The rays of the early November sunset slanted full upon the audience, and made it necessary for the officers of the Court to draw the purple curtains over the windows, adding to the solemnity of the scene.

In the depth of those warm shadows, surrounded by her ladies, the empress Faustina was seated to listen.

The beautiful Greek statue of Victory, which since the days of Augustus had presided over the assemblies of the Senate, had been brought into the hall, and placed near the chair of the emperor; who, after rising to perform a brief sacrificial service in its honour, bowing reverently to the assembled fathers left and right, took his seat and began to speak.
There was a certain melancholy grandeur in the very simplicity or triteness of the theme: as it were the very quintessence of all the old [200] Roman epitaphs, of all that was monumental in that city of tombs, layer upon layer of dead things and people.

As if in the very fervour of disillusion, he seemed to be composing--Hosper epigraphas chronon kai holon ethnon+--the sepulchral titles of ages and whole peoples; nay! the very epitaph of the living Rome itself.

The grandeur of the ruins of Rome,--heroism in ruin: it was under the influence of an imaginative anticipation of this, that he appeared to be speaking.