eBooks Base 2000

It is strange how our ideas of
what antiquity is become altered here in Rome; the sixteenth century, in
which many of the churches and fountains seem to have been built or
re-edified, seems close at hand, even like our own days; a thousand
years, or the days of the latter empire, is but a modern date, and
scarcely interests us; and nothing is really venerable of a more recent
epoch than the reign of Constantine. And the Egyptian obelisks that
stand in several of the piazzas put even the Augustan or Republican
antiquities to shame. I remember reading in a New York newspaper an
account of one of the public buildings of that city,--a relic of "the
olden time," the writer called it; for it was erected in 1825! I am glad
I saw the castles and Gothic churches and cathedrals of England before
visiting Rome, or I never could have felt that delightful reverence for
their gray and ivy-hung antiquity after seeing these so much older
remains. But, indeed, old things are not so beautiful in this dry
climate and clear atmosphere as in moist England.


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