lot will be. No doubt, in old days, such picture teaching suited the times; to-day one scarcely knows whether to smile or shiver at them. The central grassy space shews no sign of graves, though it is quite full, for all Pisans are buried there, the earth being regarded as specially sacred, having been brought in Pisan galleys from Jerusalem when Pisa was a great sea power, the rival of Genoa and Venice. The bodies rest there for a few years, and are then transferred to one common grave.
"You are a day too late for the fair," said a much travelled friend to me, as I spoke of going to Rome for the first time; "its beauty has vanished before the spade of the excavator, and the zeal of the archæologist; they have turned the Forum into a quarry yard of stones, and scraped the Colosseum of its graceful mantle of creepers and wild flowers."
"Wrong," I said to myself, "whatever the artist might say," as on my first morning there I stood on one of the massive tiers of seats in the Colosseum, and looked down on the most imposing ruin in the world. The whole circuit of the walls remains, though only on one side rising to its original height of one hundred and fifty-seven feet; its seats for ninety thousand spectators; the original surface of the arena, with its cages of wild beasts, and arrangements for gladiatorial shows, are all laid bare to view. Sitting there, and musing on those terrible scenes of blood which the Romans delighted in: Ignatius torn to bits by wild beasts; Telemachus, the plucky monk who rushed into the arena to protest against the gladiatorial fight, and by his death putting a stop to them for
