OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

tation. If Charlemagne had fixed in Italy theseat of the Western empire, his genius wouldhave aspired to restore, rather than to violate,the works of the Caesars: but policy confinedthe French monarch to the forests of Germany;his taste could be gratified only by destruction;and the new palace of Aix la Chapelle was de-corated with the marbles of Ravenna' andRome* Five hundred years after Charlemagne,a king of Sicily, Robert, the wisest and mostliberal sovereign of the age, was supplied withthe same materials by the easy navigation of theTyber and the sea; and Petrarch sighs an indig-nant complaint, that the ancient capital of theworld should adorn, from her own bowels, theslothful luxury of Naples . 11 But these examples

1 For the spoils of Ravenna (rausiva atqne marmora) see the originalgrant of pope Adrian I. to Charlemagne (Codex Carolin. epist. lxvii,in Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. iii, p. ii, p. 223).

* I shall quote the authentic testimony of the Saxon poet (a. d. 887-809) de Rebus gestis Caroli magui, 1. v, 437 440, in the Historians ofFrance (tom. v, p. 180):

Ad quae marmoreas praestabat Roma columnas,

Quasdam praecipuas pulchra Ravenna deditDe tarn longinqui potent regione vetustasIllius ornatum Francia ferre tibi.

And I shall add, from the Chronicle of Sigebert (Historians of France,ton), v, p. 378), extruxit etiam Aquisgrani basilicam plurimae pulchri.tudinis, ad cujus structuram a Roma et Ravenna columnas et mar-mora devehi fecit.

“ I cannot refuse to transcribe a long passage of Petrarch (Opp.p. 536, 537, in Epistolh hortatoria ad Nicolaum Laurentium), it is sostrong and full to the point •• Nec pudor aut pietas continuit quominusimpii spoliata Dei templa, occupatas arces, opes publicas regiones urbis,atque honores magistratnum inter se divisos ( habeantf) qua uni inre, turbulent! ac seditiosi homines et totius reliqnas vitas consiliis etrationibus discordes, inhuman! fcederis stupendisocietatc convenerant,

in

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CHAP.

LXXI.