' It is to be supposed that so extraordinary
an event as this, gave the wall that sacred character, which deterred
subsequent rulers from attempting its repair; which permitted it to
remain crooked and rent through the convulsions of the middle ages; and
which still preserves it, to attest the veracity of historians, by
appealing to the antiquarian curiosity of the traveller of modern times.
We now return to Ulpius. It is a peculiarity observable in the
characters of men living under the ascendancy of one ruling idea, that
they intuitively distort whatever attracts their attention in the outer
world, into a connection more or less intimate with the single object of
their mental contemplation. since the time when he had been exiled from
the Temple, the Pagan's faculties had, unconsciously to himself, acted
solely in reference to the daring design which it was the business of
his whole existence to entertain. Influenced, therefore, by this
obliquity of moral feeling, he had scarcely reflected on the discovery
that he had just made at the base of the city wall, ere his mind
instantly reverted to the ambitious meditations which had occupied it in
the morning; and the next moment, the first dawning conception of a bold
and perilous project began to absorb his restless thoughts.
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