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Having been left so much to herself, she had read much, and especially in profounder books. She had thus become a complete philosopher of the refined, that is, the infidel and intellectual, epicureanism, which had been long fashionable in Rome. Of Christianity she knew nothing, except that she understood it to be something very low, material, and vulgar. She despised it, in fact, too much to think of inquiring into it. And as to paganism, with its gods, its vices, its fables, and its idolatry, she merely scorned it, though outwardly she followed it. In fact, she believed in nothing beyond the present life, and thought of nothing except its refined enjoyment. But her very pride threw a shield over her virtue; she loathed the wickedness of heathen society, as she despised the frivolous youths who paid her jealously exacted attention, for she found amusement in their follies. She was considered cold and selfish, but she was morally irreproachable.

Elaborate Seat from Herculaneum.

If at the beginning we seem to indulge in long descriptions, we trust that our reader will believe that they are requisite, to put him in possession of the state of material and social Rome at the period of our narrative; and will make this the more intelligible. And should he be tempted to think that we describe things as over splendid and refined for an age of decline in arts and good taste, we beg to remind him, that the year we are supposed to visit Rome is not as remote from the better periods of Roman art, for example, that of the Antonines, as our age is from that of Cellini, Raffaele, or Donatello. Yet in how many Italian palaces are still preserved works by these great artists, fully prized, though no longer imitated? So, no doubt, it was with the houses belonging to the old and wealthy families of Rome.