The Argosy — page 75: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

62 “Ecco Roma!” Shakespeare himself might have stood on one of the seven hills, and gazing upon that matchless scene of departed glory, have written the words, as Rome’s epitaph : The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; And like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wreck behind. Weare such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. But the life of Rome has been great.and wonderful... Her sleep has been long, and her dream is eternal. So far she may well be called the Eternal City. Though all traces of her former greatness disappeared ; though her monuments were all desecrated until one stone was not left upon another ; the outlines of the seven hills, the slow and silvery Tiber, the vast and melancholy Campagna, would be sufficient until the end of time to plunge one into dreams of the past, and visions of martial glory and worldly pomp and pageantry never before rivalled, never since approached. We read of the glories of the Babylonian empire, the greatness of Persia, the influence of Greece, the reign of Venice; we are told of the wisdom of the Egyptians, the riches of a Solomon: but do any of these affect us as does the magic word Rome ? ‘‘Which do you find the more interesting, Pagan or Christian - Rome ?” asked a friend the other day; and how, amidst such an embarrassment of wealth, the recollections and traditions of the past, was it possible to draw a comparison? All reaches the very height of interest. Pagan Rome is more remote: Christian Rome has all the beauty and softening influence which religion throws upon her votaries : Barbarity is swallowed up and disappears under the greater spell of an awakened conscience ; of a charity which is the great lever of the world; of a still small voice which becomes more and more heard and followed, and elevates and purifies. But Pagan Rome is full of a wild and rugged greatness and grandeur which commands our highest admiration : all the greater, perhaps, that those times and influences have passed away for ever. The great religious drama which took place nearly nineteen hundred years ago has changed the face of the world for ever. Though all religion died out, and men became universally sin-stained and corrupted, still they would be only that. The rugged dignity and power of paganism could never return. It is gone for ever: and with it all its majesty. It has given place to what is far better, but less outwardly visible. What may be called the Ceremonial of Paganism has yielded to the Spiritual influence of the Unseen. This world is not all in all now, as it was then ; and those who are CORNIECLOOOKS (eC)