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."