Strange! that those who record,
and give credit to such a story, can yet continue as a duty their
intercessions for the dead!
But I have seen the Coliseo, which would swallow that of pretty Verona;
it is four times as large I am told, and would hold fourscore thousand
spectators. After all the depredations of all the Goths, and afterwards
of the Farnese family, the ruin is gloriously beautiful; possibly more
beautiful than when it was quite whole; there is enough left now for
Truth to repose upon, and a perch for Fancy beside, to fly out from, and
fetch in more.
The orders of its architecture are easily discerned, though the height
of the upper story is truly tremendous; I climbed it once, not to the
top indeed, but till I was afraid to look down from the place I was in,
and penetrated many of its recesses. The modern Italians have not lost
their taste of a prodigious theatre; were they once more a single
nation, they would rebuild _this_ I fancy; for here are all the
conveniencies in _grande_, as they call it, that amaze one even in
_piccolo_ at Milan and Turin: Here were supper-rooms, and taverns, and
shops, and I believe baths; certainly long galleries big enough to drive
a coach round, and places where slaves waited to receive the commands of
masters and ladies, who perhaps if they did not wait to please them,
would scarcely scruple to detain them in the cage of offenders, and
keep them to make sport upon a future day.
Pages:
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324