her population is fast increasing; since 1870 scores of millions of dollars have been spent on works of public utility and general improvement; great thoroughfares have been created, the monuments of the past have been opened to the light and air, the pestilential conditions that during the centuries of her decadence hung over the city like a pall have been removed by wise sanitation; the great estates of noble families have been given over to the public; and again the compelling power of Rome is being felt throughout the civilized world. During the slow centuries which followed upon the destruction and decay of ancient civilization, no great works of civic utility or adornment were undertaken, and the old were no longer maintained. As the consciousness of national life again began to assert itself in Europe, and the unifying forces of Christianity and Roman law began to bind humanity together, the cities of Italy, of Germany, of France, and of England grew strong and rich by industry and traffic; and throughout western Europe the sense of permanence and power found expression in the rearing and beautification of cities. Everywhere the same spirit actuated the people, although in each land the mode of expression took on characteristic form; and since the vital principle was religion, the cathedral became the embodiment of the highest expression in civic art.