than any other in Europe.--About his feet is spread the remnant of a

city that once had a population of four million souls; and among its

massed edifices stand the ruins of temples, columns, and triumphal arches

that knew the Caesars, and the noonday of Roman splendor; and close by

them, in unimpaired strength, is a drain of arched and heavy masonry that

belonged to that older city which stood here before Romulus and Remus

were born or Rome thought of. The Appian Way is here yet, and looking

much as it did, perhaps, when the triumphal processions of the Emperors

moved over it in other days bringing fettered princes from the confines

of the earth. We can not see the long array of chariots and mail-clad

men laden with the spoils of conquest, but we can imagine the pageant,

after a fashion. We look out upon many objects of interest from the dome

of St. Peter's; and last of all, almost at our feet, our eyes rest upon

the building which was once the Inquisition. How times changed, between

the older ages and the new! Some seventeen or eighteen centuries ago,

the ignorant men of Rome were wont to put Christians in the arena of the

Coliseum yonder, and turn the wild beasts in upon them for a show. It

was for a lesson as well. It was to teach the people to abhor and fear

the new doctrine the followers of Christ were teaching. The beasts tore

the victims limb from limb and made poor mangled corpses of them in the

twinkling of an eye. But when the Christians came into power, when the

holy Mother Church became mistress of the barbarians, she taught them

the

error of their ways by no such means. No, she put them in this pleasant

Inquisition and pointed to the Blessed Redeemer, who was so gentle and so

merciful toward all men, and they urged the barbarians to love him; and

308

The Innocents Abroad