As for the destructive effects of Gothic fire, they seem to have been confined to a few palaces and private houses; and so partial was the mischief, that only one edifice of any note, the palace of Sallust, is mentioned as having been consumed on this occasion. Religious rage or Christian zeal, two expressions meaning, I fancy, the same thing, are frequently introduced by authors of a certain mode of thinking, as agents unusually active in the work of destruction; while Papal piety is represented as the presiding demon, who directed their operations, and quickened their natural activity. The fact, however, is otherwise; we do not find that any one temple in Rome was destroyed by the Christians, either tumultuously or legally; that is, by Imperial orders; on the contrary, such was the respect which the Christian Emperors paid even to the prejudices of the Romans, that idols, when proscribed in the provinces, were still tolerated in the capital, and allowed to occupy their rich shrines, and sit enthroned in their deserted temples. In the pillage of Rome by the Goths and Vandals, these statues, when of precious materials, such as gold, silver, or brass, were not spared; but the shrine only, or perhaps the furniture and decorations of the temple, of similar materials, and of course equally calculated to attract the hand of rapacity, were violated, while the edifices themselves, without I believe one exception, were respected. The influence of Papal piety was employed to preserve these buildings, and if possible to consecrate them to the pure mysteries of Christian adoration ; and to it we owe the few temples that have survived the general ruin, such as the temple of Vesta, that of Faunus, that of Fortuna Virilis, and last, though first in estimation and grandeur, the Pantheon itself.

5

Having thus rejected as fabulous or inefficient the causes produced by the poet, and admitted by ignorance and prejudice with little or no examination, it is necessary and not difficult to substitute in their place, the real agents that effected the degradation, and finally the destruction of the noblest city that the world had ever beheld.

Under the auspicious government of Trajan, the empire of Rome had reached the utmost extent of its destined limits; and Rome herself had attained the full perfection of her beauty, and the highest degree of her magnificence. During the virtuous administration of the Antonines, this state of prosperity and glory continued unaltered; that is during the space of nearly a century, till the tyranny of Commodus revived the memory and the disasters of the reigns of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, and ended like them, in assassination, civil war, and revolution. From the portentous era of the death of Pertinax, Rome ceased to be the fixed and habitual residence of her Emperors, who were generally employed in the field, either in repressing rebellious usurpers, or on the frontiers, in repelling foreign enemies. Still they occasionally returned to celebrate festive games, to receive the homage of the Senate and Roman people, or perhaps to ascend in triumph to the Capitol, and worship the tutelar deities of the empire. From the accession of Diocletian, these visits became less frequent, and while the Mistress of the world was neglected by her half-barbarian Emperors, the handmaid cities of the provinces, Thessalonica, Nicomedia, Antioch, Milan, Ravenna, and Paris, enjoyed the honor and the advantages of their residence. Though Rome was still the acknowledged capital of the world, and though her

population and her riches were unbounded, yet the arts, no longer encouraged or employed by the sovereign, languished. Taste was on the decline, and the great masterpieces (edifices statues paintings) that adorned the city, monuments of the genius and magnificence of happier periods, were passed by unnoticed, and gradually neglected. We cannot suppose that a people who had lost their taste and spirit, or that Emperors, occupied in remote provinces, with the intrigues of competition, or the dangers of war, were disposed to furnish the sums requisite to repair and maintain buildings, which they scarcely knew, or probably beheld with indifference. We may therefore fairly conclude, that at the beginning of the reign of Constantine, some, perhaps several, public edifices must have suffered from neglect; and when we behold the triumphal arch of Trajan destroyed by order of the senate, to furnish materials for the erection of a similar trophy in honor of the former Emperor, we may fairly infer, that such edifices were considered as scarcely worth preservation, and that they were indebted for their duration to their own solidity. Among the causes of ruin we may therefore safely rank, the indifference and neglect of government; nay, we have even some reason to suspect that the Emperors not only neglected the reparation, but sometimes hastened the fall of public structures. Each sovereign was ambitious of distinguishing his reign by some magnificent fabric, by erecting baths or a circus, a portico or a forum ; but it is to be feared that they were not always delicate as to the places whence the materials were taken, and sometimes stripped the monuments of their predecessors of their ornaments, in order to employ them in the decoration of their new edifices. Certain it is that some Emperors, while they were adding to the splendor of the city

on one side, made no difficulty of plundering it on the other. Moreover, as the number of Christians increased the temples became deserted, and Christian princes; though not obliged by their religion to destroy, did not perhaps consider themselves as authorized in conscience to repair the sanctuaries of idolatrous worship.

When Rome ceased to be free, and lost even the forms of republican liberty, the forum (the seat of popular deliberations) became useless, and the five or six superb squares that bore that appellation, were turned into so many lonely walks. The various curiæ (the superb palaces of the senate) so necessary in the days of Roman freedom, when almost the whole of the civilized world was governed by the wisdom of that venerable body, stood silent and unfrequented under the later Emperors, when public deliberation was a mere form, and the senate itself an empty shadow. The basilicæ indeed (the halls where the magistrates sat to administer justice) might still collect a crowd, and challenge attention; but as the population of the city decreased, their numbers appeared too great, and the Emperors seemed to embrace with readiness every opportunity of turning them to other purposes. These three sorts of edifices may be supposed, therefore, to have fallen into decay, at an early period, and have mouldered imperceptibly into dust, even though no active power was employed to hasten their dissolution. Of the several curiæ, not one has escaped destruction, and the classic reader will learn with regret, that time has swept away the very vestiges of these celebrated seats of liberty, wisdom, and public dignity. Some few temples remain which, after they had long been abandoned both by their

deities and their votaries, are indebted for their existence to "Christian zeal and Papal piety," which saved them from complete ruin by turning them into churches. We may lament that more of these beautiful edifices were not destined to partake of this advantage, and particularly that the magnificent temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was not of the number; especially as it survived the taking of the city, and stood, as to its walls, unimpaired in the time of Theodoric.

But in the first place, the Christians do not seem to have taken possession of any temple, at least in Rome, where the Emperors treated the ancient religion of the empire with peculiar delicacy, till the total downfal of idolatry, and the complete change of public opinion; that is, till many of these fabrics had fallen into irreparable decay and become incapable of restoration. In the next place, the forms of pagan temples in general, and particularly of such as were built (and these formed the far greater number) on a smaller scale, were extremely ill adapted to the purposes of Christian worship. Narrow oblong edifices, frequently dark and lighted only from the entrance, they seem to have been constructed merely as sanctuaries to receive the statues of their respective gods, while the multitude of adorers filled the porticos, or crowded the colonnades without, and waited till the trumpets announced the moment of sacrifice, or the priest proclaimed the oracles of the god. The external ornaments, and the vast extent of porticos and galleries that surrounded the principal temples, and not the capacity of the interior, constituted their magnificence. The Adyta or Penetralia, seem mostly to have been on a contracted scale, and though well calculated for a chapel or oratory for a small assembly, are