GLORY OF ANCIENT ROME.

Ancient Rome was built upon seven hills, which are now scarcely discoverable on account of the vast quantities of rubbish with which the valleys are filled. Pliny estimates the circumference of the city in his time at 13,000 paces (which nearly agrees with modern measurements), and the population at 3,000,000. Rome was filled with magnificent public edifices, temples, theatres, amphitheatres, circuses, naumachiæ, porticos, basilicæ, baths, gardens, triumphal arches, columns, sewers, aqueducts, sepulchres, public and private palaces, etc.

In the time of the Cæsars, fourteen magnificent aqueducts, supported by immense arches, conducted whole rivers into Rome, from a distance of many miles, and supplied one hundred and fifty public fountains, one hundred and eighteen large public baths, the artificial seas in which naval combats were represented in the Colosseum, and the golden palace of Nero, besides the water necessary to supply the daily use of the inhabitants. One hundred thousand marble and bronze statues ornamented the public squares, the temples, the streets, and the houses of the nobility: ninety colossal statues raised on pedestals; and forty-eight Egyptian obelisks of red granite, some of the largest size, also adorned the city.

Such was ancient Rome, "the Eternal City." Although visited for more than a thousand years by various calamities, she is still the most majestic of cities; the charm of beauty, dignity, and grandeur still lingers around the ruins of ancient, as well as the splendid structures of modern Rome, and brilliant recollections of every age are connected with the monuments which the passing traveler meets at every step.