I was so fortunate as to be in the city on Saturday, 21st April 1877, which was held as the birthday of Rome (the 2630th, I believe), and beheld a spectacle in the Colosseum which never had greeted the eyes of the old Romans. Nearly the whole population was, in the evening of that day, drawn to the great amphitheatre and its neighbourhood. Joining a party of ladies from our house, with considerable difficulty we drove through the crowded streets, and, dismissing the carriage, we succeeded in getting inside the Colosseum along with a large but orderly mass of people. After waiting long, we were at last rewarded. All of a sudden, the various galleries, which I suppose had been lined with soldiers, were illumined with coloured lights. On one half of the huge building red lights were burned; on the other half, green. When the powders were burned down, others were substituted, the colours being reversed. The effect was magnificent. Every figure in the place was bathed in coloured light, while the walls were one mass of a glowing hue, disclosing the colossal proportions in all their ruinous irregularity, and, where red was burned, looking as if it were a huge lump of burning lava or molten iron. This over, with some trouble we managed to edge away from the crowd to the outside, to see the further operations elsewhere. The Colosseum itself was first lighted on the exterior, which, fine as the effect was, I think could hardly be compared with the interior view. Lights were then successively burned to illuminate the Arches of Constantine and Titus and the Basilica of Constantine—the figures of the persons running about in charge appearing at a little distance, wrapped in the carmine colour, like so many incarnate demons. Last of all, the Forum, the Capitoline Hill, and the surrounding buildings and ruins, were several times similarly illuminated, while a display of fireworks from the Capitol terminated this very imposing spectacle. * * * * * The grand dimensions of the Colosseum drew us often there. It seemed at every visit more and more imposing. Leaving it, and proceeding by the Via Sacra to the Capitoline Hill, which lies about half a mile distant, one passes upon the left the Arch of Constantine, standing at the entrance to a broad wooded roadway, called the Via di Gregorio, running between the Palatine Hill (on which are the ruined palaces of the Cæsars) on the right side, and the Church of San Gregorio Magno and other buildings on the left side, and leading out towards the Appian Way. The fine sculptures upon the arch are well preserved, and give a richer appearance to it than to any other arches now standing; but have been taken from buildings of an earlier age than that of Constantine, and thought to be of the time of Trajan, whose life they illustrate.