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It is wonderful, the solidity with which
those old Romans built; one would suppose they contemplated the whole
course of Time as the only limit of their individual life. This is not
so strange in the days of the Republic, when, probably, they believed in
the permanence of their institutions; but they still seemed to build for
eternity, in the reigns of the emperors, when neither rulers nor people
had any faith or moral substance, or laid any earnest grasp on life.
Reaching the top of the Capitoline Hill, we ascended the steps of the
portal of the Palace of the Senator, and looked down into the piazza,
with the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the centre of it. The
architecture that surrounds the piazza is very ineffective; and so, in my
opinion, are all the other architectural works of Michael Angelo,
including St. Peter's itself, of which he has made as little as could
possibly be made of such a vast pile of material. He balances everything
in such a way that it seems but half of itself.


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