The next most considerable relic of antiquity, considered as a ruin,
is the Thermæ of Caracalla. These consist of six enormous chambers,
above 200 feet in height, and each enclosing a vast space like that of
a field. There are in addition a number of towers and labyrinthine
recesses, hidden and woven over by the wild growth of clinging ivy.
Never was any desolation more sublime and lovely. The perpendicular
wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines, filled up with flowering
shrubs, whose thick twisted roots are knotted in the rifts of the
stone, and at every step the aerial pinnacles of shattered stone group
into new combinations of effect, towering above the lofty yet level
walls, as the distant mountains change their aspect to one traveling
rapidly toward the skirts by masses of the fallen ruins, overturned
with the broad leaves of the creeping weeds. The blue sky canopies it,
and is as the everlasting roof of these enormous halls. But the most
interesting effect remains.
In one of the buttresses that supports an immense and lofty arch
"which bridges the very wings of heaven" are the crumbling remains of
an antique winding staircase, whose sides are open in many places to
the precipice. This you ascend and arrive on the summit of these
piles. There grow on every side thick entangled wildernesses of
myrtle, and the myrletus and bay and the flowering laurestinus, whose
white blossoms are just developed, the white fig and a thousand
nameless plants sown by the wandering winds. These woods are
intersected on every side by paths, like sheep tracks through the
copse wood of steep mountains, which wind to every part of the immense
labyrinth. From the midst rise those pinnacles and masses, themselves
like masses which have been seen far below. In one place you wind
along a narrow strip of weed-grown ruin: on one side is the immensity
of earth and sky, on the other a narrow chasm, which is bounded by an
arch of enormous size, tinged by the many colored foliage and blossoms
and supporting an irregular pyramid overgrown like itself with the
all-pervading vegetation. Around rise other crags and other peaks, all
arrayed and the deformity of their vast desolation softened down by
the undecaying investiture of nature. Come to Rome--it is a scene by
which expression is overpowered, which words can not convey.
Still winding up one-half of the shattered pyramids, by the path
through the blooming wood, you come to a little mossy lawn surrounded
by the wild shrubs; it is overgrown with anemones, wall flowers and
violets, whose stalks pierce the starry moss, and with radiant blue
flowers whose name I know not, and which scatter through the air the
divinest odor; which, as you recline under the shade of the ruin,
produces sensations of voluptuous faintness, like the combinations of
sweet music. The paths still wind on, threading the perplexed
windings, other labyrinths, other lawns, deep dells of wood, and lofty
rocks and terrific chasms. When I tell you that these ruins cover
several acres and that the paths alone penetrate at least half their
extent, your imagination will fill up all that I am unable to express
of the astonishing scene.