APPII FORUM, AND THREE TAVERNS. 229 and despised country; and how little could they have anticipated the day when the religion he came to teach should fill the land, and that its stately shrines would stand triumphant, when the sea should wash over the tesselated relics of their. luxurious villas, and splendid temples! Leaving Puteoli, St. Paul and his companions directed their steps towards Rome, whence a band of disciples, who had received the joyful news of his arrival, were hastening to give him the meeting. Baie and Puteoli communicated with Rome by a branch road, which entered the Appian Way near Minturnæ. This famous highway, the Via Appia, called the queen of Roman roads, was constructed with large stones, so well prepared and fitted, that they adhered for ages without the aid of cement. It was well furnished with inns and post-houses, being the most frequented outlet from the capital. The modern road from Rome to Naples runs, for the most part, upon its foundations, and displays, in many places, the most enchanting scenery, especially at Mola, Fondi, and Terracina; but upon this our plan forbids us to dwell in detail. The road had not long been traversed in the opposite direction, by a very different sort of traveller-the poet Horace, who has given the facetious account of his adventures, so familiar to classical scholars, and so truthfully presented to the English reader by the gentle Cowper. In what way the Apostle and his friends may have travelled, we are left very much to conjecture; but, across the Pontine Marshes, between Terracina and Torre Treponti, supposed to occupy the site of Appii Forum, ran a canal, along which Horace was conveyed during the night, and of which some vestiges are still to be traced. At Appii Forum Paul met the first detachment of his sympathising friends, and the remainder at Tres Tabernas, or the Three Taverns, the next station towards Rome, situated near the modern town of Cisterna. The sight of company after company, thus prepared beforehand to welcome him, must have been cheering indeed to the Apostle, after his long and arduous journey; and, to use the brief but expressive words of the sacred narrative, "he thanked God, and took courage.' The whole party now proceeded together towards Rome, crossing the romantic hills of Aricia and Albano, till the wide expanse of the Campagna opened before them, terminated in the distance by the glittering buildings of the Eternal City. Far different from what it now is, was then the approach to Rome. The throng of chariots and horsemen must have pressed eagerly along the narrow causeway, lined with those splendid sepulchres, of which the ruins are now scattered over the dreary and deserted plain, where the solitary herdsman pastures his droves of buffaloes. But where shall we find the scene, such as it must then have been, so vividly portrayed as in the well-known lines of Milton? "What conflux issuing forth, or entering in,- In various habits, on the Appian road, Or on th' Emilian; some from farthest south, Dusk faces, with white silken turbans wreath'd; Paradise Regained, b. iv. The modern road from Rome to Naples, diverging from the Via Appia, enters the city by the Porta S. Giovanni. Paul and his companions continued, of course, to follow the Appian Way, and leaving on the right the beautiful round sepulchre of |