the largest portion of the seven hills is overspread with vineyards and ruins. The beauty and splendour of the modern city may be ascribed to the abuses of the government, to the influence of superstition. Each reign (the exceptions are rare) has been marked by the rapid elevation of a new family, enriched by the childless pontiff, at the expense of the church and country. The palaces of these fortunate nephews are the most costly monuments of elegance and servitude; the perfect arts of architecture, painting, and sculpture, have been prostituted in their service, and their galleries and gardens are decorated with the most precious works of antiquity, which taste or vanity has prompted them to collect. The ecclesiastical revenues were more decently employed by the popes themselves in the pomp of the Catholic worship; but it is superfluous to enumerate their pious foundations of altars, chapels, and churches, since these lesser stars are eclipsed by the sun of the Vatican, by the dome of St. Peter, the most glorious structure that ever has been applied to the use of religion. The fame of Julius the Second, Leo the Tenth, and Sixtus the Fifth, is accompanied by the superior merit of Bramante and Fontana, of Raphael and Michael-Angelo;* and the same muni1740, they had increased to one hundred forty-six thousand and eighty; and in 1765, I left them, without the Jews, one hundred sixty-one thousand eight hundred and ninety-nine. I am ignorant whether they have since continued in a progressive state. [Sir W. Gell (Addenda to Topog. p. 498), says that the French invasion reduced the population of Rome in 1805 to 135,000, and in 1810 to 123,000. In 1830, it had again increased to 147,000. According to Malte Brun and Balbi, (p. 584,) it amounted in 1800 to 153,000, had fallen in 1813 to 117,882, and risen again in 1836, to 157,268. Of these, 3,700 were Jews, 37 bishops, 1468 priests, 2023 monks, and 1476 nuns; the total of males about 83,000 to 74,000 females. Sir W. Gell observes that, the deaths exceed the births in the proportion of 5,100 to 4,700 in the year, and that the population is kept up by the influx of strangers. Yet marriage is encouraged by a thousand dowries given annually from the public purse; and seven foundling hospitals receive every year above 2,800 children, many of which are brought from distant provinces and even from Naples.-ED.]

* [If the fine arts could, of themselves, elevate a people, Italy ought to be the leader of Europe. They are certainly the means of affording delightful amusement and splendid decoration; but they are no more; they do not constitute the serious and important purpose of life, for which they are often mistaken, and from which they have too much diverted talent and toil. Popes and cardinals have well known how serviceable they might thus be made. When mind

ficence which had been displayed in palaces and temples was directed with equal zeal to revive and emulate the labours of antiquity. Prostrate obelisks were raised from the ground, and erected in the most conspicuous places; of the eleven aqueducts of the Cæsars and consuls, three were restored; the artificial rivers were conducted over a long series of old, or of new, arches, to discharge into marble basins a flood of salubrious and refreshing waters; and the spectator, impatient to ascend the steps of St. Peter's, is detained by a column of Egyptian granite, which rises between two lofty and perpetual fountains, to the height of one hundred and twenty feet. The map, the description, the monuments, of ancient Rome, have been elucidated by the diligence of the antiquarian and the student ;* could no longer be kept inactive, these vigilant observers of its ways provided for it this lightest employment, in order to withdraw its attention from the sources of valuable information. This has prompted the fostering care bestowed in Italy on poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture, and music. Brilliant genius has been so nurtured; but all its productions have one common character and the same uniform tendency they lull, they do not awaken, thought; they give imagination the ascendancy over reason; they take excited feeling by surprise, and carry it away the insnared captive of superstition. The fascinated slave has thus lost sight of truth, and every stray glance at its forbidden secrets has been reprehended as a crime. Never be it forgotten, that the readers of Ariosto and Tasso, and the enthusiastic worshippers of Raphael and Michael Angelo, allowed Galileo to be imprisoned. It is well to cultivate the fine arts as graceful attendants on more useful and ennobling purcuits, but it is better wholly to neglect them, than permit their usurpation of too high a place.-ED.]

*The Père Montfaucon distributes his own observations into twenty days, (he should have styled them weeks, or months,) of his visits to the different parts of the city. (Diarium Italicum, c. 8-20. p. 104301). That learned Benedictine reviews the topographers of ancient Rome; the first efforts of Blondus, Fulvius, Martianus, and Faunus, the superior labours of Pyrrhus Ligorius, had his learning been equal to his labours; the writings of Onuphrius Panvinius, qui omnes obscuravit, and the recent but imperfect books of Donatus and Nardini. Yet Montfaucon still sighs for a more complete plan and description of the old city, which must be attained by the three following methods: 1. The measurement of the space and intervals of the ruins. 2. The study of inscriptions and the places where they were found. 3. The investigation of all the acts, charters, diaries, of the middle ages which name any spot or building of Rome. The laborious work, such as Montfaucon desired, must be promoted by princely or public munificence; but the great modern plan of Nolli (A.D. 1748) would furnish a solid and accurate basis for the ancient topography of Rome.

and the footsteps of heroes, the relics, not of superstition, but of empire, are devoutly visited by a new race of pilgrims, from the remote, and once savage, countries of the North.

Of these pilgrims, and of every reader, the attention will be excited by a history of the decline and fall of the Roman empire; the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind. The various causes and progressive effects are connected with many of the events most interesting in human annals: the artful policy of the Cæsars, who long maintained the name and image of a free republic; the disorders of military despotism; the rise, establishment, and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople; the division of the monarchy; the invasion and settlements of the Barbarians of Germany and Scythia; the institutions of the civil law; the character and religion of Mahomet; the temporal sovereignty of the popes; the restoration and decay of the Western empire of Charlemagne; the crusades of the Latins in the East; the conquests of the Saracens and Turks; the ruin of the Greek empire; the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age. The historian may applaud the importance and variety of his subject; but, while he is conscious of his own imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency of his materials. It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised nearly twenty years of my life; and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public.

LAUSANNE, June 27, 1787.

INDEX.

ABAN, the Saracen, heroism of his | Ablavius, a favourite of Constantine the
widow, vi. 31.