So he rose and approached the balustrade of a terrace; and beneath him appeared the Forum, and beyond it the Capitoline hill.

To the eye the latter now only presented a commingling of grey buildings, lacking both grandeur and beauty.

On the summit one saw the rear of the Palace of the Senator, flat, with little windows, and surmounted by a high, square campanile.

The large, bare, rusty-looking walls hid the church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli and the spot where the temple of Capitoline Jove had formerly stood, radiant in all its royalty.

On the left, some ugly houses rose terrace-wise upon the slope of Monte Caprino, where goats were pastured in the middle ages; while the few fine trees in the grounds of the Caffarelli palace, the present German embassy, set some greenery above the ancient Tarpeian rock now scarcely to be found, lost, hidden as it is, by buttress walls.