After all, the imagination
is very childlike, and it prefers the elements of its pleas-ures simple
and few; if the materials are very abundant or complex, it can make
little out of them; they embarrass it, and it turns critical in
self-defence. The grandeur that was Rome as visioned from the Cow Field
becomes in the mind's eye the kaleidoscopic clutter which the
resurrection of the Forum Romanum must more and more realize.
If the visitor would have some rash notion of what the ugliness of the
place was like when it was in its glory, he may go look at the plastic
reconstruction of it, indefinitely reduced, in the modest building
across the way from the official entrance to the Forum. One cannot say
but this is intensely interesting, and it affords the consolation which
the humble (but not too humble) spirit may gather from witness of the
past, that the fashion of this world and the pride of the eyes and all
ruthless vainglory defeated themselves in ancient Rome, as they must
everywhere when they can work their will.
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