rome, as it now exists, has grown up under the popes, and seems like nothing but a heap of broken rubbish, thrown into the great chasm between our own days and the empire, merely to fill it up; and, for the better part of two thousand years, its annals of obscure policies, and wars, and continually recurring misfortunes, seem also but broken rubbish, as compared with its classic history.
if we consider the present city as at all connected with the famous one of old, it is only because we find it built over its grave.a depth of thirty feet of soil has covered up the rome of ancient days, so that it lies like the dead corpse of a giant, decaying for centuries, with no survivor mighty enough even to bury it, until the dust of all those years has gathered slowly over its recumbent form and made a casual sepulchre.
we know not how to characterize, in any accordant and compatible terms, the rome that lies before us; its sunless alleys, and streets of palaces; its churches, lined with the gorgeous marbles that were originally polished for the adornment of pagan temples; its thousands of evil smells, mixed up with fragrance of rich incense, diffused from as many censers; its little life, deriving feeble nutriment from what has long been dead.everywhere, some fragment of ruin suggesting the magnificence of a former epoch; everywhere, moreover, a cross,--and nastiness at the foot of it.as the sum of all, there are recollections that kindle the soul, and a gloom and languor that depress it beyond any depth of melancholicsentiment that can be elsewhere known.