As I do not know whether you ever saw a copy of it, I
inclose it to you, and desire you will send it as an agreeable exercise,
to be well translated by my friend at Oxford.
On the other side of the vestibule is a noble stair-case, on which is
well painted the destruction of the city, by so dreadful a fire in the
time of the Romans, that _Seneca_, who gives an account of it in a
letter to his friend, says,
"_Una nox fuit inter urbem maximam et nullum._"
i.e. One night only intervened between a great city and nothing.
There is something awful in this scene, to see on one side of the
stair-case the conflagration well executed; on the other, strong marks
of the very fire which burnt so many ages ago; for there can be no
doubt, but that the Bronze plate then stood in the _Roman Hotel de
Ville_, and was burnt down with it, because it was dug up among the
refuse of the old city on the mountain called _Fourvire_, on the other
side of the river, where the original city was built.--In cutting the
letters on this large plate of Bronze, they have, to gain room, made no
distance between the words, but shewn the division only by a little
touch thus < with the graver; and where a word eroded with a C, or G,
they have put the touch within the concavity of the letter, otherwise it
is admirably well executed.
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