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Show "Jtrry-llutli" Uou ol Itituie. On tin outskirts of the UliuUo liny strwt li'J ii'ttu-tioriii-nof Octavia, where Titus (;i'K-1ii .tud Ins triumph uuil Syrian eaptiv.-s bore the r-poils of the temple in liL- innn (,'lu.se by the colonnade of this noble ruin, ihc ancient tUli market. which lunl 1-t.fii held here for centuries, might stiil have been seen a year or two ao. The sihl w;ii strikingly pirturi'Mpue The many sloi ied lioiitiesof l he narrow street almost ishut out the blue hky over liead, and the unsliine streamed through the im-etin roofs uu the jjlitterinj; scales of tish and the worn marble slulis which had been in use since the ilavs of tlie Ciesars. A few steps further on was the theatre which Augustus built in honor of the youny Marcellus. Here we were met by another of those strange contrasts over which Ampere loved to moralize. Under the Doric uxchcsof the lowest tier artisans had their shops, and the ruddy lij;lit of the forge glowed upon piles of given vegetables and watermelons and joints of meat which dangled from the travertine bUcks of the Augustan age. AIhjvc the loinc arches of the upper story rose the grim walls of the Savelli palace, built in the middle ages on a lofty heap of debris within the theatre. , This was the home of Niebuhr when he lived in Rome as Prussian auibassa- dor. From these windows ho looked down on the fountains, the orange trees j and tl'jworing jasmine of his little garden, gar-den, and far away across the Tiber to St. Peter's and Monte Mario. This district; has undergone a thorough cleansing, j The ancient fish market and the shops ! have been removed, and the Ghetto lev- I eled to the ground. Whole streets were carted away last year amid clouds of j white dust and mortar. Only the for i tress looking walls of the Cenci palace, tho portico of Octavia and the theatre of Marcel I ub remain, isolated and stripped of their surroundings, lu short, the whole of this remarkable quarter baa disappeared to make room for more boulevards bou-levards and "jerry-built" houses. Nineteenth Nine-teenth Century. |