they passed the solitary column of phocas, and looked down into the excavated space, where a confusion of pillars, arches, pavements, and shattered blocks and shafts--the crumbs of various ruin dropped from the devouring maw of time stand, or lie, at the base of the capitoline hill.that renowned hillock (for it is little more) now arose abruptly above them.the ponderous masonry, with which the hillside is built up, is as old as rome itself, and looks likely to endure while the world retains any substance or permanence.it once sustained the capitol, and now bears up the great pile which the mediaeval builders raised on the antique foundation, and that still loftier tower, which looks abroad upon a larger page of deeper historic interest than any other scene can .on the same pedestal of roman masonry, other structures will doubtless rise, and vanish like ephemeral things.
to a spectator on the spot, it is remarkable that the events of roman history, and roman life itself, appear not so distant as the gothic ages which succeeded them.we stand in the forum, or on the height of the capitol, and seem to see the roman epoch close at hand.we forget that a chasm extends between it and ourselves, in which lie all those dark, rude, unlettered centuries, around the birth-time of christianity, as well as the age of chivalry and romance, the feudal system, and the infancy of a better civilization than that of rome.or, if we remember these mediaevaltimes, they look further off than the augustan age.the reason may be, that the old roman literature survives, and s for us an intimacy with the classic ages, which we have no means of forming with the subsequent ones.
the italian climate, moreover, robs age of its reverence and makes it look newer than it is.not the coliseum, nor the tombs of the appian way, nor the oldest pillar in the forum, nor any other roman ruin, be it as dilapidated as it may, ever give the impression of venerable antiquity which we gather, along with the ivy, from the gray walls of an english abbey or castle.and yet every brick or stone, which we pick up among the former, had fallen ages before the foundation of the latter was begun.this is owing to the kindliness with which natures takes an english ruin to her heart, covering it with ivy, as tenderly as robin redbreast covered the dead babes with forest leaves.she strives to make it a part of herself, gradually obliterating the handiwork of man, and supplanting it with her own mosses and trailing verdure, till she has won the whole structure back.but, in italy, whenever man has once hewn a stone, nature forthwith relinquishes her right to it, and never lays her finger on it again.age after age finds it bare and naked, in the barren sunshine, and leaves it so.besides this natural disadvantage, too, each succeeding century, in rome, has done its best to ruin the very ruins, so far as their picturesque effect is concerned, by stealing away the marble and hewn stone, and leaving only yellow bricks, which never can look venerable.