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It is not, any more than the other objects of the scene, a very
picturesque wall, but is little more than a brick garden-fence seen
through a magnifying-glass, with now and then a tower, however, and
frequent buttresses, to keep its height of fifty feet from toppling over.
The top was ragged, and fringed with a few weeds; there had been
embrasures for guns and eyelet-holes for musketry, but these were
plastered up with brick or stone. I passed one or two walled-up gateways
(by the by, the Parts, Latina was the gate through which Belisarius first
entered Rome), and one of these had two high, round towers, and looked
more Gothic and venerable with antique strength than any other portion of
the wall. Immediately after this I came to the gate of San Giovanni,
just within which is the Basilica of St. John Lateran, and there I was
glad to rest myself upon a bench before proceeding homeward.
There was a French sentinel at this gateway, as at all the others; for
the Gauls have always been a pest to Rome, and now gall her worse than
ever.


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