The Marble Faun Volume 1 - Page 95/130

Besides its central consecration, the whole area has been made sacred

by a range of shrines, which are erected round the circle, each

commemorating some scene or circumstance of the Saviour's passion and

suffering. In accordance with an ordinary custom, a pilgrim was

making his progress from shrine to shrine upon his knees, and saying a

penitential prayer at each. Light-footed girls ran across the path along

which he crept, or sported with their friends close by the shrines

where he was kneeling. The pilgrim took no heed, and the girls meant

no irreverence; for in Italy religion jostles along side by side

with business and sport, after a fashion of its own, and people are

accustomed to kneel down and pray, or see others praying, between two

fits of merriment, or between two sins.

To make an end of our description, a red twinkle of light was visible

amid the breadth of shadow that fell across the upper part of the

Coliseum. Now it glimmered through a line of arches, or threw a broader

gleam as it rose out of some profound abyss of ruin; now it was muffled

by a heap of shrubbery which had adventurously clambered to that dizzy

height; and so the red light kept ascending to loftier and loftier

ranges of the structure, until it stood like a star where the blue sky

rested against the Coliseum's topmost wall. It indicated a party of

English or Americans paying the inevitable visit by moonlight, and

exalting themselves with raptures that were Byron's, not their own.

Our company of artists sat on the fallen column, the pagan altar, and

the steps of the Christian shrine, enjoying the moonlight and shadow,

the present gayety and the gloomy reminiscences of the scene, in almost

equal share. Artists, indeed, are lifted by the ideality of their

pursuits a little way off the earth, and are therefore able to catch

the evanescent fragrance that floats in the atmosphere of life above

the heads of the ordinary crowd. Even if they seem endowed with little

imagination individually, yet there is a property, a gift, a talisman,

common to their class, entitling them to partake somewhat more

bountifully than other people in the thin delights of moonshine and

romance.

"How delightful this is!" said Hilda; and she sighed for very pleasure.

"Yes," said Kenyon, who sat on the column, at her side. "The Coliseum

is far more delightful, as we enjoy it now, than when eighty thousand

persons sat squeezed together, row above row, to see their fellow

creatures torn by lions and tigers limb from limb. What a strange

thought that the Coliseum was really built for us, and has not come to

its best uses till almost two thousand years after it was finished!"

"The Emperor Vespasian scarcely had us in his mind," said Hilda,

smiling; "but I thank him none the less for building it."