Rome is great because of its past, and its ruins are more attractive than its modern buildings; it is a tomb rather than a living city. These monuments, raised by the former masters of the world, strongly impress the imagination. The sight of the Coliseum arouses an admiration akin to terror, unless we look upon this formidable edifice as a mere heap of stones. The thought that this vast arena was crowded with men who sought to kill each other, that the steps surrounding it were occupied by 80,000 human beings who delighted in this butchery and {276} encouraged it by their shouts, calls up an amount of baseness, ferocity, and frenzy, whose existence could not fail to sap the foundations of Roman civilisation, and make it an easy prey to the barbarian. The Forum awakens memories of quite a different nature. Abominations were practised there, too, but its history as a whole exhibits it as the true centre of the Roman world. It was from this spot that the first impetus was given to the nations of the West; it was here that the ideas imported from every quarter of the world bore fruit. The walls, columns, temples, and churches which surround the Forum relate in mute language the principal events in the history of Rome; and if we search beneath existing edifices we meet with structures more ancient, which take us back to a period still more remote, for edifice has succeeded edifice on this spot, where pulsated the life of the Roman people. And thus it is throughout Rome. Every ancient monument, arcade, or broken column, every stone, bears witness to some {277} historical event, and though it may be difficult sometimes to interpret these witnesses of the past, the truth is elicited by degrees.