Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: '|| Mi was rising over the ts .Wilban hills, when Eck- m his ascent. Now and :aused on a spot, which particularly striking o j|te city, reposing in the ht of day. No sound solemn stillness, save of convent-bells on or the sombre shrine. ome seemed to stretch le haze. :d, massive, with twin- ufj.rtominated the view on one to another. Here rases, loomed up the oiffttimes singly, sometimes cifJwCs the aqueducts pursued through the Campagna. hroud their undulating Kgf. had wrought! Eckhardt beheld the iSed to ruin. The high- , .. rested on their firm |t !gTp§C3§itc£c;|nr itined roofs supported bymassive pillars, broken, pierced and creviced. Resplendent in the last glow of departing day towered high the imperial palaces of Augustus, Tiberius and Domitian. The Septizonium of Alexander Severus, still well preserved in its seven stories, had been converted into a feudal stronghold by Alberic, chief of the Optimates, while Caligula's great piles of stone rose high and dominating in the evening air. The Jovian temples were still standing close to the famous tomb of Romulus, but the old triumphal course was obstructed with filth. In crescent shape here and there a portico was visible, shadeless and long deprived of roofing. High towered the Coliseum's stately ruins; Circus and Stadium were overgrown with bushes; of the baths of Diocletian and Caracalla, once magnificent and imposing, only ruins remained. Crumbling, weatherbeaten masonry confronted the eye on every turn. Endless seemed the tangled maze of crooked lanes, among which loomed a temple-gable green with moss or a solitary column; an architrave resting on marble columns, looked down upon the huts of poverty. Nero's golden palace and the Basilica of Maxentius lay in ruins; but in the ancient Forum temples were...