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342 NOTICES OF BOOKS.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
The Excavations " Carthage At Carthage A...
was excavated at the expense of the Duchess of Devonshire , was called by
Byron" The nameless column with the buried base . " The winds of heaven lightly bear upon their wings the drifting
sand which hides these buried cities ; " The little redbreasts painfully
Do cover them with leaves ;" plants spring up , and blossom and decay , leaving fertile mould for
yet another generation of flowers . Whether man possesses himself of the site and builds , or whether Nature is left to her own tender
and decorous way of veiling the past , matters little . In either case the ancient world subsides under our feet , as it fades away in
memory . I have seen in Rome a most remarkable discovery which * took place only about four years agoand which singularly
illus-, trates this historic truth . The Latin Way , an ancient road which leads across the Campagna to the hills in a perfectly straight line ,
like all Roman roads , is seen and traced for a mile or two out of the city , and there it plunges into the bushy hillocks of the desolate
_© ampagna and is lost . Somebody , I forget who , actuated by antiquarian and pious Christian zealrecalled that there had once
, existed a church in the plain , a basilica dedicated to St . Stephen the Martyr , and placed close beside the Latin Way , at a certain distance
from Rome . Following a straight line drawn from the existing road , and stopping at the point indicated in the ancient manuscripts
, a spot which was as wild and grassy as any part of the waste land , the excavators dug till they came upon the massive stones of the
Latin Way , to the west of which lay some wonderfully perfect Roman tombs of the Pagan _time-underground chambers richly
, decorated with paintings in well preserved condition , and . to the east of the road lay the perfect foundations and ground-plan , of the
JBasilica of St . Stephen , ivith the columns of the nave broken off short a few feet from the base . The earth had filled up the interior of the
church , of "which the walls were standing to about the height of a childand lay lightly on the toj ) s of the columns * and these few
, , feet represented the accumulation which had drifted over the basilica in the thousand years which had _elajasecl since it went to
ruin ; and even more , for it was probably destroyed in one of the barbarian invasions of Rome .
But we must return to Dr . Davis and his excavations ; and having * said that the Punic relics for which he was seeking were generally
buried twenty feet below the surface of the field , allowing' an accumulation of one foot for every century since Carthage was destroyed ,
let us examine the historic site on which he was engaged . The traveller approaching Tunis by sea from the west , sails past
the wide sandy promontory which makes , as it were , one horn of the deep bay at the end of which Tunis lies . On this promontory , or
isthmus , Carthage was built , and on the wide neck which bounds it
342 Notices Of Books.
342 NOTICES OF BOOKS .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), July 1, 1861, page 342, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01071861/page/54/
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