"There are sermons in stones," said Hilda thoughtfully, smiling at
Kenyon's morality; "and especially in the stones of Rome."
The party moved on, but deviated a little from the straight way, in
order to glance at the ponderous remains of the temple of Mars Ultot,
within which a convent of nuns is now established,--a dove-cote, in the
war-god's mansion. At only a little distance, they passed the portico
of a Temple of Minerva, most rich and beautiful in architecture, but
woefully gnawed by time and shattered by violence, besides being buried
midway in the accumulation of soil, that rises over dead Rome like a
flood tide. Within this edifice of antique sanctity, a baker's shop
was now established, with an entrance on one side; for, everywhere, the
remnants of old grandeur and divinity have been made available for the
meanest necessities of today.
"The baker is just drawing his loaves out of the oven," remarked Kenyon.
"Do you smell how sour they are? I should fancy that Minerva (in revenge
for the desecration of her temple) had slyly poured vinegar into the
batch, if I did not know that the modern Romans prefer their bread in
the acetous fermentation."
They turned into the Via Alessandria, and thus gained the rear of the
Temple of Peace, and, passing beneath its great arches, pursued their
way along a hedge-bordered lane. In all probability, a stately Roman
street lay buried beneath that rustic-looking pathway; for they had now
emerged from the close and narrow avenues of the modern city, and were
treading on a soil where the seeds of antique grandeur had not yet
produced the squalid crop that elsewhere sprouts from them. Grassy as
the lane was, it skirted along heaps of shapeless ruin, and the bare
site of the vast temple that Hadrian planned and built. It terminated
on the edge of a somewhat abrupt descent, at the foot of which, with a
muddy ditch between, rose, in the bright moonlight, the great curving
wall and multitudinous arches of the Coliseum.