The imagination is quite bewildered here from the variety of ancient
monuments that meet the eye in every direction. What vast souvenirs crowd
all at once on the mind! Look all around! the _Via Sacra_, the Arch of
Severus, and the Capitol in front; on one side of you, the temple of Peace,
that of Faustina and that of the Sun and Moon: on the other the remaining
three columns of the temple of Jupiter Stator; the three also of the temple
of Jupiter Tonans; the eight columns of the temple of Concord; and the
solitary column of Phocas. At a short distance the temple of Castor and
Pollux and that of Romulus and Remus, which is a round building of great
antiquity, whose rusticity forms a striking contrast with the elegance of
the colonnaded temples, and which was evidently built before the conquest
of Greece by the Romans and the consequent introduction of the fine arts
and of the Grecian orders of architecture.

You may wish to know my sensations on traversing this sacred ground. The
_Via Sacra_ recalled to me Horace meeting the _bavard_ who addresses him:
_Quid agis, dulcissime rerum_?[85] I then thought of the Sabine rape; of
Brutus' speech over the body of Lucretia; then I almost fancied I could see
the spot where stood the butcher's shop, from whence Virginius snatched the
knife to immolate his daughter at the shrine of Honor; next the shade of
Regulus flitted before my imagination, refusing to be exchanged; then I
figured to myself Cicero thundering against Catiline; or the same with
delicate irony ridiculing the ultra-rigor of the Stoics, so as to force
even the gravity of Cato to relax into a smile; then the grand, the heroic
act of Marcus Brutus in immolating the great Caesar at the altar of
liberty. All these recollections and ideas crowded on my imagination
without regard to order or chronology, and I remained for some time in a
state of the most profound reverie, from which I was only roused by my
friend the Jew reminding me that we had a quantity of other things to see.