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Naples. It was he who enlarged and laid out the Villa Reale, in the English style of shrubbery, which forms a delightful promenade between the Chiaja and the sea.

In the centre of this walk is the group of Dirce, commonly called the Toro Farnese.—Pliny tells us it was cut out of a single block

"Zethus et Amphion, ac Dirce, et Taurus, vinculumque ex eodem lapide, Rhodo advecta, opera Apollonii et Taurisci.”

But the integrity of the original block has been much invaded; for, the head and arms of Dirce— the head and arms of Antiope-the whole of Amphion and Zethus, except the bodies and one leg -and the legs and rope of the bull—are modern.

2d. Excursion to Pozzuoli and Baie; where all is fairy ground. Here you may wander about, with Virgil and Horace in your hand, and moralize over the changes that time has produced.How are the mighty fallen!-Here the great ones of the earth retired, from the noise and smoke of Rome, to their voluptuous villas. Baia was the Brighton, the Cheltenham-or, perhaps, with more propriety, the Bath of Rome;-for it was a winter retreat. The rage for building was car

ried to an extent that made it necessary to en

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"Contracta pisces æquora sentiunt,

Jactis in altum molibus. Huc frequens
Camenta demittit redemptor."

But their redemptors built with more solid materials than our modern builders, whose structures will never endure to afford the remnant of a ruin, seventeen hundred years hence, to our curious posterity, as a sample of the style of building of their ancestors.

One might fancy that Horace had been gifted with a prophetic sight of the changes that have taken place, when he wrote

"Debemur morti nos, nostraque; sive receptus
Terrâ Neptunus, classes Aquilonibus arcet,

Regis opus-"

Who can recognise, in the present appearance of the Lucrine Lake, any vestiges of the superb description of Virgil?

“An memorem portus, Lucrinoque addita claustra :
Atque indignatum magnis stridoribus æquor,
Iulia qua ponto longe sonat unda refuso,
Tyrrhenusque fretis immittitur æstus Avernis?

But it is thus that the fashion of this world passeth away. The lovely Lucrine-the scene

of imperial Regatas-is now a mere morass— or at most a fenny fish-pond. It was curtailed of its fair proportions, and indeed almost filled up, by the monstrous birth of the Monte Nuovothe offspring of a volcano-which burst out in 1538 with a fearful eruption of flames and fire; the ashes of which, after being shot up into the air to an immense height, in their descent formed this prodigious mountain of cinders.

Avernus has no longer any thing diabolical about it. The axe of Agrippa, by levelling the woods that enveloped it in impenetrable gloom, and mysterious dread, long ago deprived the lake of all its terrors. Silius Italicus describes the change which had already taken place in his time :

"Ille, olim populis dictum Styga, nomine verso,

Stagna inter celebrem nunc mitia monstrat Avernum." Popular superstition might well fix upon such a spot, situated in the midst of volcanoes, and supposed to be of unfathomable depth, as the mouth of hell: Homer probably followed the real belief of his time, in sending Ulysses thither;— and Virgil followed Homer. But if Italy has furnished the hells of the poet, it has also supplied them with the scenery of Elysium. Milton seems

to have culled the flowers of his delicious garden of Eden, from the soft and sublime scenery of Tuscany; and the charming retreats in the neighbourhood of Avernus, were probably the prototypes of Virgil's habitations of the blessed; though he could scarcely intend to fix the geographical position of his Elysium, which, by the concluding words, seems evidently transferred to another world-" Solemque suum sua sidera norunt."

From hence we made a pilgrimage to Torre di Patria-the ancient Liternum;—the retreat and the tomb of Scipio. The word "Patria,” is still legible on the wall of a watch-tower, which, you are told, is all that remains of the angry epitaph which he dictated himself:-" Ingrata Patria, neque enim mea ossa habebis." It is evident, however, that this tower is of modern construction, and therefore, the inscription on it only affords evidence of the tradition that this was the place of Scipio's interment. And this tradition is at least as old as Pliny, who tells us there was a notion, that a dragon watched over the manes of Scipio, in a cavern at Liternum.-Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xvi. cap. 44.

Such traditions have usually some foundation in truth. But it is extraordinary that the memory of

so great a man should not have outlived his grave long enough to enable history to record where he was buried. All that we gain from Livy however on this point, rests on the same vague tradition :— "Silentium deinde de Africano fuit. Vitam Literni egit, sine desiderio urbis. Morientem rure eo ipso loco sepeliri se jussisse ferunt, monumentumque ibi ædificari, ne funus sibi in ingrata patria fieret." A heap of stones is all that remains of the ruins of Liternum!

We hurried rapidly over the ruins of Pozzuoli, in our way home. A peasant showed us a tomb containing three Sarcophagi, which he had lately discovered in his vineyard. He complained bitterly that the King had sent a party of soldiers to remove one of these to his Museo, without giving him any remuneration. Further excavation might lead to the discovery of curious remains of antiquity;-but who excavate on such terms? The bones in the Sarcophagi were in perfect pre

servation.

Solfatara is well worth seeing.-Murat carried on sulphur works here, for his domestic manufacture of gunpowder.-Three pounds of stone yield one pound of sulphur. Solfatara is the crater of an extinguished volcano—it is a fearful

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