with side-walks. At the hour of our arrival it was thronged with carriages, which were pouring incessantly into the Piazza. Some of them continued the course through the gate; others wound their way up a terraced road to the top of the Pincian Mount, on our left; and the remainder, wheeling round an Egyptian Obelisk, erected as a goal in the centre of the square, either halted on the great Exchange of Fashion, to stare and be stared at, or made another circuit through the Corso. Such are the high sports in the capital of his Holiness on Sunday evening.

The magnificent area, surrounded by three stately churches and by two white marble fountains crowned with colossal statues, thronged as it was with no inconsiderable share of the splendour, beauty, taste, and fashion, which a population of a hundred and fifty thousand can afford, formed an imposing vestibule to the imperial city. We sat in our carriages, in the midst of the multitude, and learned much in a short time. The Roman ladies are beautiful-pre-eminently beautiful over those of any part of Italy we have yet seen-in face, form, and complexion; blending grace with dignity of manners, and a comparative simplicity with richness and elegance of dress. The Italian language, as here spoken, is melody itself in comparison with the harsh, guttural intonations of the Tuscans, though the latter are the fathers of the modern dialect, and are said to write it with greater purity than the Romans.

But not to enter farther upon these topics at present: we took lodgings at the Hotel de l'Europe, situated on the Piazza di Spagna, the finest part of the city. The area extends along the base of the Pincian Hill, to the brow of which a magnificent flight of marble steps, perhaps a hundred feet in breadth, and as many in perpendicular height, affords an easy ascent. Rome is indebted to the late king of France, Louis XVIII. for this colossal work, which adds much to the beauty of the city. At the head of the steps, the same monarch restored a large church and established an Academy of the Fine Arts for the benefit of French students. In the rear of the latter is a beautiful garden, containing several acres, planted with shrubbery, and ornamented with statues. Its situation is delightful, and the whole of this group of buildings, with their appurtenances, reflects credit upon the liberality of the French government. Numerous inscriptions take care to inform the public, who was the benefactor. The top

of the Pincian Hill is laid out with terraced roads and gravel walks for pedestrians, bordered by trees, ornamented with an obelisk, and furnished with seats beneath the shade, for the accommodation of visitants. So much by way of preface: for as the summit of this eminence commands a full view of Rome and its environs, and as it was near our lodgings, we frequently resorted to it, as a kind of observatory for fixing the outlines of the city.

LETTER LVII.

SKETCH OF ROME-VIEW FROM THE CAPITOLINE HILL-OUTLINES OF THE CITY AND ENVIRONS-ASPECT OF THE SEVEN HILLS-RUINS OF THE FORUM-TRIUMPHAL ARCHES ANCIENT TEMPLES-COLISEUM.

April, 1826.-On the morning after our arrival, we hastened to the centre of attraction, the Capitol and the Forum, and the visit has since been daily repeated with almost as much regularity, as Cicero and Hortensius attended the courts, some two thousand years ago. Let us again hurry thither, and without pausing at present to look at objects on our right or left, ascend to the top of the comparatively modern tower, which rises to the height of perhaps two hundred feet, upon the summit of the Capitoline Hill. The reader has already received from my own remarks, and perhaps from a hundred other sources, some intimations of the great outlines of the picture, which he hence surveys. He here finds himself in the centre both of the ancient and modern city, as well as of the Campagna di Roma. To the north and east,

in the distance, the eye rests upon the blue summits of the Apennines, sweeping round the plain like a vast amphitheatre, from Tivoli to the heights of Baccano, embracing in the long range the sombre crest of Soracte, and a hundred other hills, with their tops fading into the skies. Between these mountains, and Mont Albano heaving its woody summit above a cincture of white hamlets, towards the south, an arm of the Campagna, resembling a strait of the sea, opens in boundless perspective, which, beyond the reach of vision, is lost among the hills. On the west and southwest, the prospect is co-extensive with the sensible horizon; for at the distance

of twelve or fifteen miles, the Mediterranean bathes the solitary shores, and so similar is the complexion of the two expanses, that it is difficult to distinguish the precise boundary between land and sea.

Such are the remote features of this great panorama. The aspect of the Campagna has already been described. It is a belt of utter solitude, twelve miles in breadth in the narrowest part, and completely encircles Rome. Two or three straggling churches, forming the very outposts of the city, are but a few miles from the gates. Dark ruins are scattered over. the waste in shapeless masses, fast sinking into the grave of empire. On one side are seen wrecks of tombs, which skirted the Appian Way; on another side, the spectator traces the windings of the Tiber through its lonely borders, from the walls of the city to the sea. The eternal silence, which broods over this region, once rural, populous and gay, sends a chill to the heart:

"Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent."

But the gloomiest features in the picture have not yet been portrayed. The high dark ramparts, visible in their whole circumference of about sixteen miles, enclose an area which exhibits a chaos of desolate ruins and modern splendour. As the former image predominates in the mind, the latter by contrast only serves to render it the more hideous. More than half the space within the walls is not occupied at all by buildings. These waste places, once covered by golden palaces and temples of the gods, are now strewed with rubbish, or converted into gardens and patches of cultivation, the soil of which is enriched by the dust of an empire. A luxuriant growth of foliage and flowers often mantles these ruins, exhibiting the eternal vigour of nature, when compared with the transient works of art.

Three of the Seven Hills of Rome, the Palatine, the Aventine, and Cælian, are almost entirely destitute of buildings of any kind. Of the other four, the Esquiline is partially, and the Capitoline, Viminal, and Quirinal are fully occupied by the modern city. They are all, as my readers probably need not be told, on the left bank of the Tiber: the Aventine, the Palatine, and Capitoline are near the river -the others are at the distance of perhaps half a mile from the margin. None of them have that prominence, which the

traveller might rationally expect to find, and which they in fact once had. The cause is obvious. While the ruins of the city, piled stratum above stratum, have elevated its level twenty, thirty, and sometimes even forty feet above the ancient pavement, no addition has been made to the height of the hills. On the contrary, a portion of their summits, loosened by tillage and swept down by rains, forms a part of the heterogeneous strata, on which modern Rome is seated.

The Aventine is one of the largest and highest of the group. It rises boldly from the immediate bank of the Tiber, near the ancient port, at the lower extremity of the city. There is barely room for the road between the margin of the river, and the cliffs, which have an air of rugged, stern, and solitary grandeur. The verdant summit of this hill, the aerial tomb of Remus, and where once rose fanes to Juno, Diana, Victory, Liberty, and other divinities, is now as much the haunt of birds,* as it was in the days of the soothsayers, and old Hercules might find better pasturage for his cattle, than he did in the age of Cacus.†

But of all the Roman Hills, the Palatine is infinitely the most interesting, both from its associations and its present picturesque appearance. Here was the cradle of empire;

here rose the first humble walls; here was established the Court, from the thatched cottage of old Romulus to the Golden Palace of Nero; here stood the shrine consecrated to Apollo and the Muses; here Cicero lived and Horace sung! The Palatine mount is immediately under the eye of the spectator, as he stands upon the tower on the Capitoline. We have rambled over it again and again. It is the very image of desolation. Nearly its whole circumference is girt with a series of subterranean baths, sweeping round in a dark line, under the brow of the hill, and opening into its sides, like gloomy caverns.

On the cliffs, at the south-western extremity, stand all that remains of the Palace of the Cæsars and the splendid Temple of Apollo, consisting of a few damp and dreary

*The Aventine derives its name from the word aves, (birds) by which it used to be much frequented.

Virgil lays the scene of this fable on the Aventine Mount, and there is a cave half way up the side, which is still called the Den of Cacus. A hermit, instead of a robber, now keeps the key. We made at least half a dozen attempts to find him at his little hut by the side of the road, but without success.

arches, still exhibiting traces of fresco ceilings. Of the palace, which once covered the whole hill, the composition floor of the terrace is in good preservation, bordering upon the cliff, where Nero used to sit at his window, and drop his handkerchief, as a signal for the games to begin, in the Circus Maximus,* below. Of the temple, nothing save its foundations is left. Fragments of its Corinthian capitals and friezes of Parian marble are strewed under a grove of ilex on the brow of the hill, mantled by the matted grass and the leaves of the acanthus, whence the order derives its origin. The region in the vicinity of these two buildings is thickly overgrown with wild shrubbery, in which persons are effectually concealed, as they ramble along the foot-paths. The solitude is absolutely appalling. Some memorials of Nero's crimes are yet preserved. A bath is shown in which

the veins of Seneca were pricked by the order of the Emperor; and by turning the eye to the left, it rests on the old tower, upon which he is said to have fiddled, while Rome was burning. His Golden House extended from the Palace of the Cæsars, to the Cælian and Esquiline Hills, a distance of half a mile or more!

The summit and central part of the Palatine is not so dreary. It is occupied by an extensive garden, or rather vineyard, belonging to a Neapolitan Prince, and denominated the Orti Farnesiani. The soil is rich, covered with a luxuriant crop of artichokes and other vegetables, overshadowed by the vine. In the midst of the field, are the remains of the subterranean baths of Livia, into which the visitant descends through a tangled copse, as into the cave of a Sybil, with a hag for a pioneer, bearing a brimstone torch to show the frescos. There are but two or three modern buildings on the whole Mount, and these are in such situations, as not to break in upon its solitude. In a word, it has so far reverted to the wildness of nature, that Pales, the goddess of flocks, to whom it was originally consecrated, and from whom it derives its name, might again resume the crook and ascend her sylvan throne. It is a truth, which

*Between the Aventine and Palatine Hills. The outlines are yet visible. It was large enough to hold 150,000 spectators.

†The lines of Tibullus, descriptive of the rural charms of this hill, in its original state of pastoral simplicity, are so beautiful that I cannot for bear another quotation in Latin, having no translation of the poet :