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“Let us settle it,” said Kenyon, stamping his foot
firmly down, “that this is precisely the spot where the
chasm opened, into which Curtius precipitated his good
steed and himself. Imagine the great, dusky gap, impenetrably
deep, and with half-shaped monsters and hideous
faces looming upward out of it, to the vast affright of the
good citizens who peeped over the brim! There, now, is
a subject, hitherto unthought of, for a grim and ghastly
story, and, methinks, with a moral as deep as the gulf
itself. Within it, beyond a question, there were prophetic
visions — intimations of all the future calamities of Rome—
shades of Goths and Gauls, and even of the French
soldiers of to-day. It was a pity to close it up so soon!
I would give much for a peep into such a chasm.”

“I fancy,” remarked Miriam, “that every person takes
a peep into it in moments of gloom and despondency; that
is to say, in his moments of deepest insight.”

“Where is it, then?” asked Hilda. “I never peeped
into it.”

“Wait, and it will open for you,” replied her friend.

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“The chasm was merely one of the orifices of that pit of
blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere. The firmest
substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread
over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive
stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake
to open the chasm. A footstep, a little heavier
than ordinary, will serve; and we must step very daintily,
not to break through the crust at any moment. By-and-by,
we inevitably sink! It was a foolish piece of heroism
in Curtius to precipitate himself there, in advance; for
all Rome, you see, has been swallowed up in that gulf, in
spite of him. The Palace of the Cæsars has gone down
thither, with a hollow, rumbling sound of its fragments!
All the temples have tumbled into it; and thousands of
statues have been thrown after! All the armies and the
triumphs have marched into the great chasm, with their
martial music playing, as they stepped over the brink. All
the heroes, the statesmen, and the poets! All piled upon
poor Curtius, who thought to have saved them all! I am
loth to smile at the self-conceit of that gallant horseman,
but cannot well avoid it.”

“It grives me to hear you speak thus, Miriam,” said
Hilda, whose natural and cheerful piety was shocked by
her friend's gloomy view of human destinies. “It seems
to me that there is no chasm, nor any hideous emptiness
under our feet, except what the evil within us digs. If
there be such a chasm, let us bridge it over with good
thoughts and deeds, and we shall tread safely to the other
side. It was the guilt of Rome, no doubt, that caused
this gulf to open; and Curtius filled it up with his heroic

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self-sacrifice and patriotism, which was the best virtue
that the old Romans knew. Every wrong thing makes
the gulf deeper; every right one helps to fill it up. As
the evil of Rome was far more than its good, the whole
commonwealth finally sank into it, indeed, but of no original
necessity.”

“Well, Hilda, it came to the same thing at last,” answered
Miriam, despondingly.

“Doubtless, too,” resumed the sculptor (for his imagination
was greatly excited by the idea of this wondrous
chasm), “all the blood that the Romans shed, whether on
battle-fields, or in the Coliseum, or on the cross, — in
whatever public or private murder, — ran into this fatal
gulf, and formed a mighty subterranean lake of gore, right
beneath our feet. The blood from the thirty wounds in
Cæsar's breast flowed hitherward, and that pure little rivulet
from Virginia's bosom, too! Virginia, beyond all
question, was stabbed by her father, precisely where we
are standing.”

“Then the spot is hallowed forever!” said Hilda.

“Is there such blessed potency in bloodshed?” asked
Miriam. “Nay, Hilda, do not protest! I take your meaning
rightly.”

They again moved forward. And still, from the Forum
and the Via Sacra, from beneath the arches of the Temple
of Peace on one side, and the acclivity of the Palace of
the Cæsars on the other, there arose singing voices of
parties that were strolling through the moonlight. Thus,
the air was full of kindred melodies that encountered
one another, and twined themselves into a broad, vague

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music, out of which no single strain could be disentangled.
These good examples, as well as the harmonious influences
of the hour, incited our artist-friends to make proof
of their own vocal powers. With what skill and breath
they had, they set up a choral strain, — “Hail, Columbia!”
we believe, — which those old Roman echoes must have
found it exceeding difficult to repeat aright. Even Hilda
poured the slender sweetness of her note into her country's
song. Miriam was at first silent, being perhaps unfamiliar
with the air and burden. But, suddenly, she threw
out such a swell and gush of sound, that it seemed to
pervade the whole choir of other voices, and then to rise
above them all, and become audible in what would else
have been the silence of an upper region. That volume
of melodious voice was one of the tokens of a great
trouble. There had long been an impulse upon her —
amounting, at last, to a necessity — to shriek aloud; but
she had struggled against it, till the thunderous anthem
gave her an opportunity to relieve her heart by a great
cry.

They passed the solitary column of Phocas, and looked
down into the excavated space, where a confusion of pillars,
arches, pavements, and shattered blocks and shafts—
the crumbs of various ruin dropped from the devouring
maw of Time — stand, or lie, at the base of the Capitoline
Hill. That renowned hillock (for it is little more)
now rose abruptly above them. The ponderous masonry,
with which the hill-side is built up, is as old as Rome
itself, and looks likely to endure while the world retains
any substance or permanence. It once sustained the

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Capitol, and now bears up the great pile which the mediæval
builders raised on the antique foundation, and that still
loftier tower, which looks abroad upon a larger page, of
deeper historic interest, than any other scene can show.
On the same pedestal of Roman masonry, other structures
will doubtless rise, and vanish like ephemeral
things.

To a spectator on the spot, it is remarkable that the
events of Roman history, and Roman life itself, appear
not so distant as the Gothic ages which succeeded them.
We stand in the Forum, or on the height of the Capitol,
and seem to see the Roman epoch close at hand. We
forget that a chasm extends between it and ourselves, in
which lie all those dark, rude, unlettered centuries, around
the birth-time of Christianity, as well as the age of chivalry
and romance, the feudal system, and the infancy of a
better civilization than that of Rome. Or, if we remember
these mediæval times, they look farther off than the
Augustan age. The reason may be, that the old Roman
literature survives, and creates for us an intimacy with
the classic ages, which we have no means of forming with
the subsequent ones.

The Italian climate, moreover, robs age of its reverence,
and makes it look newer than it is. Not the Coliseum,
nor the tombs of the Appian Way, nor the oldest
pillar in the Forum, nor any other Roman ruin, be it as
dilapidated as it may, ever give the impression of venerable
antiquity which we gather, along with the ivy, from
the gray walls of an English abbey or castle. And yet
every brick or stone, which we pick up among the former,

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had fallen, ages before the foundation of the latter was
begun. This is owing to the kindliness with which Nature
takes an English ruin to her heart, covering it with
ivy, as tenderly as Robin Redbreast covered the dead
babes with forest leaves. She strives to make it a part
of herself, gradually obliterating the handiwork of man,
and supplanting it with her own mosses and trailing verdure,
till she has won the whole structure back. But, in
Italy, whenever man has once hewn a stone, Nature forthwith
relinquishes her right to it, and never lays her finger
on it again. Age after age finds it bare and naked, in the
barren sunshine, and leaves it so. Besides this natural
disadvantage, too, each succeeding century, in Rome, has
done its best to ruin the very ruins, so far as their picturesque
effect is concerned, by stealing away the marble and
hewn stone, and leaving only yellow bricks, which never
can look venerable.

The party ascended the winding way that leads from
the Forum to the Piazza of the Campidoglio on the summit
of the Capitoline Hill. They stood awhile to contemplate
the bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius.
The moonlight glistened upon traces of the gilding
which had once covered both rider and steed; these were
almost gone, but the aspect of dignity was still perfect,
clothing the figure as it were with an imperial robe of
light. It is the most majestic representation of the
kingly character that ever the world has seen. A sight
of the old heathen Emperor is enough to create an evanescent
sentiment of loyalty even in a democratic bosom,
so august does he look, so fit to rule, so worthy of man's

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profoundest homage and obedience, so inevitably attractive
of his love. He stretches forth his hand with an air of
grand beneficence and unlimited authority, as if uttering a
decree from which no appeal was permissible, but in
which the obedient subject would find his highest interests
consulted; a command that was in itself a benediction.

“The sculptor of this statue knew what a king should
be,” observed Kenyon, “and knew, likewise, the heart of
mankind, and how it craves a true ruler, under whatever
title, as a child its father.”

“Oh, if there were but one such man as this!” exclaimed
Miriam. “One such man in an age, and one in
all the world; then how speedily would the strife, wickedness,
and sorrow of us poor creatures be relieved. We
would come to him with our griefs, whatever they might
be, — even a poor, frail woman burdened with her heavy
heart, — and lay them at his feet and never need to take
them up again. The rightful king would see to all.”

“What an idea of the regal office and duty!” said
Kenyon, with a smile. “It is a woman's idea of the
whole matter to perfection. It is Hilda's too, no doubt?”

“No,” answered the quiet Hilda; “I should never look
for such assistance from an earthly king.”

“Hilda, my religious Hilda,” whispered Miriam, suddenly
drawing the girl close to her, “do you know how
it is with me? I would give all I have or hope — my
life, oh how freely — for one instant of your trust in
God! You little guess my need of it. You really think,
then, that He sees and cares for us?”

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“Miriam, you frighten me.”

“Hush, hush! do not let them hear you!” whispered
Miriam. “I frighten you, you say; for Heaven's sake,
how? Am I strange? is there anything wild in my behavior?”

“Only for that moment,” replied Hilda, “because you
seemed to doubt God's providence.”

“We will talk of that another time,” said her friend.
“Just now it is very dark to me.”

On the left of the Piazza of the Campidoglio, as you
face cityward, and at the head of the long and stately
flight of steps descending from the Capitoline Hill to the
level of lower Rome, there is a narrow lane or passage.
Into this the party of our friends now turned. The path
ascended a little and ran along under the walls of a palace,
but soon passed through a gateway, and terminated
in a small paved courtyard. It was bordered by a low
parapet.

The spot, for some reason or other, impressed them as
exceedingly lonely. On one side was the great height of
the palace, with the moonshine falling over it, and showing
all the windows barred and shuttered. Not a human
eye could look down into the little courtyard, even if the
seemingly deserted palace had a tenant. On all other
sides of its narrow compass there was nothing but the
parapet, which as it now appeared was built right on the
edge of a steep precipice. Gazing from its imminent
brow, the party beheld a crowded confusion of roofs
spreading over the whole space between them and the
line of hills that lay beyond the Tiber. A long, misty

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wreath, just dense enough to catch a little of the moonshine,
floated above the houses, midway towards the hilly
line, and showed the course of the unseen river. Far
away on the right, the moon gleamed on the dome of St.
Peter's as well as on many lesser and nearer domes.

“What a beautiful view of the city!” exclaimed
Hilda; “and I never saw Rome from this point before.”

“It ought to afford a good prospect,” said the sculptor;
“for it was from this point — at least we are at liberty to
think so, if we choose — that many a famous Roman
caught his last glimpse of his native city, and of all other
earthly things. This is one of the sides of the Tarpeian
Rock. Look over the parapet and see what a sheer tumble
there might still be for a traitor, in spite of the thirty
feet of soil that have accumulated at the foot of the precipice.”

They all bent over, and saw that the cliff fell perpendicularly
downward to about the depth, or rather more, at
which the tall palace rose in height above their heads.
Not that it was still the natural, shaggy front of the original
precipice; for it appeared to be cased in ancient stonework,
through which the primeval rock showed its face
here and there grimly and doubtfully. Mosses grew on
the slight projections, and little shrubs sprouted out of the
crevices, but could not much soften the stern aspect of the
cliff. Brightly as the Italian moonlight fell a-down the
height, it scarcely showed what portion of it was man's
work, and what was Nature's, but left it all in very much
the same kind of ambiguity and half-knowledge in which
antiquarians generally leave the identity of Roman remains.

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The roofs of some poor-looking houses which had been
built against the base and sides of the cliff, rose nearly
midway to the top; but from an angle of the parapet
there was a precipitous plunge straight downward into a
stone-paved court.

“I prefer this to any other site as having been veritably
the Traitor's Leap,” said Kenyon, “because it was so
convenient to the Capitol. It was an admirable idea of
those stern old fellows to fling their political criminals
down from the very summit on which stood the Senate
House and Jove's Temple, emblems of the institutions
which they sought to violate. It symbolizes how sudden
was the fall in those days from the utmost height of ambition
to its profoundest ruin.”

“Come, come; it is midnight,” cried another artist,
“too late to be moralizing here. We are literally dreaming
on the edge of a precipice. Let us go home.”

“It is time, indeed,” said Hilda.

The sculptor was not without hopes that he might be
favored with the sweet charge of escorting Hilda to the
foot of her tower. Accordingly, when the party prepared
to turn back, he offered her his arm. Hilda at first accepted
it; but when they had partly threaded the passage
between the little courtyard and the Piazza del Campidoglio,
she discovered that Miriam had remained behind.

“I must go back,” said she, withdrawing her arm from
Kenyon's; “but pray do not come with me. Several
times this evening I have had a fancy that Miriam had
something on her mind, some sorrow or perplexity, which,
perhaps, it would relieve her to tell me about. No, no;

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do not turn back! Donatello will be a sufficient guardian
for Miriam and me.”

The sculptor was a good deal mortified, and perhaps a
little angry; but he knew Hilda's mood of gentle decision
and independence too well not to obey her. He therefore
suffered the fearless maiden to return alone.

Meanwhile, Miriam had not noticed the departure of
the rest of the company; she remained on the edge of
the precipice, and Donatello along with her.

“It would be a fatal fall, still,” she said to herself,
looking over the parapet, and shuddering as her eye
measured the depth. “Yes; surely yes! Even without
the weight of an overburdened heart, a human body
would fall heavily enough upon those stones to shake all
its joints asunder. How soon it would be over!”

Donatello, of whose presence she was possibly not
aware, now pressed closer to her side; and he, too, like
Miriam, bent over the low parapet and trembled violently.
Yet he seemed to feel that perilous fascination which
haunts the brow of precipices, tempting the unwary one
to fling himself over for the very horror of the thing, for,
after drawing hastily back, he again looked down, thrusting
himself out farther than before. He then stood silent
a brief space, struggling, perhaps, to make himself conscious
of the historic associations of the scene.

“What are you thinking of, Donatello?” asked Miriam.

“Who were they,” said he, looking earnestly in her
face, “who have been flung over here in days gone by?”

“Men that cumbered the world,” she replied. “Men

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whose lives were the bane of their fellow-creatures.
Men who poisoned the air, which is the common breath
of all, for their own selfish purposes. There was short
work with such men in old Roman times. Just in the
moment of their triumph a hand, as of an avenging
giant, clutched them, and dashed the wretches down this
precipice.”

“Was it well done?” asked the young man.

“It was well done,” answered Miriam; “innocent persons
were saved by the destruction of a guilty one, who
deserved his doom.”

While this brief conversation passed, Donatello had
once or twice glanced aside with a watchful air, just as a
hound may often be seen to take sidelong note of some
suspicious object, while he gives his more direct attention
to something nearer at hand. Miriam seemed now first
to become aware of the silence that had followed upon
the cheerful talk and laughter of a few moments before.
Looking round, she perceived that all her company of
merry friends had retired, and Hilda, too, in whose soft
and quiet presence she had always an indescribable feeling
of security. All gone; and only herself and Donatello
left hanging over the brow of the ominous precipice.

Not so, however; not entirely alone! In the basement
wall of the palace, shaded from the moon, there was a
deep, empty niche, that had probably once contained a
statue; not empty, either; for a figure now came forth
from it and approached Miriam. She must have had
cause to dread some unspeakable evil from this strange
persecutor, and to know that this was the very crisis of

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her calamity; for, as he drew near, such a cold, sick
despair crept over her, that it impeded her breath, and
benumbed her natural promptitude of thought. Miriam
seemed dreamily to remember falling on her knees; but,
in her whole recollection of that wild moment, she beheld
herself as in a dim show, and could not well distinguish
what was done and suffered; no, not even whether she
were really an actor and sufferer in the scene.

Hilda, meanwhile, had separated herself from the sculptor,
and turned back to rejoin her friend. At a distance,
she still heard the mirth of her late companions, who
were going down the cityward descent of the Capitoline
Hill; they had set up a new stave of melody, in
which her own soft voice, as well as the powerful sweetness
of Miriam's, was sadly missed.

The door of the little courtyard had swung upon its
hinges, and partly closed itself. Hilda (whose native
gentleness pervaded all her movements) was quietly
opening it, when she was startled, midway, by the noise
of a struggle within, beginning and ending all in one
breathless instant. Along with it, or closely succeeding
it, was a loud, fearful cry, which quivered upward
through the air, and sank quivering downward to the
earth. Then, a silence! Poor Hilda had looked into the
courtyard, and saw the whole quick passage of a deed,
which took but that little time to grave itself in the eternal
adamant.

p576-219

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