The whole appearance of the street before Vetranio's mansion, had it
been unoccupied by the repulsive groups now formed in it, would have
been eminently beautiful at the hours of which we now write. The nobly
symmetrical frontage of the palace itself, with its graceful succession
of long porticoes and colossal statues, contrasted by the picturesquely
irregular appearance of the opposite dwelling of Numerian and the lofty
houses by its side; the soft, indistinct masses of foliage running
parallel along the upper ends of the street, terminated and connected by
the archway garden across the road, on which was planted a group of tall
pine-trees, rising in gigantic relief against the transparent sky; the
brilliant light streaming across the pavement from Vetranio's gaily-
curtained windows, immediately opposed by the tranquil moonlight which
lit the more distant view--formed altogether a prospect in which the
natural and the artificial were mingled together in the most exquisite
proportions--a prospect whose ineffable poetry and beauty might, on any
other night, have charmed the most careless eye and exalted the most
frivolous mind.
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