So Bayard saw the ancient city, although he has described it somewhat differently. Rome was to Florence what the Apollo is to the Venus de Medici, each enhancing the beauty of the other, and losing nothing by comparison. It was near the first of January, 1846, when the subject of these sketches entered Rome and took up his abode in a lowly tavern opposite the front of the Pantheon. In a most humble, almost beggarly way, he obtained his food at the cheapest places, and walked among those old ruins in the most unobtrusive manner. He was too poor, and earned too little as a newspaper correspondent, to spend aught on the luxuries of Rome. Hence all his time and attention were on that which pleased the eye and satisfied the mind, rather than upon those things which gratify the appetite or inflate the pride. He walked to the Coliseum by moonlight, and heeded not fatigue. For within its cragged circuit he saw again the excited hosts, the gay ladies about the imperial throne, the writhing Christian, and the lions with bloody jaws. Or he saw the fiercer human beings engaged in the gladiatorial combat, saw the flash of shields and swords, heard the groan of the dying as it was drowned by the rising shouts for the victor. He searched the hidden recesses of the baths, palaces, arches, prisons, and churches, which remain as reminders of the old city; he marched far out on the Appian Way and contemplated its tombs and mysterious piles in laborious detail; he sketched the spirals of Trajan’s Column, and drew a plan of the ancient Capitol. In awe-stricken silence he walked beneath the dome of mighty St. Peter’s, and marvelled in worshipful mood before those exquisite mosaics. He lingered long and lovingly in the great labyrinth of the Vatican, wept at the sight of some of those great paintings, and bowed with respect to the greatest productions of the greatest sculptors. Few will give credit to the glowing pictures which he draws of the arts in Rome, nor believe the strong assertions we herein make, who have not been there and experienced the same sensations. He visited in pious respect the tombs of Tasso, Keats, and Shelley, and found his way into the studios of the modern artists. He took short trips into the country, and once stopped for the night under the shadows of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. Beyond Rome he could not go. For once, Dame Fortune turned her back upon him. If he would see Naples, Pompeii, and Samos, he must have money. Money he could not get. Grievously disappointed, yet thankful for what he had seen, he most devoutly thanks God, and turns northward.