Not thus
unnecessary appeared the Coliseum; haunted by wild beasts, especially
lions, leaping (I imagined) in hobgoblin array from the cavernous
entrances which were pointed out to me as connected in the days of
triumphant tyranny with their donjons. Many tender thoughts filled my
reflections as I saw pilgrims visiting, and kneeling before, the black
cross in the centre, and the altars around the walls. I delighted to
muse within the circular ruin, upon whose upper rim, jagged but
sunlit, delicate vegetation found a repentant welcome. The circular
form of the ruin is full of eloquence, as one approaches from the
Forum. What would be grace in a smaller structure is tragedy in so
immense a sweep, which melts into vagueness, or comes mountainously
upon you, or swirls before you in a retreating curve that figures the
never-changing change of eternity.
The tomb of Cecilia Metella, and other successive tombs of the Appian
Way beyond the walls, gave me my first impression of death that really
was death. There could be, I reflected, looking at the sepulchres of
these old Romans, no pretty story about the poor folk having gone to
heaven comfortably from their apparent bodies. Here were the ashes of
them, after a thousand years, in contemptible little urns; and they
were expected to enjoy, in that much impaired state, sundry rusty
bric-a-brac, dolls, and tear-vials of spookish iridescence, until, in
the vast lapse of time, even a ghost must have got tired.
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