 | THE COLISEUM. The Italian sketch book |  |
THE COLISEUM.
Of all impressions from antiquity, derived from the
ruins at Rome, none is more vivid and lasting than
that inspired by the Coliseum, when viewed under
circumstances best calculated for effect. Such are
the quiet and mystery, the shadowy aspect and mild
illumination of moonlight. Availing myself of a
season like this, it was with something of awe that
I approached to partake of a pleasure, in its very
nature melancholy, yet in the highest degree attractive
to the imagination, and calculated to awaken
many of the deepest sentiments, especially those by
which the fellow-feeling of our race is nurtured and
sustained. And as the scene, in all its actual beauty,
environed by associations more impressive than its
past magnificence, and reposing in a light more tender
than gleamed from the eager eyes, which once
shone out from its now dim arches, broke upon
my sight, I seemed to have come forth to hold communion—not
with the material form, but with the
very spirit of antiquity. There, its massive walls
circling broadly, preeminent in lingering pride,
stands the Coliseum. As the monarch of ruins, its
prominence, while surrounding objects are lost or
blended in shade. Its many arched recesses are
rendered still more obscure by the veil of shadow,
or partially revealed in the congenial light.
Through some of them the silent stars may be seen
at their far-off vigils in the heavens, and again a
fragment, which the hand of time has spared, abruptly
bars the view. Over some, the long grass,
that sad frieze which antiquity ever attaches to the
architecture of man, hangs motionless, and, as a
lattice, divides the falling moonbeams, or waves
gently in the night breeze. But it is when standing
beneath one of those arches, and vainly scanning
the length of the half-illumined corridor, or looking
down upon the grass-grown area, marked by a single
path, that a sense of the events and times of
which this ruin is the monument, and its suggestions
the epitaph, gradually gains upon the attention,
like the home thoughts which a strain of familiar
music has aroused. The gorgeous spectacle of
Rome's congregated wisdom and beauty thronging
the vast galleries, now lost or crumbling through
age, the glitter of wealth, the pomp of power, the
eagerness of curiosity, and the enthusiasm of varied
passions, which once rendered this a scene of unequalled
pageantry,—all come, at the call of memory,
to contrast themselves with the same scene now,
clad in the solemnity of solitude and decay.
But yet another retrospection, inducing deeper
scene a higher interest. What an amount of human
suffering have these dark walls witnessed! Could
they but speak, what a tale of horror would be unfolded!
How often has man, in all his savage or
his cultivated dignity, been abandoned in this wide
area to the beasts of the forest,—more solitary when
surrounded by his unpitying kind, than when alone
with the lordly brute in his desert domain! How
much of human blood has this damp earth drunk,
and how often upon its clammy surface has the
human form been stretched in agony or death!
Nor was this the theatre of effort and woe only to
the physical nature. Who can estimate the pangs
of yearning affection which have wrung the departing
spirit, the feeling of utter desolation with
which the barbarian has laid down his unsupported
head and died in the midst of his enemies? Who
can distinctly imagine the concentration of every
sentiment in that of the love of existence, which has
nerved the arm of the combatant, and the stern
despair with which he has at length relinquished his
dearly sold life? Far less might one hope to realize
the deep energy with which the martyr to his
faith has here given proof of its power. There is
something holy in a spot which has witnessed the
voluntary sacrifice of existence to the cause of
Christianity. Of beautiful and sublime, as well as
terrible spectacles, has this been the scene. Where
has youth seemed so pure in its loveliness, or manhood
its majesty, as here? If, in this ruined amphitheatre,
humanity has been most debased, by the despoiling
hand of cruelty, where has she exhibited
more of the sublimest of her energies—the spirit of
self-sacrifice? Often as this air has wafted the sigh
and groans of suffering and remorse, has it not likewise
borne upward the prayer of faith and the
thanksgiving of joyful confidence? Though glances
of ferocity and revenge have been turned, in impotent
malignity, through this broad opening to the
smiling sky above, how often have eyes, beaming
with forgiving love, or fixed in religious fervour,
looked into its blue depths, from the awful death of
the Coliseum!
And yet, while the abandonment and decay of
Flavian's amphitheatre plainly indicate the departure
of those ideas and customs, in accordance with
which it was reared, the question forcibly suggests
itself to the observer of its remains, has the principle,
which sustained so long an institution like this,
utterly and forever departed? Have we nothing in
our experience, resembling what seems to have originated
in a deeper sentiment than caprice, and
from its long continuance and popularity, has an
apparent foundation in our nature? The reply to
such self-interrogations is affirmative. What student
of humanity, or observer of man, does not
recognize the same principle operating eternally?
Those who hold the system of Christianity, in its
Individual man has arrayed against him the varied
force of circumstances without and passion within.
Of the insidiousness, the power of these opponents,
who is ignorant? And there are, too, spectators—
too often as heartless, curious, and cold lookers on,
as those which thronged the galleries of the Coliseum.
| THE COLISEUM. The Italian sketch book | |