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HOW ROME WAS FOUNDED. Very far back in time, more than twenty-six hundred years ago, on the banks of a small Italian river, known as the Tiber, were laid the foundations of a city which was in time to become the conqueror of the civilized world. Of the early days of this renowned city of Rome we know very little. What is called its history is really only legend, -stories invented by poets, or ancient facts which became gradually changed into romances. The Romans believed them, but that is no reason why we should. They believed many things which we doubt. And yet these romantic stories are the only existing foundation-stones of actual Roman history, and we can do no better than give them for what little kernel of fact they may contain. In our tales from Greek history it has been told how the city of Troy was destroyed, and how AEneas, one of its warrior chiefs, escaped. After many adventures this fugitive Trojan prince reached Italy and founded there a new kingdom. His son Ascanius afterwards built the city of Alba Longa (the long white city) not far from the site of the later city of Rome. Three hundred years passed away, many kings came and went, and then Numitor, a descendant of AEneas, came to the throne. But Numitor had an ambitious brother, Amulius, who robbed him of his crown, and, while letting him live, killed his only son and shut up his daughter Silvia in the temple of the goddess Vesta, to guard the ever-burning fire of that deity. Here Silvia had twin sons, whose father was said, in the old superstitious fashion, to be Mars, the God of War. The usurper, fearing that these sons of Mars might grow up and deprive him of his throne, ordered that they and their mother should be flung into the Tiber, then swollen with recent rains. The mother was drowned, but destiny, or Mars, preserved the sons. Borne onward in their basket cradle, they were at length swept ashore where the river had overflown its banks at the foot of the afterwards famous Palatine Hill. Here