TRAJAN’S COLUMN.

This column is one of the most celebrated monuments of antiquity. Its height, including the pedestal and statue, is one hundred and forty-four English feet. It was erected in the centre of the forum of Trajan, and was dedicated to that emperor by the senate and people of Rome in commemoration of his decisive victory over the Dacians. It is of the Doric order, and its shaft is constructed of thirty-four pieces of Greek marble, hollowed out in the centre for the stairs, and joined together with cramps of bronze. For elegance of proportion, beauty of style, and for simplicity and dexterity of sculpture, it is accounted the finest column in the world. The sculptures on the pedestal are master-pieces of Roman art. The shaft is embellished with bassi-rilievi, representing the expedition of Trajan against the Dacians, which run spirally, twenty-three times around the column, and which gradually increase in size, so that those at the top appear to the spectator, to be of the same size as those at the bottom. A spiral stair-case, of one hundred and eighty-five steps, runs up the interior, and receives light from sixty-three openings in the shaft. A gold medal, struck in commemoration of the completion of the column, shows that it was formerly surmounted by a statue of Trajan, holding in one hand a sceptre, and in the other a globe, in which were deposited the ashes of that prince. Pope Sixtus V. placed a statue of St. Peter, by the Cavaliere Fontana, in the place of that of Trajan, which had been destroyed some centuries before. A greater absurdity than placing the statue of a peaceful apostle over the sculptured representation of the Dacian war, can scarcely be conceived.