eBooks Base 2000

The level of these excavations is about
fifteen feet, I should judge, below the present street, which passes
through the Forum, and only a very small part of this alien surface has
been removed, though there can be no doubt that it hides numerous
treasures of art and monuments of history. Yet these remains do not make
that impression of antiquity upon me which Gothic ruins do. Perhaps it
is so because they belong to quite another system of society and epoch of
time, and, in view of them, we forget all that has intervened betwixt
them and us; being morally unlike and disconnected with them, and not
belonging to the same train of thought; so that we look across a gulf to
the Roman ages, and do not realize how wide the gulf is. Yet in that
intervening valley lie Christianity, the Dark Ages, the feudal system,
chivalry and romance, and a deeper life of the human race than Rome
brought to the verge of the gulf.
To-day we went to the Colonna Palace, where we saw some fine pictures,
but, I think, no masterpieces.


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