eastern boundary of the Ponteni marshes. | took place in the reign of Theodoric, is The Sabine hills surround like an amphi- the last exhibition of which history has theatre the whole expanse of the Northern left us any record. During the Christian Campagna. We quote from Murray: "In persecutions, the amphitheatre was the the foreground, and nearest the eye of the scene of fearful barbarities. In the reign spectator, is the Arch of Titus. It was of Trajan, St. Ignatius was brought from erected by the senate and people of Rome Antioch purposely to be devoured by the in honor of Titus, to commemorate the wild beasts of the Coliseum; and the traconquest of Jerusalem. It is the most ditions of the Church are filled with the magnificent of all the triumphal arches, names of martyrs who perished in the and as a record of Scripture history, is, arena. The building was originally called beyond all doubt, the most interesting the Flavian Amphitheatre in honor of its ruin in Rome. It is a single arch of founders, and the first mention of the Grecian marble, with fluted columns of name Coliseum occurs in the fragments of the composite order on each side. On the the Venerable Bede, who records the side opposite the spectator, the columns famous prophecy of the Anglo-Saxon pilare more perfect, and nearly all the cornice grims: and the attic are preserved. The sculptures of the frieze represent a procession of warriors leading oxen to the sacrifice; on the keystone is the figure of a Roman warrior, nearly entire. The bas-reliefs on the sides of the piers under the arch, are highly interesting. On one side is a representation of a procession bearing the spoils of the Temple, among which the golden table, the seven-branched candlestick, and the silver trumpets, may be still recognized; they perfectly correspond with the description of Josephus, and are the only authentic representations of the sacred objects." THE COLISEUM. Near the centre of the engraving will be seen rising in solemn grandeur and colossal proportions the noblest old ruin in existence. 66 This amphitheatre was founded by Vespasian, A.D. 72, and completed by Titus in his eighth consulate, A.D. 80, ten years after the destruction of Jerusalem. The Church tradition tells us that it was designed by Gaudentius, a Christian architect and martyr, and that many thousand captive Jews were employed in its construction. It received successive additions from the later emperors, and was altered and repaired at various times until the beginning of the sixth century. The gladiatorial spectacles of which it was the scene for nearly four hundred years, are matters of history, and it is not necessary to dwell upon them further than to state that at the dedication of the building by Titus, 5000 wild beasts were slain in the arena, and the games in honor of the event lasted for nearly 100 days. The gladiatorial combats were abolished by Honorius, and a show of wild beasts, which 'While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand: This prophecy is generally regarded as a proof that the amphitheatre was tolerably perfect in the eighth century. Nearly all the authorities agree that two thirds of the original building have entirely disappeared. The western and southern sides are supposed to have perished during the siege of Robert Guiscard, who showed as little reverence for the monuments of Rome as he did for the temples of Pæstum. After the ruin had been converted into a fortress in the middle ages, it supplied the Roman princes for nearly 200 years with materials for their palaces. After these spoliations the popes appear to have been anxious to turn the ruin to some profitable purpose. Sixtus V. endeavored to transform it into a woollen manufactory, and employed Fontana to design a plan for converting the arcades into shops; but the scheme entirely failed, and was abandoned after it had cost the Pope 15,000 scudi. Clement XI., a century later, inclosed the lower arcades, and established a manufactory of saltpetre, with as little success. To prevent further encroachments, Benedict XIV., in 1750, consecrated the building to the memory of the Christian martyrs who had perished in it. The French cleared the porticoes and removed from the arena the rubbish which had accumulated for centuries. Pius VII. built the wall which now supports the southwestern angle-a fine specimen of modern construction; and his successors have liberally contributed towards the preservation of the fabric. A cross now stands in the middle of the arena, promising for every kiss an indulgence of 200 days; and fourteen statues of Our Lord's Passion are placed at regular intervals around it. In the rude pulpit a monk occasionally preaches, and it is impossible not to be impressed with the solemnity of a Christian service in a scene so much identified with the early history of our common faith. "The amphitheatre is built principally of travertine, though large masses of brickwork and tufa are to be seen in different parts of the interior. Its form, as usual, is elliptical. The external elevation consisted of four stories, the three lower being composed of arches supported by half columns, and the fourth being a solid wall faced with pilasters, and pierced in the alternate compartments with forty square windows. In each of the lower tiers there were eighty arches. The first tier is of the Doric order, and is nearly thirty feet high; the second is Ionic, about thirtyeight feet high; the third is Corinthian, of the same height; and the fourth, also Corinthian, is forty-four feet high. Above this was an attic. At the summit of the northern side many of the consoles, which projected in order to support the poles of the velarium, or awning, still remain. The height of the outer wall is stated by Taylor and Cressy to be 157 English feet; the major axis of the building, including the thickness of the walls, is 620 feet; the minor axis, 513. The length of the arena is 287 feet, the width 180 feet. The superficial area, on the same authority, is nearly six acres. The arches were numbered externally from 1. to LXXX., as may still be seen on the north side. Between those numbered 38 and 39 is one facing the Esquiline which has neither number nor cornice: it is wider than the others, and is supposed to have been the private entrance of the emperor. There was a corresponding entrance from the Palatine on the opposite side, supposed to communicate with a subterranean passage, still visible, constructed by Commodus, and in which he narrowly escaped assassination. In the interior, the centre is of course occupied by the arena. Around this were arranged, upon walls gradually sloping down towards the centre, the seats for the spectators. There were four tiers of seats, corresponding with the four external stories. The first story was composed of three circular porticoes. At the base sur rounding the arena was the Podium, a kind of covered gallery, thirteen feet high and fourteen broad, on which the emperor, the senators, and the vestal virgins, had their seats. Above this, and separated from it by a wall, were three orders of seats called the cavea, and an attic or roofed gallery, as may be seen on several coins on which the building is represented. The first order is supposed to have contained twenty-four rows of seats; it terminated in a kind of landing-place, from which rose the second order, consisting of sixteen rows of seats. A lofty wall, part of which still exists, separated this from the third order, and is supposed to have been the line of demarcation between the Senatus Populusque Romanus' and the plebeians. Above the third order was the attic and the covered gallery already mentioned, both of which have entirely disappeared. The Regionaries state that the amphitheatre would contain 87,000 spectators. A staircase has been made near the old Hermitage, by which visitors may ascend to the upper stories, and from thence as high as the parapet. During the ascent they will traverse the ambularia and galleries, and will thus be enabled to form a better idea of the whole fabric than they could do from pages of description. At the summit they will observe fragments of columns, cornices, etc., built up in the walls, as if the upper portions had been hastily finished with materials originally destined for other purposes. The scene from this summit is one of the most impressive in the world, and there are few travellers who do not visit the spot by moonlight in order to realize the magnificent description in Manfred,' the only description which has ever done justice to the wonders of the Coliseum: I do remember me, that in my youth, A grove which springs through levell'd battle- And twines its roots with the imperial hearths. Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon Considerable speculation has been occasioned by the holes which are seen in the exterior wall of the building, and many learned treatises have been written on the subject. Nibby states that they were made during the middle ages in extracting the iron cramps which bound the stone together; and the Abbé Barthelemi mentions that he found some fragments of iron still remaining in them. This statement seems to set at rest the opinion of the older antiquaries, who supposed that they were made to receive the poles of the booths erected in the corridors during the fairs which were held there. Among the numerous dissertations to which the Coliseum has given rise, is one of higher interest than the disputes of the antiquaries the quarto volume of Professor Sebastiani, entitled the Flora Colisea, in which he enumerates 260 species of plants found among the ruins. Nearly a fourth of the entire number are papilionacea; the cryptogamia make up a large proportion of the remainder. With such ma terials for a hortus siccus, it is surprising that the Romans do not make complete collections for sale, on the plan of the Swiss herbaria; we cannot imagine any memorial of the Coliseum which would be more acceptable to the traveller." THE ROMAN FORUM. The ancient Roman Forum was situated, according to antiquarians, in the open space near the centre of the engraving, ending at the three columns. The double avenue of trees is on the north-east side of the Forum. It was 630 feet in length, by 100 to 110 feet in breadth. On the right is the Palatine Hill, covered with gardens and a convent standing alone amidst the ruins of the palace of the Cæsars. The Palatine was the seat of the earliest settlement of Rome. Over the Coliseum, the eye rests on the magnificent Basilica of St. John Lateran. On the left of the Coliseum are ruins which are scattered over the engravseen the ruins of the bath of Titus. The the imagination and memory must fill up. ing are but the outlines of a picture which Amid these ruins the traveller looks for visible memorials of the heroes, poets, and orators whose fame has consecrated the soil and invested even the name of Rome with imperishable interest. "Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place Where Rome embraced her heroes? where the steep Tarpeian? fittest goal of Treason's race, A thousand years of silenced factions sleep- From Sharpe's Magazine. VOLCANIC PHENOMENA. ENTHUSIASTIC German Werner, about operating, all the previous changes which the middle of the eighteenth century, in the exterior of the globe had undergone. his lecture-room at Freyberg, propounded Now began a prolonged and fierce contest the so-called Neptunian theory of the between the Neptunists and Vulcanists, formation of the earth's crust. Musing as Hulton and his school were termed. upon the monuments and mysteries of the Theological rancor added bitterness to dread past, his philosophic mind gave the controversy. Atheism and infidelity birth to the idea of an illimitable chaotic were charged against the innovators by ocean, from whose turbid waters the crys- intolerant divines and scientific laymen. talline rocks were first precipitated Truth sustained by fact, notwithstanding, granite as a basis, then gneiss, afterwards made way, and at length the doctrines of schists, serpentines and porphyries-the the Scotch geologist as to the igncous crystalline character gradually diminish- origin of certain rocks, were securely ing as the waters became purer. During established on the ruins of the Neptunian the lapse of ages, in still clearer seas, suc- theory. ceeded the deposition of the incumbent secondary strata. To igneous agency Werner would assign no share in these grand processes in Nature's laboratory. Trap equally with sandstones and shales was of aqueous origin, and existing volcanoes, testifying as they did by their eruptions to an indisputable relation to heat, he considered as modern phenomena, possibly not older than Adam. The Neptunian theory was eagerly hailed and warmly embraced, both on the Continent and in this country, as a complete solution of a great cosmical enigma. Hosts of zealous Neptunists rallied under the standard of the ingenious theorist. Names of weight and eminence gave in their adhesion to Abraham Gottlob Werner, who, despite his modesty, speedily found himself presiding over the domain of scientific geology-the centre of attraction and the object of admiration. In the year seventeen hundred and eighty-eight, Dr. James Hulton, of Edinburgh, published his "Theory of the Earth," in which he dared to contravene the popular views of the Freyberg professor, and boldly proclaimed the igneous origin of trap and granite. Hulton was also the first writer who endeavored to rescue geology from the region of hypothesis, and to place it on the basis of fact, by referring to the natural agencies now Werner, however, was so far correct in attributing to water the formation of the fossiliferous or stratified rocks. His error lay in entirely excluding the agency of heat. Water and heat are now the universally recognized agents of geological change; under their continuous action through indefinite cycles of time the earth has assumed its present diversified structure. Geology, disentangled from the meshes of the once popular Wernerian system, has not yet entirely escaped from under the dominion of theory. Werner's universal chaotic ocean surrounding the globe, has given place to a molten ocean in its interior. From a wilderness of waters we are made to descend to internal fires. But the latter theory, like the former, is based upon hypothesis. It assumes that the earth was originally an intensely heated fluid massthat, with the exception of the encircling crust, which to a certain depth has resulted from a gradual process of refrigeration, it is so still, Differing as widely as may be from the exploded aqueous system of Werner, the new theory teaches that heat is the sole original agent in the production. of the exterior of the globe. Now, it is, of course, sufficiently established that granite and other kindred rocks have been at one time in a state of fusion, that the numerous traps which abound are the are result of igneous action, and that internal by the sudden opening by earthquakes of heat exists and exerts a continual influence subterranean cavities filled with water. of upheaval and depression; but to account Curious though it may seem, fish for such facts, the theory of a molten sometimes thrown from the volcanoes of ocean in the interior of the earth goes not the Andes. Humboldt is of opinion that only very much beyond the requirements the fish must have lived and multiplied in of the case, but is, in the opinion of emi- the under-ground caverns or lakes formed nent savans like Sir Charles Lyell, by previous convulsions. An eruption of opposed to what is known of the laws of the volcano of Imbaburu took place in heat. sixteen hundred and ninety-one, and so On what other hypothesis, then, are we large was the quantity of fish ejected that to account for the fiery phenomena of a fever is said to have been caused by their volcanoes? Were it possible to under- putrid remains. The volcanic line branches take an exploring expedition to the nether from Quito through Guatemala to Mexico. regions, eagerly scientific men might sat- The latter country is traversed by five isfactorily solve the question; but failing active volcanoes. The mountain Jorullo such device, we have no other resource is one of these, and is distant from the than to fall back upon another and more sea one hundred and twenty miles. Prior probable theory-that of chemical action. to seventeen hundred and fifty-nine it had Heat, electricity, and elastic gases, are no existence. The place where it now evolved from the contact of the oxygen stands, formed part of an elevated platform, contained in water, with the metallic bases through which wandered two streams, and of earths and alkalies. It is therefore on whose fertile fields were cultivated inferred that the water which percolates indigo and the sugar-cane. During the through porous rocks and by other vents, month of June in the above year, this finds its way to the unoxidized substances scene of peaceful industry was broken in of the interior, produces those chemical upon by a succession of earthquakes and changes which generate subterranean heat, and that, too, on a scale of sufficient magnitude to melt rocky masses and to account for all other forms of igneous agency. alarming sounds-which continued until the end of September, when flames were observed to rise from the ground, and pieces of burning rock were tossed high into the air. Six cones speedily sprang up, none of which were under three hundred feet high, whilst the largest, Jorullo, attained to the hight of sixteen hundred feet. It continued to pour forth streams of basaltic lava and fragments of rock for a period of about five months, after which, having spent its fury, it reposed from its toils. Humboldt visited the spot forty years afterwards, and found the mass of lava still in a heated state. Connected with the volcanic chain of the Andes are many islands of the Caribbean sea. St. Vincent has been from time to time in eruption, and earthquakes of extraordinary violence have frequently visited Jamaica and St. Domingo. Volcanic action seems peculiar to certain regions, and to run generally in extended lines. One of these lines stretches along the chain of the Andes, from a point south of Chili to Quito, about two degrees north of the equator. It alternates throughout its course with extinct and active volcanoes. It is a circumstance of interest that, when the great earthquake took place in Chili in eighteen hundred and thirty-five, the coast was permanently upheaved, and the neighboring volcanoes of Yantales and Orsono were in eruption-the three different effects being in this case traceable to the same internal force. The volcanoes of Peru rise to the immense height of from seventeen to twenty thousand feet Another volcanic region extends from above the level of the sea. Those of the coasts of Russian America to the Quito attain to an equal elevation. The Indian Archipelago. This line, according eruptions of Cotopaxí, which is in form a to Von Buch, follows throughout its course perfect cone, and the most lofty active the external border of the continent of volcano of South America, are usually Asia, strikes southeast to the Moluccas, accompanied by destructive effects from the isles of Sunda, and New-Zealand. On inundations, caused by the melting of the snow which surrounds it. Deluges are indeed frequently occasioned in these elevated regions from eruptions-and also the borders of Cook's Inlet, in the Russian American territories, there is a volcano fourteen thousand feet high-while in the peninsula of Alaska are also cones of vast |