are gone, which once fastened the hewn stones together, yet the columns stand majestic and unbroken, amid the ruin around them, and seem to defy "the iron tooth of time." Through the arches at the right, I could faintly discern the ruins of the baths of Titus on the Esquiline; and from the left, through every chink and cranny of the wall, poured in the brilliant light of the full moon, casting gigantic shadows around me, and diffusing a soft, silvery twilight through the long arcades. At length I came to an open space where the arches above had crumbled away, leaving the pavement an unroofed terrace high in air. From this point, I could see the whole interior of the amphitheatre spread out beneath me, half in shadow, half in light, with such a soft and indefinite outline that it seemed less an earthly reality than a reflection in the bosom of a lake. The figures of several persons below were just perceptible, mingling grotesquely with their foreshortened shadows. The sound of their voices reached me in a whisper; and the cross that stands in the centre of the arena looked like a dagger thrust into the sand. I did not conjure up the past, for the past had already become identified with the present. It was before me in one of its visible and most majestic forms. The arbitrary distinctions of time, years, ages, centuries, were annihilated. I was a citizen of Rome! This was the amphitheatre of Flavius Vespasian !

Mighty is the spirit of the past, amid the ruins of the Eternal City!

I

THE VILLAGE OF LA RICCIA.

Egressum, magnâ me excepit Aricia Româ,

Hospitio modico.

HORACE

PASSED the month of September at the village of La
Riccia, which stands upon the western declivity of the

R

Albanian hills, looking towards Rome. Its situation is one of the most beautiful which Italy can boast. Like a mural crown, it encircles the brow of a romantic hill,-woodlands of the most luxuriant foliage whisper around it; above it rise the rugged summits of the Abruzzi, and beneath lies the level floor of the Campagna, blotted with ruined tombs, and marked with broken but magnificent aqueducts that point the way to Rome. The whole region is classic ground. The Appian Way leads you from the gate of Rome to the gate of La Riccia. On one hand you have the Alban Lake, on the other the Lake of Nemi; and the sylvan retreats around were once the dwellings of Hippolytus and the nymph Egeria.

The town itself, however, is mean and dirty. The only inhabitable part is near the northern gate, where the two streets of the village meet. There, face to face, upon a square terrace, paved with large flat stones, stand the Chigi palace and the village church with a dome and portico. There, too, stands the village inn, with its beds of cool, elastic corn-husks, its little dormitories, six feet square, and its spacious saloon, upon whose walls the melancholy story of Hippolytus is told in gorgeous frescoes. And there, too, at the union of the streets just peeping through the gateway, rises the wedge-shaped Casa Antonini, within whose dusty. chambers I passed the month of my villeggiatura, in company with two much-esteemed friends from the Old Dominion, a fair daughter of that generous clime, and her lord and master, an artist, an enthusiast, and a man of "infinite jest."

My daily occupations in this delightful spot were such as an idle man usually whiles away his time withal in such a rural residence. I read Italian poetry-strolled in the Chigi park-rambled about the wooden environs of the villagetook an airing on a jackass-threw stones into the Alban Lake and being seized at intervals with the artist-mania,

that came upon me like an intermittent fever, sketched-or thought I did the trunk of a hollow tree, or the spire of a. distant church, or a fountain in the shade.

At such seasons the mind is "tickled with a straw," and magnifies each trivial circumstance into an event of some importance. I recollect one morning, as I sat at breakfast in the village coffee-house, a large and beautiful spaniel came into the room, and placing his head upon my knee looked up into my face with a most piteous look, poor dog! as much as to say that he had not breakfasted. I gave him a morsel of bread, which he swallowed without so much as moving his long, silken ears; and keeping his soft, beautiful eyes still fixed upon mine, he thumped upon the floor with his bushy tail, as if knocking for the waiter. He was a very beautiful animal, and so gentle and affectionate in his manner, that I asked the waiter who his owner was.

"He has none now," said the boy.

"What!" said I, "so fine a dog without a master?"

"Ah, sir, he used to belong to Gasparoni, the famous robber of the Abruzzi mountains, who murdered so many people, and was caught at last and sent to the galleys for life. There's his portrait on the wall."

It hung directly in front of me; a coarse print, representing the dark, stern, countenance of that sinful man, a face that wore an expression of savage ferocity and coarse sensuality. I had heard his story told in the village; the accustomed tale of outrage, violence, and murder. And is it possible, thought I, that this man of blood could have chosen so kind and gentle a companion? What a rebuke must he have met in those large, meek eyes, when he patted his favourite on the head, and dappled his long ears with blood! Heaven seems in mercy to have ordained that none-no, not even the most depraved-should be left entirely to his evil nature, without one patient monitor-a wife-a daughter -a fawning, meek-eyed dog, whose silent supplicating look

may rebuke the man of sin! If this mute, playful creature, that licks the stranger's hand, were gifted with the power of articulate speech, how many a tale of midnight storm, and mountain-pass, and lonely glen would-but these reflections are commonplace!

On another occasion I saw an overladen ass fall on the steep and slippery pavement of the street. He made violent but useless efforts to get upon his feet again, and his brutal driver-more brutal than the suffering beast of burden— beat him unmercifully with his heavy whip. Barbarian! is it not enough that you have laid upon your uncomplaining servant a burden greater than he can bear? Must you Scourge this unresisting slave because his strength has failed. him in your hard service? Does not that imploring look disarm you? Does not-and here was another theme for commonplace reflection!

Again. A little band of pilgrims, clad in white, with staves, and scallop-shells, and sandle shoon, have just passed through the village gate, wending their toilsome. way to the holy shrine of Loretto. They wind along the brow of the hill with slow and solemn pace,-just as they ought to do, to agree with my notion of a pilgrimage, drawn from novels. And now they disappear behind the hill; and hark! they are singing a mournful hymn, like Christian and Hopeful on their way to the Delectable Mountains. How strange it seems to me that I should ever behold a scene like this! a pilgrimage to Loretto! Here was another outline for the imagination to fill up.

But my chief delight was in sauntering along the many woodland walks which diverge in every direction from the gates of La Riccia. One of these plunges down the steep declivity of the hill, and threading its way through a most romantic valley, leads to the shapeless tomb of the Horatii and the pleasant village of Albano. Another conducts you over swelling uplands and through wooded hollows to Gen

zano and the sequestered Lake of Nemi, which lies in its deep crater like the waters of a well, "all coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake." A third, and the most beautiful of all, runs in an undulating line along the crest of the last and lowest ridge of the Albanian Hills, and leads to the borders of the Alban Lake. In parts it hides itself in thick-leaved hollows, in parts climbs the open hillside, and overlooks the Campagno. Then it winds along the brim of the deep, oval basin of the lake, to the village of Castel Gandolfo, and thence onward to Marino, GrottoFerrata, and Frascati.

That part of the road which looks down upon the lake passes through a magnificent gallery of thick-embowering trees, whose dense and luxuriant foliage completely shuts out the noon-day sun, forming

"A greensward wagon-way, that, like

Cathedral aisle, completely roof'd with branches,
Runs through the gloomy wood from top to bottom,
And has at either end a Gothic door

Wide open."

This long, sylvan arcade is called the Galleria-di-sopra, to distinguish it from the Galleria-di-sotto, a similar, though less beautiful avenue, leading from Castel Gandolfo to Albano, under the brow of the hill. In this upper gallery, and almost hidden amid its old and leafy trees, stands a Capuchin convent, with a little esplanade in front, from which the eye. enjoys a beautiful view of the lake and the swelling hills. beyond. It is a lovely spot,-so lonely, cool, and still; and was my favourite and most frequented haunt.

Another pathway conducts you round the southern shore of the Alban Lake, and after passing the site of the ancient Alba Longa, and the convent of Palazzuola, turns off to the right through a luxuriant forest, and climbs the rugged precipice of Rocca di Papa. Behind this village swells the rounded peak of Monte Cavo, the highest pinnacle of the Albanian Hills, rising three thousand feet above the level