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ANCIENT ROME. Map No. X.

In describing ANCIENT ROME Our attention is first directed to the relative localities of the Seven Hills on which Rome was originally built-the Aventine, Coelian, Palatine, Esquiline, Capitoline, Viminal, and Quirinal-all included within the walls of Servius Tullius, built about the year 550 B. C. About two hundred and eighty years later the emperor Aurelian commenced the erection of a new wall, which was completed by Probus five years afterward. The circumference of the Servian town was about six miles; that given it by the wall of Aurelian, which extended to the right bank of the Tiber, and inclosed a part of the Janiculan mount, was about twelve; although the city extended far beyond the limits of the latter. The modern rampart surrounds, substantially, the same area as that of Aurelian.

The greater part of Modern Rome covers the flat surface of the Campus Martius, the Capitoline and Quirinal mounts, and the right bank of the Tiber from Hadrian's Mausoleum, (now the Castle of St. Angelo,) south to and including the Janiculan mount. The ancient city of the Seven Hills is nearly all contained within the old walls of Servius. Almost the whole of this area, with the exception of the Capitoline and Quirinal hills, is now a wide waste of piles of shattered architecture rising amid vineyards and rural lanes, exhibiting no tokens of habitation except a few mouldering convents, villas, and cottages.

Beginning our survey at the Capitoline hill, on which once stood the famous temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, we find there no vestiges of ancient grandeur, save about eighty feet of what are believed to have been the foundations of the temple. At the northern extremity of the hill we still discern the fatal Tarpeian Rock, surrounded by a cluster of old and wretched hovels, while ruins encumber its base to the depth of twenty feet.

The open space between the Capitoline, Esquiline, and Palatine hills, is covered by relics of ancient buildings interspersed among modern churches and a few paltry streets. Here was the Great Roman Forum-a large space surrounded by and filled with public buildings, temples, statues, arches, &c., nearly all of which have disappeared; and the surface pavement on which they stood is now covered with their ruins to a depth of from fifteen to thirty feet. The space which the Forum occupied has been called, until recently, Campo Vaccino, or the Field of Cows; and it is in reality a market place for sheep, pigs, and cattle.

In early times there was a little lake between the Capitoline and Palatine hills. In time this was converted into a marsh; and the most ancient ruin which remains to us, the Cloaca Maxima, or great drain, built by the Tarquins, was designed for carrying off its waters. This drain, still performing its destined service, opens into the Tiber with a vault fourteen feet in height and as many in width. The beautiful circle of nineteen Corinthian columns near the Tiber, around the church of Santa Maria, has been usually styled the Temple of Vesta-supposed to belong to the age of the Antonines.

On the Palatine hill Augustus erected the earliest of the Palaces of the Casars; Claudius extended them, and joined the Palatine to the Capitoline by a bridge; and towards the northern point of the Palatine, Nero built his "Golden House," fronted by a vestibule in which stood the emperor's colossal statue. The Aventine rises from the river steep and bare, surmounted by a solitary convent. On the Cœlian are remains of the very curious circular Temple of Faunus, built by Claudius. Southward are, the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, occupying a surface equal to one-sixteenth of a square mile. The building, or range of buildings, was immense, containing four magnificent temples dedicated to Apollo, Esculapius, Hercules, and Bacchus,—a grand circular vestibule, with baths on each side for cold, tepid, warm, and seabathing-in the centre an immense square for exercise--and beyond it a noble hall with sixteen hundred marble seats for the bathers, and, at each end of the hall, libraries. On each side of the building was a court surrounded by porticoes, with an odeum for music, and, in the middle, a spacious basin for swimming. There was also a gymnasium for running, wrestling, &c., and around the whole a vast colonnade opening into spacious halls where the poets declaimed, and philosophers gave lectures to their auditors. But the immense halls are now roofless, and the wind sighs through the aged trees that have taken root in the pavements.

South of the Palatine was the Circus Marimus, which is said to have covered the spot where the games were celebrated when the Romans seized the Sabine women. It was more than two thousand feet in length, and, in its greatest extent, contained seats for two hundred

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and sixty thousand spectators. We can still trace its shape, but the structure has entirely disappeared.

In the open space eastward of the Great Forum stands the Coliseum or Flavian Amphitheatre, the boast of Rome and of the world. This gigantic edifice, which was begun by Vespasian and completed by Titus, is in form an ellipse, aud covers an area of about five and a-half acres. The external elevation consisted of four stories,-each of the three lower stories having eighty arches supported by half columns, Doric in the first range, Ionic in the second, and Corinthian in the third. The wall of the fourth story was faced with Corinthian pilasters, and lighted by forty rectangular windows. The space surrounding the central elliptical arena was occupied with sloping galleries resting on a huge mass of arches, and ascending towards the summit of the external wall. One hundred and sixty staircases led to the galleries. A movable awning covered the whole, with the exception of the Podium, or covered gallery for the emperor and persons of high rank. Within the area of the Coliseum, gladiators, martyrs, slaves, and wild beasts, combated on the Roman festivals; and here the blood of both men and animals flowed in torrents to furnish amusement to the degenerate Romans. The Coliseum is now partially in ruins; scarcely a half presents its original height; the uppermost gallery has disappeared; the second range is much broken; the lowest is nearly perfect; but the Podium is in a very ruinous state. From its enormous mass "walls, palaces, half cities have been reared;" but Benedict XIV. put a stop to its destruction by consecrating the whole to the martyrs whose blood had been spilled there. In the middle of the once bloody arena stands & crucifix; and around this, at equal distances, fourteen altars, consecrated to different saints, are erected on the dens once occupied by wild beasts.

The principal ruins on the Esquiline, a part of them extending their intricate corridors on the heights overlooking the Coliseum, have been called the Baths and the Palace of Titus; but although it is evident that baths constituted a part of their plan, the design of the whole is not known. What is called the Temple of Minerva Medica, in a garden near the eastern walls, is a decagonal ruin, supposed to belong to the age of the Antonines. The Baths of Diocletian, on the Viminal mount, appear to have resembled, in their general arrangement, those of Caracalla. Still farther to the north-east are the remains of the camp erected by Sejanus, the minister of Tiberius, for the Prætorian guards. In the beautiful gardens of the historian Sallust, on the eastern declivity of the Pincian mount, are the remains of a temple and circus, supposed to belong either to the Augustan age, or to the last days of the Republic. On the western ascent of the thickly-peopled Quirinal, whose heights are crowned by the palace and gardens of the pope, are extensive ruins of walls, vaults, and porticoes, belonging to the baths of Constantine. They are now surrounded by the beautiful gardens of the Colonna palace. Farther south, between the Quirinal and Capitoline, some striking remains of the Forums of Nerva and Trajan are still visible.

Of the numerous ruins in the Campus Martius, we have room for only a brief notice. Of the Theatre of Marcellus, eleven arches of the exterior walls still remain. Of the Theatre of Pompey, the foundation arches may be seen in the cellars and stables of the Palazzio Pio. The Flaminian Circus and the Circus Agonalis are entirely in ruins. The Column of Antoninus and the Tomb of Augustus are still standing, with their summits much lowered.

The Pantheon, the most perfect of all the remains of ancient Rome, is a temple of a circular form, built by Agrippa. It was dedicated to Jupiter the Avenger, but besides the statue of this god, it contained those of the other heathen deities, formed of various materials-gold, silver, bronze, and marble. The portico of this temple is one hundred and ten feet long by forty-four in depth, and is supported by sixteen Corinthian columns, each of the shafts consisting of a single piece of Oriental granite, forty-two feet in height. The bases and capital are of white marble. The main building consists of a vast circular drum, with niches flanked by columns, above which a beautiful and perfectly preserved cornice runs round the whole building. Over a second story, formed by an attic sustaining an upper cornice, rises, to the height of one hundred and forty-three feet, the beautiful dome, which is divided internally into square panels supposed to have been originally inlaid with bronze. A circular aperture in the dome admits the only light which the place receives. The consecration of this temple (A. D. 608) as a Christian church, has preserved, for the admiration of the moderns, this most beautiful of heathen fanes. Christian altars now fill the recess where once stood the most famous statues of the gods of the heathen world.

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Map No. XI. is a CHART OF THE WORLD on Mercator's projection-a Chart of History, exhibiting the world as known to Europeans at the period of the discovery of America-and a Chart of Isothermal lines, or lines of equal heat, showing the comparative mean annual temperature of different parts of the Earth's surface.

It will be observed that General History, previous to the discovery of America, is confined to a small portion of the Earth's surface; as represented by the light portions of the Chart; while the whole Western Continent and Greenland, most of Africa and Asia, and their islands, and parts of Northern Europe and Iceland, were unknown to Europeans, and in the darkness of barbarism. It would seem, therefore, that the history of THE WORLD has but just commenced.

The Isothermal lines show that the temperature of a place does not depend wholly upon its latitude. Thus the southern limit of perpetually frozen ground in the northern hemisphere (at a mean annual temperature of thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit) follows a line ranging from below fifty-five degrees of latitude to above seventy. The mean annual temperature of London, at fifty-one and a-half degrees north latitude, is fifty degrees of Fahrenheit, the same as that of Philadelphia, which is eleven and a-half degrees of latitude farther south. The line of greatest heat, (at a mean annual temperature of eighty-two and four-tenths degrees of Fahrenheit,) is more than ten degrees of latitude north of the Equator in South America, in Africa, and southern Hindostan; and about eight degrees south of the Equator in a part of the Indian Ocean between Borneo and Hew Holland. The sea is, generally, considerably warmer in winter than the land, and cooler in summer. Continents and large islands are found to be warmer on their western sides than on the eastern. The extremes of temperature are experienced chiefly in large inland tracts, and little felt in small islands remote from continents. Had the Arctic regions been entirely of land, the intense heat of summer and the cold of winter would have been equally fatal to animal life.

BATTLE GROUNDS OF THE WARS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE WARS OF NAPOLEON. Map No. XII.

The wars growing out of the French Revolution, of which those of Napoleon were a continuation, embrace a period of nearly twenty-three years, from the defeat of the Austrians at Jemappes on the 17th of November, 1792, to the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo on the 18th of June, 1815.

The accompanying Map presents at a glance the vast theatre on which were exhibited the thousand Scenes in this mighty Drama of human suffering. The thickly-dotted Spanish peninsula may be regarded as one great battle-field, where Frenchman, Spaniard, Portuguese, and Briton, sank in the death struggle together. Those dark spots where the "pealing drum," the "waving standards," and the “trumpets clangor," invited to slaughter, cluster thickly around the eastern boundaries of France, including Belgium and northern Italy; they are seen in far-off Egypt and Palestine, recalling Napoleon's dreams of Eastern conquest; and they strew the route to Moscow, where, from the fires of the Kremlin, and amid the snows of a Russian winter, the French eagles commenced a lasting retreat.

As we look over this vast gladiatorial arena of frantic, struggling Life, and agonizing Death, our thoughts naturally turn from its mingled horrors and glories to rest upon the commanding genius, the wizard spirit,-of him "who rode upon the whirlwind and directed the storm”— of him whom Byron well describes as a mighty Gambler,

"Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones,
Whose table earth, whose dice were human bones."

But the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, with all the suffering which they oecasioned, have not been unattended with useful results in urging forward the march of European civilization. The moral character of Napoleon, the most prominent actor in the drama, has been variously drawn by friends and foes; but the towering height, the lightning-like rapidity, and the brilliancy, of his genius, have never been questioned by his most bitter revilers.

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