ON beholding for the first time this prodigious Rotunda, the Spectator involuntarily stops at the Entrance, and surveys with astonishment-tinctured perhaps with apprehension, the immense Concavity of the Dome, which is seen so much nearer the eye than that of St. Peter's as to impress more strongly with an idea of physical impossibility, and invisible support.

From hence the opening in the centre appears to be of moderate dimensions, although it is little less than thirty feet diameter; and through it the sight of clouds and azure in the ambient air

adds unspeakable sublimity to the artificial Hemisphere.

The

The circling walls encrusted with marble present alternate Niches and Colonnades. The latter form ample Recesses within the thickness of the walls, and the compartments of the Vault are said to have been originally plated with silver.

The everlasting Pavement has been chiefly laid with porphyry and granite, and the centre piece, a circle of ten or twenty feet diameter, is perforated with holes, to carry off the rain that occasionally enters from above.

There is nothing remarkable among the seven Altars which have supplanted the Pedestals of the Heathen gods ever since the year 606, when the Emperor Phocas assigned this Temple to Pope Boniface

Boniface IV. and with it that Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, which is by Some thought to have then constituted the Temporal Antichrist.

The Busts of Raphael-of Annibal Carracci-of Poussin-of Metastasioof Winkelman-and of Mengs are modestly placed in circular Niches, around the walls; and serve to point-or to recall the appropriate meditations which are here frequently disturbed by clamorous Beggars, and idle Devotees.

Towards evening (when These were withdrawn) I have often niched myself in a corner of one of the Recesses, and reviewed the evanescent Scenes connected with the history of this everlasting Edifice. Separated from the jarring World,

World by the impervious Circle, I could fancy myself secured, like it, from the effects of years and revolutions-enclosed in the perpetual Concave that forms an adamantine link between the Ancient and the Modern World.

THE Pantheon is not the only Monument of Roman magnificence that rears its venerable head in a form that promises to endure as long as the Globe on which it stands. Two others remain uninjured-the Witnesses-and the Survivors of the Decline and Fall of the Empire of the World. They are the Doric Columns erected in the respective Forums of Trajan, and Antonine.

Of these unparalleled Pillars a single block of white marble, two and twenty

feet square,

forms the Plinth-four

others placed two along and two across make the Pedestal-another gives the Base-twenty or thirty more turn the Shaft, in circular blocks of twelve feet diameter-and another, twenty twenty feet square, displays the soaring Capital, a hundred and twenty or thirty feet in the air.

The Pedestal of that of Trajan is cu riously embossed with Bas Reliefs, representing missile weapons, and coats of mail; and the Shafts of both these matchless Columns are fretted with the historic scenery of the successful expeditions of the respective Emperors, represented by some thousands of Figures occasionally interspersed with Towers and Gallies, curiously wrought, upon a

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