alive, since they were sure of being execrated after they were dead. These columns may with equal probability have belonged to the Basilica, as to the Temple of Antoninus Pius, both of which were in this Forum.

The sight of the stupendous Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, which alone stand triumphant over Time, while the proud trophies of a long list of tyrants are laid low in the dust, make us involuntarily admire the poetical justice displayed in the perfect preservation of those sublime monuments of the best and greatest emperors Rome ever produced-the sole who deserved the victor's laurel, and the civic crown; who united the praise of pre-eminent virtue to that of military glory;-and who, on a throne too often sullied with every vice and every crime that can disgrace human nature, were at once the conquerors of distant nations, and the fathers of their people.

LETTER XXI.

FORUM BOARIUM-JANUS QUADRIFRONTIS―LITTLE ARCH TO SEPT. SEVERUS-THE CLOACA MAXIMA AND FOUNTAIN OF JUTURNA.

In a deserted and lonely situation, and on a damp and grass-grown spot which was once the Forum Boarium, or market of Rome, stands the magnificent ruin of Janus Quadrifrontis. It received its name from having four similar fronts, in each of which there is an arch of entrance; it is, therefore, somewhat inaccurately styled an arch, for it consists of four arches, and, in technical language, perhaps it would be more properly termed a Compitum.*

It is the only one now remaining of the many Jani of Ancient Rome, which were common in every Forum, or market-place, to shelter the people from the sun and rain; and were, in short, exactly what exchanges, or market-houses, are in the busy parts of our towns.

* So say Forsyth and many other authorities. Yet a Compitum was generally erected where four roads met, and that does not seem to have been the case here.

But widely does this differ in magnificence. It' is built of immense blocks of Grecian marble, now so darkened and discoloured by time, that they look like aged and lichen-covered stone; but their grey and sober hues accord far better with its present ruinous and desolate appearance, than would all the bright polish of recent finish. I know few ruins more picturesque and venerable than this. Its niches are empty; its statues, its pillars, its sculptured monuments, are all destroyed; and wild weeds, thick matted bushes, and aged ivy, wave luxuriantly from its top, and cling to its grey walls.

During the long and bloody struggles of the domestic wars waged by the Roman barons in the dark ages, it was turned into a fortress by the Frangipani family, who erected the brick walls that we now see in ruins on its summit. That this arch is a work of Imperial Rome, there can be no doubt; but the date of its erection is purely conjectural. By many, it has been attributed to Domitian, and it is certain he built a great number of magnificent Jani in various parts of the city.* Others, judging from its style of architecture, pronounce it a work of later times.

The Forum Boarium, in which it stands, almost adjoined the Roman Forum, on the side nearest the Tiber, to the banks of which, however, it did not extend. It occupied a part of what was the Velabrum, or marsh, and which, indeed, though

drained, ever since the days of Tarquin'; still bears that name. The old church which stands here is called S. Giorgio in Velabro. By its side there is a little insignificant arch of marble, erected, as its inscription testifies, by the trades people and bench keepers of this Forum, to the Emperor Severus. It serves at once as a monument of their adulation and of their bad taste. The design is mean, and the sculpture barbarous. On one side is represented Sept. Severus, as high priest, in the act of sacrificing, with his wife Julia by his side. On the other is Caracalla, as a boy; but not a trace remains of the figure of Geta; a blank appears where it has been; for his name, his image, every thing relative to him, were effaced both from this arch, from the larger one in the Forum, and from every public monument, by command of his brother and his murderer.

Did he expect thus to erase the remembrance of his guilty fratricide?

I was assured that, on the site of the arch, there was the figure of a man ploughing with an ox and a cow, in commemoration of the tradition that it was from this point Romulus set out to trace the furrow round the Palatine Hill, which then described the boundaries of his infant city; but the sculpture was so defaced I could not make it out.

Below the figures of the Imperial family, are sculptured the different instruments used in sacrifice. We were a good deal amused to see them nearly the same as those in present use in the catholic church. The cap worn by the Flamens differs little from the mitre of the bishops; the simpulum and

the aspergillum used for the lustral water, are exactly like the basin and brush for the holy water; the accerra, or incense-box, is much the same as the censor; and the consecrated cake of Pagan sacrifice, differs in nothing from the consecrated wafer of high mass.

Solomon wisely said, "there was nothing new under the sun;" and what is a prefericula but a classical term for a jug; or a patera, but a more refined term for a saucer; and in what, after all, does holy water differ from lustral water, or saints from deified men; or the worship of images now, from that of statues formerly; or the Catholic from the Pagan rites?

But however close the similitude may be between their forms, I could not help feeling that their spirit is still widely different, and that even the gross corruptions of men had not had power to vitiate the divine influence of that religion which was derived from Heaven-when, in the midst of my flippant observations upon the Catholic worship, a tremendous proof of the horrors of Paganism, of which this very spot was the scene, burst upon my remembrance.

Yes, it was in this very Forum Boarium that the Romans twice offered up living sacrifices !— Two Gauls and two Greeks, a man and a woman of each nation, were twice buried alive here; first during a war with the Gauls, and then during the second Punic war, in compliance with the Sybilline books, or rather in order to elude one of the predictions they contained, which was, "that Gauls and Grecks should possess the city ;" and in