The Rome of
that time was in many parts built of wood; and there is much probability
that it must have been a _picturesque_ city, and in parts almost
grotesque. But it is remarkable, and a fact which we have nowhere seen
noticed, that the ancients, whether Greeks or Romans, had no eye for the
picturesque; nay, that it was a sense utterly unawakened amongst them; and
that the very conception of the picturesque, as of a thing distinct from
the beautiful, is not once alluded to through the whole course of ancient
literature, nor would it have been intelligible to any ancient critic; so
that, whatever attraction for the eye might exist in the Rome of that day,
there is little doubt that it was of a kind to be felt only by modern
spectators. Mere dissatisfaction with its external appearance, which must
have been a pretty general sentiment, argued, therefore, no necessary
purpose of destroying it. Certainly it would be a weightier ground of
suspicion, if it were really true, that some of his agents were detected
on the premises of different senators in the act of applying combustibles
to their mansions.
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