grotesque. But it is remarkable, and a fact which we have nowhere seen
noticed, that the ancients, whether Greeks or Romans, had no eye for the
picturesque; nay, that it was a sense utterly unawakened amongst them; and
that the very conception of the picturesque, as of a thing distinct from
the beautiful, is not once alluded to through the whole course of ancient
literature, nor would it have been intelligible to any ancient critic; so
that, whatever attraction for the eye might exist in the Rome of that day,
there is little doubt that it was of a kind to be felt only by modern
spectators. Mere dissatisfaction with its external appearance, which must
have been a pretty general sentiment, argued, therefore, no necessary
purpose of destroying it. Certainly it would be a weightier ground of
suspicion, if it were really true, that some of his agents were detected
on the premises of different senators in the act of applying combustibles
to their mansions. But this story wears a very fabulous air. For why
resort to the private dwellings of great men, where any intruder was sure
of attracting notice, when the same effect, and with the same deadly
results, might have been attained quietly and secretly in so many of the
humble Roman _coenacula_?

The great loss on this memorable occasion was in the heraldic and
ancestral honors of the city. Historic Rome then went to wreck for ever.
Then perished the _domus priscorum ducum hostilibus adhuc spoliis
adornatae_; the "rostral" palace; the mansion of the Pompeys; the Blenheims
and the Strathfieldsays of the Scipios, the Marcelli, the Paulli, and the
Caesars; then perished the aged trophies from Carthage and from Gaul; and,
in short, as the historian sums up the lamentable desolation, "_quidquid
visendum atque memorabile ex antiquitate duraverat_." And this of itself
might lead one to suspect the emperor's hand as the original agent; for by
no one act was it possible so entirely and so suddenly to wean the people
from their old republican recollections, and in one week to obliterate the