work of constructive engineers where large operations are in progress, and in many night-industries where some increase of cost is immediately compensated by the augmented efficiency of the service. It will find its beneficent way into the firehaunted recesses of dangerous mines. It will be used wherever it is important that true tints and colours shall be accurately discriminated under artificial illumination, and wherever costly and delicate fabrics, that are prone to be injured by the vapours produced by ordinary processes of combustion, are stored. It will be distributed into a softened constellation of subordinate lights whenever additional cost of production is not of practical moment, or wherever there is superfluity of steam-power at hand to be turned to account. And, if last, not least, in that divided form it will become a cherished accession to the gathering of other bright things in the dwellings of the wealthy, where elegance and luxury take rank as necessaries of life, and where high cost is a recommendation rather than a disqualifying condition. ART. III.-1. The Primitive Fortifications of the City of Rome, &c. By JOHN HENRY PARKER, C.B., &c. 2nd edition. Oxford: 1878. 2. L'Histoire Romaine à Rome. Par J.-J. AMPÈRE. 2me édition. Paris: 1865. 3. The Roman Forum: a Topographical Study. By FRANCIS MORGAN NICHOLS, M. A., F.S.A. London: 1877. THE HE history of the spot of ground upon which the city of Rome has stood for so many centuries has passed through three stages of very different character and interest, but each of which reflects some light upon the others, and may deserve to be embraced in one general view. First of all we discover some slight record of material facts in the mere outward aspect of the site on which the city has been erected, in the visible features impressed upon it by the silent operations of nature, in which man has had no part and no place at all. Secondly, we trace the works of man, and of human power, in such fragments as remain embedded in the soil, or peering above it, of his intelligent constructions. Lastly, we may read in books, or interpret from graven monuments in stone or metal, what purport to be the connected annals of human progress through many centuries of the city's actual existence. From the two latter stages of this history the first stands of course wholly apart; it does not represent man or the actions of man at all, and accordingly its interest is of a special character, distinct from all human affairs. Nevertheless it has no doubt a reality of its own, consecutive in its details and consistent with itself, could we trace it as fully as we should desire. To some enquirers, indeed, the ineradicable traces of this prehistoric career impressed upon the soil of Rome by the order of its physical revolutions is more significant and really intelligible than many written annals blurred by the passions and errors of human nature; the man of science, the naturalist and geologist, may regard the testimony of the rocks and streams, of the flora and fauna, of primeval Rome as surer at least, if less distinct and particular, than the gravest assertions of many eminent compilers of social annals. These witnesses cannot invent; they cannot misinterpret facts. In the face of the mountains and the rivers criticism is silent, scepticism has no standpoint. The geologist may rest secure when he has pointed out how, for instance, the central ridge of the Apennines was in the remotest ages upheaved from a vast circumambient ocean by some explosive force lodged in its foundations; how in its rise it raised with it the smoother surface of the Campagna, studded indeed with lesser hills, each perhaps once a focus of volcanic action; how these hills lifted along with them masses of marine sand and shells from the ocean beneath which they had originally lain; how the plain, once covered by the salt waters, was afterwards immersed in the great lake which was fed by the affluents from the surrounding eminences, the outlet from which was barred before they could empty themselves into the sea. We know not by what natural convulsion an opening was effected in the hills at Ostia, and the valley in which Rome stands left at last free to cast off its superfluous waters by the great natural drain of the Tiber. These changes and others like them are plainly visible to the eye of the naturalist, and mark to his mind a series of epochs and a succession of causes and effects, which may be called in some sense historical. Before man has appeared upon the soil, the naturalist traces mentally the generation of animal life; even prior to the birth of animal life he may picture to himself a vision of the vegetable organisms by which the bare skeleton of rocks and stones has become gradually clad with mould. His observation of the evolution of law even among the brute elements of this primal Rome may be not less interesting, not less true, not less fruitful of reflection to him, than the recorded progress of the Roman jurisprudence in after ages from the Twelve Tables to the Pandects, the furthest outcome of human intellect in the ancient world. Thence he proceeds, no doubt, to enquire into the changes which have occurred in the Roman climate, indicating the disappearance of vast tracts of forest; when the plains were covered deeply with snows that are now of rare occurrence; when the rapid Tiber was periodically congealed; when the air was more humid, and greater masses of water descended from the hills to stagnate in the lower levels between them. The earliest observations which man has made upon the spot disclose these its special features. We do not suppose, indeed, that, according to the old Roman tradition, the Velabrum was so called from the sails (vela) of the barks which navigated it, nor from the ferries (a vehendo) by which it was crossed; but it is probable that the appellation owes its origin to the marshy nature of the soil, and has its root in xos, the ancient Greek or Pelasgic word, which reappears, for instance, in Velia, Velinus, and other local names. These marshy levels were indented with various lakes or pools, all connected in the earliest traditions with their special legendary tales. Of these pools some emitted sulphureous exhalations, the remains of the primeval volcanic forces, and these too became dignified, from the time when they were first observed by man, with imaginary associations, and mingled with the prehistoric records of the city. The cave of Cacus under the Aventine, the temple of Mephitis on the Quirinal, the bog of Terentum on the riverside, seem all to have suggested the legends connected with them by the sulphureous vapours which issued, or were reported to have once issued, from them. The presence of great tracts of woodland upon the hills of Rome is attested by the local designations by which some of them were distinguished from the first period of recorded observation: such, for instance, as the Mons Querquetulanus, and *M. Ampère traces this word in a passage of some interest :'A Rome même, plusieurs noms de localités montrent la présence 'des Pélasges, par exemple les noms du Vélabre et de la Velia. 'Helos ou Velos signifie en grec marais. Diverses villes, en Italie et 'en Grèce, se sont appelées Elis, Elea, Velia, et toutes sont situées dans 'des contrées marécageuses. Il faut y joindre . . . Velletri (Velitræ), 'qui domine les marais Pontins. Denys d'Halicarnasse dit égale'ment qu'un lieu entouré de marais (dans la Sabine où furent les Pélasges) 's'appelait Ouelia, parce que dans la langue antique on désignait ainsi 'les endroits marécageux. Servius donne la même étymologie du nom 'de la ville d'Elæa ou Velia dans l'Italie méridionale. C'est celle 'd'Hélos, à l'embouchure de l'Eurotas, de Velinus en Etrurie près des 'marais de Volterre, Vada Volaterrana.'-Hist. Romaine, i. p. 117. possibly the Esquiline, from the species of oak which grew on them respectively; the Fagutal, from its beeches; the Viminal, from its osiers. Besides these the lesser wood of the Argiletum, and the grove of the Asylum between the two heights of the Tarpeian hill, were both clothed with foliage. The tradition, if not the actual presence, of woods on the Palatine, the Aventine, and the Cælian, is attested by the frequent allusions of the poets of the Imperial era.. But the sylvan character of the ancient Tiber valley is most vividly presented in the picturesque description which Virgil gives of it. When Eneas enters the mouth of the river, he first detects the famous white sow in a wood on the bank; and as he proceeds, the waters and the forests are amazed at the sight of a vessel such as had never floated there before. The rowers as they move along are shaded by trees of various kinds, and cut their way through the green labyrinth reflected in the stream.* All is wood that is not water. The city of Evander, on the Palatine, is brought before us much like an Indian stockade half hidden in the forest. These primitive aspects of nature have been at last invaded by man, and man begins in due season to attest his entry upon his inheritance-or call it rather his conquest of nature-by the material works which he has left behind him. He has found the use of his hands before he has learned to exert his voice; or rather he ploughs and he builds before he relates the story of his works and actions. Food is his first need, for which he clears the forest, cleaves the soil, and sows the furrow; and his earliest traditions point to the first husbandman as the primal benefactor of his kind. Saturn, the inventor of sowing, with the hook with which he reaps his harvest, typifies to him the earliest germ of social existence. But next to food his great need is shelter; shelter from the heat of the sun and the dews at night he can easily obtain, first in the caves of the rock, and next from the stems or boughs of trees, with the * If such was the sylvan aspect of the primeval Tiber, it is curious that in the time of Augustus the river could again be celebrated for its verdant foliage, though Propertius can speak no longer of the aboriginal forest, but of recent plantations the growth of a few generations :Tu licet abjectus Tiberina molliter ora Lesbia Mentoreo viva bibas opere; Et modo tam celeres mireris currere lintres, addition, step by step, of clay or lime and wattles, of timber for framework, and lastly of brick or stone as the one or the other is most easily acquired or worked. But his materials are at first slight and perishable. The dwelling each man erects for himself hardly survives the life of the builder. If his house falls or rots away or takes fire, he easily fashions himself another. But this is not all the shelter he requires. The sun and the rain are not the only disturbers of his rest, not the only enemies he has to guard against. He must protect himself first from the beasts, and next from his fellow-man. The mound, the trench, the palisade form perhaps his earliest fortifications; but the means of attack, in primitive as in modern times, constantly tend to overcome the means of defence. He must employ all his ingenuity and energy to devise and erect more effectual bulwarks against the force or the wiles of his assailants. He must build walls, solid ramparts of stone, the firmest and most compact material he can fashion to his use. The hills with their sides naturally or artificially scarped, the woods that encircle and the streams that bound them, form each a natural bulwark requiring little assistance from his hands; but he must connect these strongholds, and fence the valleys beneath them with masonry of such height that it cannot be scaled, of such thickness that it cannot be beaten down. Throughout the central regions of Italy, as indeed very commonly elsewhere, there still remain colossal fragments of what we must regard as the earliest existing work of man, the defensive walls of his primeval habitations. Such of these as are distinguished by a special style of construction, namely, by big unhewn and shapeless boulders laid in no regular order on one another, have been commonly designated by the term Cyclopean, a word of no real signification, implying indeed in our mouths little more than that we know nothing of their authors. More recent archeologists, however, have given them the name of Pelasgian, and supposed them to be the work of the earliest race of which notice can be found in the records of Italian history, the race which is popularly reported to have wandered from Lesser Asia into Greece, and thence into Italy; in Italy to have mingled with a primitive stock of aborigines, and, after planting many such works as these on the soil, to have left a not less permanent memorial of themselves in the names which still attach to hills and streams and centres of ancient habitation. The antiquaries, taking Mount Ida in the Troad for their point of starting, trace such structures, all of kindred formation, to Lycia, to Crete, and to many regions of continental Hellas. From |