I lost myself in coming home, and following a priest's direction to the Corso, came unexpectedly upon the "Pantheon," which I recognised at once. This wonder of architecture has no questionable beauty. A dunce would not need to be told that it was perfect. Its Corinthian columns fall on the eye with that sense of fulness that seems to answer an instinct of beauty in the very organ. One feels a fault or an excellence in architecture long before he can give the feeling a name; and I can see why, by Childe Harold and others, this heathen temple is called "the pride of Rome," though I cannot venture on a description. The faultless interior is now used as a church, and there lie Annibal Carracci and the divine Raphael--two names worthy of the place, and the last, of a shrine in every bosom capable of a conception of beauty. Glorious Raphael! If there was no other relic in Rome, one would willingly become a pilgrim to his ashes.
With my countryman and friend, Mr. Cleveland, I stood in the Roman forum by the light of a clear half moon. The soft silver rays poured in through the ruined columns of the Temple of Fortune and threw our shadows upon the bases of the tall shafts near the capitol, the remains, I believe, of the temple erected by Augustus to Jupiter Tonans. Impressive things they are, even without their name, standing tall and alone, with their broken capitals wreathed with ivy, and neither roof nor wall to support them, where they were placed by hands that have mouldered for centuries. It is difficult to rally one's senses in such a place, and be awake coldly to the scene. We stood, as we supposed, in the Rostrum. The noble arch, still almost perfect, erected by the senate to Septimius Severus, stood up clear and lofty beside us, the three matchless and lonely columns of the supposed temple of Jupiter Stator threw their shadows across the Forum below, the great arch, built at the conquest of Jerusalem to Titus, was visible in the distance, and above them all, on the gentle ascent of the Palatine, stood the ruined palace of the Cesars, the sharp edges of the demolished walls breaking up through vines and ivy, and the mellow moon of Italy softening rock and foliage into one silver-edged mass of shadow. It seems as if the very genius of the picturesque had arranged these immortal ruins. If the heaps of fresh excavation were but overgrown with grass, no poet nor painter could better image out the Rome of his dream. It surpasses fancy.