He made a nice show of it: for once, the Romans entertained themselves with a good-natured spectacle, and the whole town came to see the great bonfire [178] in the Forum, into which all bonds and evidence of debt were thrown on delivery, by the emperor himself; many private creditors following his example.

That was done well enough! But still the feeling returns to me, that no charity of ours can get at a certain natural unkindness which I find in things themselves.
"When I first came to Rome, eager to observe its religion, especially its antiquities of religious usage, I assisted at the most curious, perhaps, of them all, the most distinctly marked with that immobility which is a sort of ideal in the Roman religion.

The ceremony took place at a singular spot some miles distant from the city, among the low hills on the bank of the Tiber, beyond the Aurelian Gate.

There, in a little wood of venerable trees, piously allowed their own way, age after age--ilex and cypress remaining where they fell at last, one over the other, and all caught, in that early May-time, under a riotous tangle of wild clematis--was to be found a magnificent sanctuary, in which the members of the Arval College assembled themselves on certain days.

The axe never touched those trees--Nay! it was forbidden to introduce any iron thing whatsoever within the precincts; not only because the deities of these quiet places hate to be disturbed by the harsh noise of metal, but also in memory of that better age--the lost Golden Age--the homely age of the potters, of [179] which the central act of the festival was a commemoration.
"The preliminary ceremonies were long and complicated, but of a character familiar enough.