47

LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 421

came to see. But the disappointment was temporary, and happily enough, the
first impression heightened the effect of the subsequent happy realization of
what we had expected. With the light of day, the Eternal City, seated on its
throne of seven hills, fully gave us all it had promised, banished every feel-
ing of disappointment and filled our minds with ever-increasing wonder and
amazement. In all directions were disclosed those indications of her ancient
greatness for which we were looking, and of her fitness to be the seat of the
most powerful empire that man had ever seen;-truly the Mistress of the
known world and, for a thousand years, the recognized metropolis of the
Christian faith and the head, still, of the largest organized church in the
world. Here can be seen together the symbols of both Christian and pagan
Rome: the temples of discarded gods and those of the accepted Savior of the
world – the Son of the Virgin Mary. Empires, principalities, powers and
dominions have perished: altars and their gods have mingled with the dust;
a religion which made men virtuous in peace and invincible in war, has per-
ished or been supplanted, yet the Eternal City itself remains. It speaks from
the spacious Forum yet studded with graceful but time worn columns, where
Cicero poured out his burning eloquence against Catiline and against Antony,
for which latter speech he lost his head: from the Palatine, from whose sum-
mit the palaces of the Caesars overlooked a large part of the ancient city, and
from the Pantheon. built twenty-seven years before the songs of the angels
were heard on the plains of Bethlehem. and of which Byron says,

"Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime,
Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods.
... spared and blessed by time.
Looking tranquility. while falls or nods
Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods
His way through thorns to ashes – glorious dome!
Shalt thou not last'? Time's scythe and tyrants' rods
Shiver upon thee – sanctuary and home
Of art and piety – Pantheon! Pride of Rome!"

Though two thousand years have rolled over it, and though the beautiful
marble which once adorned and protected its exterior has been torn off and
made to serve other and inferior purposes, there, speaking to us of ages past,
it stands, erect and strong, and may stand yet a thousand years longer. Its
walls, twenty feet thick, give few signs of decay. More than any building I
saw in Rome, it tells of the thoroughness of the Romans in everything they
thought it worth their while to undertake or to be or to do.