The imagination is quite bewildered here from the variety of ancient monuments that meet the eye in every direction.  What vast souvenirs crowd all at once on the mind!  Look all around! the Via Sacra, the Arch of Severus, and the Capitol in front; on one side of you, the temple of Peace, that of Faustina and that of the Sun and Moon:  on the other the remaining three columns of the temple of Jupiter Stator; the three also of the temple of Jupiter Tonans; the eight columns of the temple of Concord; and the solitary column of Phocas.  At a short distance the temple of Castor and Pollux and that of Romulus and Remus, which is a round building of great antiquity, whose rusticity forms a striking contrast with the elegance of the colonnaded temples, and which was evidently built before the conquest of Greece by the Romans and the consequent introduction of the fine arts and of the Grecian orders of architecture.

You may wish to know my sensations on traversing this sacred ground.  The Via Sacra recalled to me Horace meeting the bavard who addresses him:  Quid agis, dulcissime rerum?[85] I then thought of the Sabine rape; of Brutus’ speech over the body of Lucretia; then I almost fancied I could see the spot where stood the butcher’s shop, from whence Virginius snatched the knife to immolate his daughter at the shrine of Honor; next the shade of Regulus flitted before my imagination, refusing to be exchanged; then I figured to myself Cicero thundering against Catiline; or the same with delicate irony ridiculing the ultra-rigor of the Stoics, so as to force even the gravity of Cato to relax into a smile; then the grand, the heroic act of Marcus Brutus in immolating the great Caesar at the altar of liberty.  All these recollections and ideas crowded on my imagination without regard to order or chronology, and I remained for some time in a state of the most profound reverie, from which I was only roused by my friend the Jew reminding me that we had a quantity of other things to see.

The first object that engaged my attention on being roused from my reverie, was the Arch of Severus at the foot of the Capitol which towers above it.  Excavations have been made around this Arch (for otherwise only half of it could be seen) and a stone wall built around the excavated ground in the same manner as at the Arch of Constantine.  Round several of the columns of the temples I have above enumerated, excavations have been also made; otherwise the lower half of them would remain buried in the earth and give to the monuments the appearance of a city which had been half swallowed up by an earthquake.  By dint of digging round the column of Phocas, the ancient paved road which led to the Capitol has been discovered and is now open to view.  This ancient road is at least thirty feet below the surface of the present road and the ground about it.  This shows how the ground must have been filled up by the destruction of buildings