Wicliffe and His Times - James Aitken Wylie

to be. Being joined by seven disciples, he made his
way to Rome, to lay his project before the Pope.
On arriving there he found Innocent III. ailing
himself on the terrace of his palace of the Lateran.
What a subject for a painter! The haughtiest of
the Pontiffs – -the man who, like another Jove, had
but to nod and kings were tumbled from their
thrones, and nations were smitten down with
interdict – was pacing to and fro beneath the
pillared portico of his palace, revolving, doubtless,
new and mightier projects to illustrate the glory
and strengthen the dominion of the Papal throne.
At times his eye wanders as far as the Apennines,
so grandly walling in the Campagna, which lies
spread out beneath him – not as now, a blackened
expanse, but a glorious garden sparkling with
villas, and gay with vineyards and olive and figtrees.
If in front of his palace was this goodly
prospect, behind it was another, forming the
obverse of that on which the Pontiff's eye now
rested. A hideous gap, covered with the fragments
of what had once been temples and palaces, and
extending from the Lateran to the Coliseum,
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