But It Would Take A Good
Deal More Than That To Spoil The Colosseum, For Neither The Rapine Of
The
Mediaeval nobles, who quarried their palaces from it, nor the
industrial enterprise of some of the popes, who wished to
Turn it into
workshops, nor the archeology of United Italy had sufficed to weaken in
it that hold upon the interest proper to the scene of the most
stupendous variety shows that the world has yet witnessed. The terrible
stunts in which men fought one another for the delight of other men in
every manner of murder, and wild beasts tore the limbs of those glad to
perish for their faith, can be as easily imagined there as ever, and the
traveller who visits the place has the assistance of increasing hordes
of other tourists in imagining them.
I will not be the one to speak slight of that enterprise which marshals
troops of the personally conducted through the place and instructs them
in divers languages concerning it. Save your time and money so, if you
have not too much of either, and be one of an English, French, or German
party, rather than try to puzzle the facts out for yourself, with one
contorted eye on your Baedeker and the other on the object in question.
In such parties a sort of domestic relation seems to grow up through
their associated pleasures in sight-seeing, and they are like family
parties, though politer and patienter among themselves than real family
parties.
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