"If I had expected to find so many plants growing on the ruins of a building, I should have brought it," said Rollo.
The pressing book which Rollo referred to, was one made expressly for the purpose of pressing flowers. The leaves of it were of blotting paper.
Rollo was half inclined to ask Mr. George to put some specimens into the Guide Book; but he did not ask him, because he knew that Mr. George did not like to have dried plants in the Guide Book. Such specimens between the leaves of a book interfere very much with the convenience of using it, by dropping out when you open the book, or impeding the turning of the leaves.
"But I mean to come again," continued Rollo, "and bring my pressing book, and then I can get as many specimens as I please. Wouldn't you, uncle George?"
"Wouldn't you what?" said Mr. George. Mr. George had been paying very little attention to what Rollo had been saying.
"Come again some day," said Rollo, "and bring my pressing book, so as to collect specimens of some of these little plants."
"Yes," said Mr. George, "that will be an excellent plan. And I wish, while you are doing it, you would gather some for me. And if you wish for some now, I can let you put them in the Guide Book."
"No, I thank you," said Rollo. "I will wait till I come again."
The height of the outer walls of the Coliseum is over a hundred and fifty feet, which would be the height of a house fifteen stories high. There are not many church steeples higher than that.
If, therefore, you conceive of an oval-shaped field six acres in extent, with a massive wall one hundred and fifty feet high, and divided into four immense stories, surrounding it, and from the top of this wall ranges of seats, with passages between them, sloping in towards the centre, leaving about an acre of open and level space in the centre for the arena, the whole finished in the most magnificent and gorgeous manner, with columns, statues, sculptured ornaments, and all the seats, and walls, and staircases, and corridors, and vestibules, and tribunes, and pavilions for musicians, and seats for judges, designed and arranged in the highest style of architectural beauty, and encased and adorned with variegated marbles of the most gorgeous description,—if, I say, you can conceive of all this, you will have some faint idea of what the Coliseum must have been in the days of its glory.