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386 AROUND THE WORLD.
Roman manufactures consist of ecclesiastic bulls, edicts,
commentaries, and creeds ; of mosaics, cameos, scarfs, and
copies of pictures.
She imports her cloths, cottons, railway
materials, cutlery, china, carriages, and military weapons.
Teeming with the accumulated treasures of ages, she encouragingly
allows her destitute children to be assisted by infidel
foreigners, whose heretical books she
confiscates, and whose
souls she consigns — or would, had she the power— to eternal
torments.
The Pantheon is one of the best preserved monumental
buildings of this ancient city. On the day of our visit, the
Piazza was dirty, and crowded with market-women. Rome
would do well to wash her devotees. The edifice has sixteen
columns of granite ; each surmounted by a frieze and entablature,
containing an inscription, which informs us that this
" heathen temple " was founded by Agrippa, the friend of
Augustus, 27 years B.C.
The Coliseum is considered the greatest wonder of Rome.
Its magnitude surpassed aU my previous conceptions. The
circumference of its area is over one-third of a mile.
It has
four stories, each of a different order, — the Doric, Ionic,
Corinthian, and the Composite, — terminating by a parapet.
It is estimated that it would comfortably seat ninety thousand
people.
Masses of stones have been taken from these
ruins to build palaces in the modern city; and yet the
structure is so immense, their absence is hardly noticeable.
The Coliseum and Forum should be seen by moonlight, say
travelers. Midnight hours might throw a mysterious
drapery around these ruins, concealing their imperfections,
and hightening their grandeur ; stdl I am sufficiently practical
to prefer sunlight and daylight. The Coliseum was commenced
in A.D. 72, by Vespasian, and completed eight
years after by Titus. Much of the work was done . captive
Jews. The openmg festival scene, say historians, lasted
a hundred days. Almost two thousand years has it stood
a monument to Roman enterprise and muscular barbarity.