Rienzi by Edward Bulwer-lytton — Read

It was upon that same evening, and while the earlier stars yet shone / over the city, that Walter de Montreal, returning, alone, to the convent / then associated with the church of Santa Maria del Priorata (both of / which belonged to the Knights of the Hospital, and in the first of which / Montreal had taken his lodgment), paused amidst the ruins and desolation / which lay around his path. Thou little skilled in the classic memories / and associations of the spot, he could not but be impressed with the / surrounding witnesses of departed empire; the vast skeleton, as it were, / of the dead giantess.

"Now," thought he, as he gazed around upon the roofless columns and / shattered walls, everywhere visible, over which the starlight shone, / ghastly and transparent, backed by the frowning and embattled fortresses / of the Frangipani, half hid by the dark foliage that sprung up amidst / the very fanes and palaces of old -- Nature exulting over the frailer / Art; "now," thought he, "bookmen would be inspired, by this scene, with / fantastic and dreaming visions of the past. But to me these monuments of / high ambition and royal splendour create only images of the future. Rome / may yet be, with her seven-hilled diadem, as Rome has been before, the / prize of the strongest hand and the boldest warrior, -- revived, not by / her own degenerate sons, but the infused blood of a new race. William / the Bastard could scarce have found the hardy Englishers so easy a / conquest as Walter the Well-born may find these eunuch Romans. And which / conquest were the more glorious, -- the barbarous Isle, or the Metropolis / of the World? Short step from the general to the podesta -- shorter step / from the podesta to the king!"