Immediately at their left hand as they entered the archway, was the superb Comitium, wherein the Senate were wont to give audience to foreign embassies of suppliant nations, with the gigantic portico, three columns of which may still be seen to testify to the splendor of the old city, in the far days of the republic. Facing them were the steps of the Asylum, with the Mamertine prison and the grand façade of the temple of Concord to the right and left; and higher above these the portico of the gallery of records, and higher yet the temple of the thundering Jupiter, and glittering above all, against the dark blue sky, the golden dome, and white marble columns of the great capitol itself. Around in all directions were basilicæ, or halls of justice; porticoes filled with busy lawyers; bankers’ shops glittering with their splendid wares, and bedecked with the golden shields taken from the Samnites; statues of the renowned of ages, Accius Nævius, who cut the whetstone with the razor; Horatius Cocles on his thunderstricken pedestal, halting on one knee from the wound which had not hindered him from swimming the swollen Tiber; Clælia the hostage on her brazen steed; and many another, handed down inviolate from the days of the ancient kings. Here was the rostrum, beaked with the prows of ships, a fluent orator already haranguing the assembled people from its platform—there, the seat of the city Prætor, better known as the _Puteal Libonis_, with that officer in session on his curule chair, his six lictors leaning on their fasces at his back, as he promulgated his irrevocable edicts. It was a grand sight, surely, and one to gaze on which men of the present day would do and suffer much; and judge themselves most happy if blessed with one momentary glance of the heart, as it were, of the old world’s mistress. But these young men, proud as they were, and boastful of the glories of their native Rome, had looked too often on that busy scene to be attracted by the gorgeousness of the place, crowded with buildings, the like of which the modern world knows not, and thronged with nations of every region of the earth, each in his proper dress, each seeking justice, pleasure, profit, fame, as it pleased him, free, and fearless, and secure of property and person. Casting a brief glance over it, they turned short to the left, by a branch of the Sacred Way, which led, skirting the market place, between the Comitium, or hall of the ambassadors, and the abrupt declivity of the Palatine, past the end of the Atrium of Liberty, and the cattle mart, toward the Carmental gate. "Methought you said, my Fuscus, that our Aurelius had some errand to perform in the Forum; how is this, is it a secret?" inquired Paullus, laughing. "No secret, by the Gods!" said Aurelius, "it is but to buy a pair of spurs in Volero’s shop, hard by Vesta’s shrine." "He will need them," cried Fuscus, "he will need them, I will swear, in the race."