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64 ROMAN DA YS.
at Civita Lavinia, in 1865. The rotunda of the Vatican
has also an exceHent bust of the same emperor; and the
Lateran has in its keeping another enthroned statue—
that, too, a good work. They all speak well of their
original, and all seem to show that their creators loved
the task. That love, which one discovers one knows not
how, has not always, in the sculptors of the Roman im-
perial statues, worked together with the eye and taste.
One finds it in the statues of Claudius, in the beautiful
figure of Nerva, at the Vatican, in certain of the best
portraits of Trajan and Antoninus Pius—but otherwise,
rarely.
If we leave the galleries for the Campagna, Claudius
meets us even there. The Campagna holds his memory
in her embrace, and she and that memory make each
other beautiful. The melancholy, and grandeur in decay,
one perceives in the features of the unfortunate emperor,
are found again in this group formed by nature and art.
The arches of Aqua Claudia traverse the Roman waste,
as a firm resolution sometimes traversed the cloudy
spaces of this Caesar’s soul. From the mountains that
on the east gird Rome’s horizon, the arcades of the
Claudian aqueduct wander over a stretch of many miles
to the eternal city. The old inscription over the Porta
Maggiore narrates where they entered Rome ; and the
five arches that yet stand on the slope of the Palatine
hill, facing the Via di Gregorio, tell us where the duct
ended, after emptying its waters, fresh as their own
springs, into many a marble basin embellished by art.
If one travel on the Via Appia Nuova, or on the road to
Frascati, one sees as far as eye can reach, at longer or
shorter intervals, these mighty arcades,* rising often to
the height of a hundred feet, and by their vastness easy
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