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At the sack of Rome by the barbarians, it was thrown down, and remained, broken in three pieces, amidst the rubbish, until, in 1589, Sixtus V. had it restored by the architect Domenico Fontana, and placed near the church Madonna del Popolo. Under Caligula, another large obelisk was brought from Heliopolis to Rome, and placed in the Circus Vaticanus. It has stood, since 1586, before St.

Still more brilliant was the idea, first, of constructing a canal through the Pomptine marshes and drawing off their waters to Tarracina, and secondly, of altering the lower course of the Tiber and of leading it from the present Ponte Molle, not through between the Campus Vaticanus and the Campus Martius, but rather round the Campus Vaticanus and the Janiculum to Ostia, where the miserable roadstead was to give place to an adequate artificial harbour.

Doctor Bengel has shown from the Ballarium Romanum and other documents regarding the Papal government, that since the Roman Emperor Constantine I. the Pope had the seat of his administration until the time in which Doctor Bengel wrote, on five of the seven mountains, to wit, 1. on the mountain Coelius, 2. mountain Aventinus, 3. Vaticanus, 4. Qurinalis, 5. Esquilinus.

Others, of a different quality, where he is dealing with Platonic subtleties or Petrarchan conceits, have been twisted into so many forms, and tortured by such frequent re-handlings, that it is difficult now to settle a final text. The Codex Vaticanus is peculiarly rich in examples of these compositions. Madrigal lvii. and Sonnet lx., for example, recur with wearisome reiteration.

This we discover from the innumerable variants of the same madrigal or sonnet which he made, and his habit of returning to them at intervals long after their composition. A good fourth of the Codex Vaticanus consists of repetitions and rifacimenti. He was also wont to submit what he wrote to the judgment of his friends, requesting them to alter and improve.

In the same case repose the Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Vaticanus, three great folios, in the original Greek and Hebrew, sacred to scholars as the works on which all authority for the Scriptures rests. Tyndale's New Testament, the first ever printed on English ground, dated London, 1536, is here, and that rare copy of the King James version known as the "Wicked Bible."

In the other cabinet is the great gem and glory of the Library the Codex Vaticanus, in strange association with a number of the love-letters of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, in French and English. This curious correspondence which, after all that subsequently happened between the English monarch and the Papal Court, we are very much surprised to see in such a place is in wonderful preservation.

What business has a man who knows nothing about the beautiful, and cannot pronounce the word view, to talk about fashion to a set of people who, if one of the quality left a card at their doors, would contrive to keep it on the very top of their heap of the names of their two-story acquaintances, till it was as yellow as the Codex Vaticanus?

Among the numberless objects of interest to be seen in Rome, a very high place must be assigned to the Codex Vaticanus, probably the oldest vellum manuscript in existence, and the richest treasure of the great Vatican Library. This famous manuscript, which Biblical scholars designate by the letter B, contains the oldest copy of the Septuagint, and the first Greek version of the New Testament.

The Codex Vaticanus is greatly admired for the beauty of the vellum; and the whiteness of the Codex Alexandrinus can be seen by all who visit the British Museum, although the exquisite thinness, softness, and delicacy of the texture can only be appreciated by touching it. The beautiful fabric of the Codex Clarmontanus has already been mentioned.