DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61893#0407
Ch. XL
THROUGH ITALY.
379
furnish their galleries. This hall is now cleared
of its encumbrances, and presents to the eye a
vast length of naked wall, and an area covered
with weeds. As we stood contemplating its ex-
tent and proportions a fox started from an aper-
ture, once a window at one end, and crossing the
open space scrambled up the ruins at the other,
and disappeared in the rubbish. This scene of
desolation reminded me of Ossian’s beautiful de-
scription, “ the thistle shook there its lonely head;
the moss whistled to the gale ; the fox looked out
from the windows ; the rank grass waved round
his head,” and almost seemed the accomplish-
ment of that awful prediction “ There the wild
beasts of the desert shall lodge, and howling
monsters shall fill the houses; and wolves shall
howl to one another in their palaces, and dragons
in their voluptuous pavilions.”*
The classic traveller as he ranges through the
groves, which now shade the Palatine Mount, f
* Lowthe’s Isaiah, xiii. v. 21, 22.
t Let the reader now contrast this mass of ruin, with the
splendors of the Palatine in Claudian’s time,
Ecce Palatino crevit reverentia monti .....
Non alium certe decuit rectoribus orbis
THROUGH ITALY.
379
furnish their galleries. This hall is now cleared
of its encumbrances, and presents to the eye a
vast length of naked wall, and an area covered
with weeds. As we stood contemplating its ex-
tent and proportions a fox started from an aper-
ture, once a window at one end, and crossing the
open space scrambled up the ruins at the other,
and disappeared in the rubbish. This scene of
desolation reminded me of Ossian’s beautiful de-
scription, “ the thistle shook there its lonely head;
the moss whistled to the gale ; the fox looked out
from the windows ; the rank grass waved round
his head,” and almost seemed the accomplish-
ment of that awful prediction “ There the wild
beasts of the desert shall lodge, and howling
monsters shall fill the houses; and wolves shall
howl to one another in their palaces, and dragons
in their voluptuous pavilions.”*
The classic traveller as he ranges through the
groves, which now shade the Palatine Mount, f
* Lowthe’s Isaiah, xiii. v. 21, 22.
t Let the reader now contrast this mass of ruin, with the
splendors of the Palatine in Claudian’s time,
Ecce Palatino crevit reverentia monti .....
Non alium certe decuit rectoribus orbis