Change of air or the pursuit of health and recreation. (Through France, Switzerland, Italy, &c.) illustrating the beneficial influence of bodily exercise, change of scene, pure air, and temporary relaxation in sickness and in health / by James Johnson.

  • Johnson, James, 1777-1845.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Change of air or the pursuit of health and recreation. (Through France, Switzerland, Italy, &c.) illustrating the beneficial influence of bodily exercise, change of scene, pure air, and temporary relaxation in sickness and in health / by James Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    153/302 (page 141)
    PYRAMID OF CAIUS CESTIUS. seum was necessary to saturate the sense of sight with slaughter—and the Thermo were indispensable for the indulgence of the other senses in every vicious propensity, which a prurient imagination could invent, or an insatiable luxury demand! WALLS* TOMBS, AQUEDUCTS. As the circle of vision widens, wave after wave, from the Tower of the Capitol, the objects grow hardly less distinct—the recollections and re- flections become scarcely less exciting. The sight of lofty battlements, standing like a chain of silent and unconscious sentinels around the soli- tude of a departed city, suggests the natural and the just idea, that Rome fell ingloriously by her own hands, and not in manly combat with a foreign foe ! Had the Romans been true to themselves, yon walls would not have been left to encircle vacuity—nor to stand, at once the emblem and the evidence of national suicide ! PYRAMID OF CAIUS CESTIUS. Carrying the eye to the right, along the mouldering and moss-grown girdle of Imperial Rome, our attention is arrested for a moment—and but for a moment—by the Pyramid of Caius Cestius—one of the Septemvirs, who prepared the banquets of the Gods, and who, as comptroller of the celestial kitchen, tasted the choicest viands on the Lectisternian tables. Caius Cestius naturally concluded that a carcase which had, during life, fattened on ambrosia and nectar, would be speedily visited, after death, by swarms of the keen-scented courtiers of the grave. Brass and marble were put in requisiton, to guard against oblivion and worms. The colos- sal statue and the pyramidal tomb arose—puny imitations of their stupen- dous prototypes heaved up on the banks of the Nile, by hands unknown and for purposes forgotten ! The foot of the statue lies in a court of the Capitol—the body of Caius Cestius has vanished—and the pyramid itself, restored by a pious Pope, is only interesting, by daily sweeping its fune- real shadow over the lowly and grass-grown graves of our departed countrymen, whom the spirit of curiosity, the thirst of knowledge, the ennui of idleness—the tyranny of fashion, or the torments of sickness, attracted to the hallowed shrine and balmy atmosphere of the Eternal City. No wall is permitted to surround the cemetery of Christian here- tics, least it should obstruct the view of a pagan sepulchre. A deep trench answers the purpose as well, or better. A perusal of the “ frail memorials'’ erected by consanguinity or friendship over the bones of our compatriots, clearly indicates that the greater number fell victims to that