THE FORUM. The Forum, where the immortal accents glow, Porta est, ait, ista Palati BYRON. Hic Stator, hoc primum condita Roma loco est. OVID. THE associations connected with childhood and early youth are infinitely more powerful than any that are formed in maturer years. How various and interesting are the recollections which the name of ROME excites, connected as they are with the happy studies of our earlier days! Montaigne has described, in his own inimitable style of simplicity and sincerity, the revival of his youthful enthusiasm on visiting the ruins of Rome. "I was acquainted," says he, " with the affairs of Rome long before I knew any thing of those of my own family. I had the Capitol and its whole figure in my mind when the Louvre was quite unknown to me, and had heard of the Tiber before the Seine. My thoughts have run more on the condition and fortunes of Lucullus, Metellus, and Scipio than of any of my own countrymen. Finding myself useless to this age, I recur to that other, and am so taken with it, that this old Rome, in its free, just, and flourishing state (for neither am I delighted with its that I can infancy or old age), affects and warms me so, not see the situation of their streets and houses, and those ancient ruins, without all the powers of my soul being stirred." Gibbon has delineated, with equal fervour, the enthusiastic feelings which animated him as he gazed upon the Forum. "At the distance of twenty-five years I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step, the ruins of the Forum. Each memorable spot-where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Cæsar fell, was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation." Even the unimpassioned Middleton, when " rambling about in the very rostra of old Rome, and in that Temple of Concord where Tully assembled the senate," confesses that his imagination was warmed to a degree almost equal to that of the orator's "old audience." In no part of the city are these classical recollections more feelingly excited than in the Forum Romanum, -"locis ipsis in quibus, eorum quos admiramur adsunt vestigia"-where we gaze, as it were, upon the present footprints of those who, in our youth, were our admiration and delight. How infinite the variety of never-forgotten incidents that crowd upon the mind in surveying this centre-seat of Roman greatness! how magnificent the multitude of images which the history of the republic presents! and how awful the vicissitudes of the city from the period when Æneas found the herds grazing in the Forum, Passim armenta videntur Romanoque foro et lautis mugire carinis, to our own days, when the Forum once more echoed with the lowings of the herd! The seat upon which the Roman people sate enthroned in their majesty was converted by their degenerate descendants into a mart for cattle. The market was constructed amongst the ruins of the Temple of Peace, and the name of the Forum Romanum was lost in that of the Campo Vaccino. It is only within a very late period that its ancient name has been restored to the Forum. The principal monuments of antiquity represented in the plate are the remains of the temple formerly supposed to have been that of Concord, the three pillars of the Temple of Jupiter Stator, the Column of Phocas, and the Arch of Septimius Severus. The round portico on the left was long believed to have been the entrance to the Temple of Concord; and the classical traveller delighted to indulge in the idea that he stood on the threshold of that edifice which had so often echoed with the eloquence of Cicero. Later discoveries, however, proved that the Temple of Concord was situated nearer the Quirinal Hill, between the Temple of Jupiter Tonans and the Arch of Septimius Severus. In the same manner the three beautiful columns near the Palatine Mount were conjectured to have formed part of the Temple of Jupiter Stator, the "munitissimus habendi senatûs locus," in which Cicero assembled the senate in that time |