red last winter, were antediluvian, and had been deposited in that spot before the Deluge!!! Several treatises of great length and learning were written to prove this, and it was established in the most satisfactory manner, till suddenly, to the confusion of the antediluvians, they proved to be Gothic! Some foreigners (in their right senses,) brought indisputable evidence of urns, so precisely similar, having been found in Prussia, and various parts of Germany, in Sweden, Denmark, and England, that even the antediluvians were compelled to admit the truth. What can we think of the sanity of a set of archeological Academicians, that gravely pronounced some clay urns to be antediluvian!

I ought to have told you, that this notion was put into their heads, in consequence of finding them, as was pretended, under a stratum of tufo stone. If this was true, the stone had probably been taken up to admit the urns, and then laid down again, or it might have been subsequently formed. It was, however, acknowledged not to have been an unbroken layer, but, on the contrary, much splintered.

LETTER XCV.

ASCENT OF THE ALBAN MOUNT.-CAMP OF HANNIBAL. TRIUMPHAL WAY.-CONVENT OF FRIARS.VOLCANOS.-LAKE OF NUMI.-ARICIA.-CIVITA LAVINIA. CORA. — TEMPLE OF HERCULES.CYCLOPEAN WALLS.

IF I could, by description, convey to you any part of the pleasure I myself enjoyed in our expedition to the top of Monte Cava, I would give it you at large; but as mere words can never paint the varied beauty of such scenery, I shall be as sparing of them as possible.

After breakfast, on a beautiful May morning, at the door of the inn, we mounted our asses, which carried us all with great ease and safety, although the long legs of some of the gentlemen nearly touched the ground. We passed the Capuchin Convent, the terrace of which,-forbidden to females,-commands a most beautiful prospect, and then turning along the banks of the lake, wound through magnificent woods and thick copses of oak, chesnut, and hazel, looking down into the deep

crystal basin below, and above to the towering summit of the classic mountain, whose sylvan sides we were ascending. I observed some broken conduits for water here and there in the ground on our right. Amidst the trees appeared a rustic chapel to the Madonna. She is called La Madonna del Tufo, because she was found under the tufo or soft volcanic stone. Like the vases, I wonder they did not make her out to be an antediluvian Madonna. But she is a very miraculous Madonna, and I am assured the day never passes without her working some miracle, more especially in the curing of cows, for which she is highly famed. We soon passed Palazzuola, a villa of the Colonna family, with another Convent of Franciscans attached to it. Near it, by the road side, are some immense caverns, supported by pillars of rock, said to be natural, but evidently much enlarged by art. The wide arches of the rocky roof, the long perspective of the interior, indistinctly seen in distance, dividing into remote passages and crossing arches, had a singularly fine effect beneath the hanging rocks and ancient trees that bend over them. The country people call them the Grottos of Ascanius, and a tomb, a little farther along, they call the Tomb of Ascanius; but as Ascanius was not a Roman Consul, and as this tomb has twelve consular fasces, with the axes, it must have been the tomb of a Consul, and consequently not his. It has also a Roman eagle and a globe resting on a sceptre, sculptured upon it, so that it would seem to have been the tomb of an emperor. Some, however,

think that it was a habitation for the living, not for the dead; a part of the Consular House, where the Roman Consuls slept during the celebration of the Feriæ Latinæ. This solemnity, in latter times, lasted four days, and if any informality or omission had taken place in the ceremony, the whole was recommenced from the beginning. The principal magistrates of all the cities of Latium assembled for this purpose, and, led by the Roman Consul, ascended in solemn procession to the Temple of Jupiter Latialis, where they offered the sacrifice of an ox, of which every one carried away a portion. States, at war with each other, desisted from hostilities during this holy "truce of God," and every treaty or engagement was here solemnly ratified in the sacred presence of their Supreme Deity.

Still ascending through the woods, we at length emerged from them at the village of Rocca di Papa, which hangs over the lake on a steep shelving ledge of bare rock, that terminates in a fine point, crowned with tufted ilexes. We scrambled through this almost perpendicular village on our feet, the poor asses being here scarcely able to pull themselves up, and were much pleased with the appearance of the people, who seem a much hardier, more industrious, and contented race, than those of the plain. The women, decently and most picturesquely dressed, were sitting twirling the spindle at their cottage-doors; and, strange to tell, they did not beg! The children, too, had shoes and stockings, a change I had also observed at Frascati and Albano.

The soft green sloping lawns above the village, which we next passed through, are called I Prati di Annibale; and the tradition is still told, that the Carthaginian pitched his camp here, and looked down upon the city he meant to subdue. There is nothing improbable in the tale, for, from the account Livy gives of Hannibal's route, both on his way from Campania, when he vainly summoned Tusculum to surrender; and back again, after his unsuccessful bravado at the gates of Rome; it is plain he passed over these hills.* Previous to this, on his way to Capua, immediately after the fatal battle of Cannæ, it would seem he made a halt upon the mountains near Rome.+

We now began to ascend the last and steepest part of the mountain, through thick woods of chesnut, and soon joined the ancient Via Triumphalis, which is paved in the usual way, with large irregular-shaped stones, closely fitted together, and forming a flat surface. The road is in high preservation, about the same breadth as the streets of Pompeii, and, like them, marked with the wheels of the cars, or carriages. In this case, however, it could not be the track of the triumphal cars, for the lesser triumph only, the Ovation, was celebrated here, when the victor walked on foot. Pope Alexander Seventh, indeed, was drawn up it in triumph in a carriage!

* Livy, lib. xxvi. c. 10.

+ In propinquis urbis montibus moratus est.

Corn. Nepotis, in Hannibal.