banks of the Tiber. There are still scattered pillars and pedestals, huge pieces of marble half buried in the earth, fragments of towers, subterraneous vaults, bathing places, and the like marks of its ancient magnificence.

In my way to Rome, seeing a high hill standing by itself in the Campania, I did not question but it had a classic name, and upon inquiry found it to be Mount Soracte. The Italians at present call it, because its name begins with an S. St. Öreste.

The fatigue of our crossing the Appenines, and of our whole journey from Loretto to Rome, was very agreeably relieved by the variety of scenes we passed through. For not to mention the rude prospect of rocks rising one above another, of the gutters deep worn in the sides of them torrents of rain and snowwater, or the long channels of sand winding about their bottoms, that are sometimes filled with so many rivers: we saw, in six days' travelling, the several seasons of the year in their beauty and perfection. We were

sometimes shivering on the top a bleak mountain, and a little while after basking in a warm valley, covered with violets and almond-trees in blossom, the bees already swarming over them, though but in the month of February. Sometimes our road led us through groves of olives, or by gardens of oranges, or into several hollow apartments among the rocks and mountains, that look like so many natural green-houses; as being always shaded with a great variety of trees and shrubs that never lose their verdure.

I shall say nothing of the Via Flaminia, which has been spoken of by most of the voyage-writers that have passed it, but shall set down Claudian's account of the journey that Honorius made from Ravenna to Rome, which lies most of it in the same road that I have been describing.

-Antiquæ muros egressa Ravennæ

Signa movet, jamque ora Padi portusque relinquit
Flumineos, certis ubi legibus advena Nereus

Estuat, et pronas puppes nunc amne secundo

VOL. II.

F

Nunc redeunte vehit, nudataque littora fluctu
Deserit, oceani lunaribus æmula damnis;
Latior hinc fano recipit Fortuna vetusto,
Despiciturque vagus præruptâ valle Metaurus,
Qua mons arte patens vivo se perforat arcu,
Admisitque viam sectæ per viscera rupis,
Exuperans delubra Jovis, saxoque minantes
Apenninigenis cultas pastoribus aras:

Quin et Clitumni sacras victoribus undas,
Candida quæ latiis præbent armenta triumphis
Visere cura fuit. Nec te miracula fontis
Prætereunt: tacito passu quem si quis adiret,
Lentus erat: si voce gradum majore citâsset,
Commistis fervebat aquis cumque omnibus una
Sit natura vadis, similes ut corporis umbras
Ostendant: hæc sola novam janctantia sortem
Humanos properant imitari flumina mores.
Celsa dehinc patulum prospectans Narnia campum
Regali calcatur equo, rarique coloris

Non procul amnis adest, urbi qui nominis auctor
Ilice sub densâ sylvis arctatus opacis
Inter utrumque jugum tortis anfractibus albet.
Inde salutato libatis Tibride nymphis,
Excipiunt arcus, operosaque semita, vastis
Molibus, et quicquid tantæ præmittitur urbi.

De 6 Cons. Hon.

They leave Ravenna and the mouths of Po,
That all the borders of the town o'erflow;
And spreading round in one continu'd lake,
A spacious hospitable harbour make.
Hither the seas at stated times resort,
And shove the loaden vessels into port:
Then with a gentle ebb retire again,
And render back their cargo to the main.
So the pale moon the restless ocean guides,
Driv'n to and fro by such submissive tides.
Fair fortune next, with looks serene and kind,
Receives 'em, in her ancient fane enshrin'd;
Then the high hills they cross, and from below
In distant murmurs hear Metaurus flow;
'Till to Clitumno's sacred streams they come,
That send white victims to almighty Rome;
When her triumphant sons in war succeed,
And slaughter'd hecatombs around 'em bleed.
At Narni's lofty seats arriv'd from far

They view the windings of the hoary Nar;

A highway made by Vespasian, like the Grotto Obscuro near Naples.

This fountain not known.

Through rocks and woods impetuously he glides,
While froth and foam the fretting surface hides.
And now the royal guest, all dangers pass'd,
Old Tiber and his nymphs salutes at last;
The long laborious pavement here he treads,
That to proud Rome th' admiring nations leads:
While stately vaults and tow'ring piles appear,
And show the world's metropolis is near.

Silius Italicus, who has taken more pains on the geography of Italy than any other of the Latin poets, has given a catalogue of most of the rivers that I saw in Umbria, or in the borders of it. He has avoided a fault (if it be really such) which Macrobius has objected to Virgil, of passing from one place to another, without regarding their regular and natural situation, in which Homer's catalogues are observed to be much more methodical and exact than Virgil's.

Cavis venientes montibus Umbri,

Hos Esis Sapisque lavant, rapidasque sonanti
Vortice contorquens undas per saxa Metaurus,
Et lavat ingentem perfundens flumine sacro
Clitumnus taurum, Narque albescentibus undis
In Tibrim properans, Tineæque inglorius humor,
Et Clanis, et Rubico, et Senonum de nomine Senon.
Sed pater ingenti medios illabitur amne

Albula, et immotâ perstringit mænia ripâ,
His urbes arva, et latis Mevania pratis,
Hispellum, et duro monti per saxa recumbens
Narnia, &c.-

SIL. IT. lib. 8.

Since I am got among the poets, I shall end this chapter with two or three passages out of them, that I have omitted inserting in their proper places.

Sit cisterna mihi quam vinea malo Ravenna,
Cum possim multo vendere pluris aquum.

Lodg'd at Ravenna, (water sells so dear)
A cistern to a vineyard I prefer.

Callidus imposuit nuper mihi caupo Ravenna;
Cum peterem mixtum, vendidit ille merum.

By a Ravenna vintner once betray'd,
So much for wine and water mix'd I paid;
But when I thought the purchas'd liquor mine,
The rascal fobb'd me off with only wine.

MAR. lib. 5.

Id.

Stat fucare colus nec Sidone vilior Ancon,
Murice nec Tyrio.-

The wool when shaded with Ancona's dye,

May with the proudest Tyrian purple vie.

SIL. IT. lib. 8.

Fountain water is still very scarce at Ravenna, and was probably much more so, when the sea was within its neighbourhood.

FROM ROME TO NAPLES.

Upon my arrival at Rome, I took a view of St. Peter's, and the Rotunda, leaving the rest till my return from Naples, when I should have time and leisure enough to consider what I saw. St. Peter's seldom answers expectation at first entering it, but enlarges itself on all sides insensibly, and mends upon the eye every moment. The proportions are so very well observed, that nothing appears to an advantage, or distinguishes itself above the rest. It seems neither extremely high, nor long, nor broad, because it is all of them in a just equality. As on the contrary, in our Gothic cathedrals, the narrowness of the arch makes it rise in height, or run out in length; the lowness often opens it in breadth, or the defectiveness of some other particular, makes any single part appear in great perfection. Though every thing in this church is admirable, the most astonishing part of it is the cupola. Upon my going to the top of it, I was surprised to find that the dome, which we see in the church, is not the same that one looks upon without doors, the last of them being a kind of case to the other, and the stairs lying betwixt them both, by which one ascends into the ball. Had there been only the outward dome, it would not have shewn itself to an advantage to those that are in the church; or had there only been the inward one, it would scarce have been seen by those that are without; had they both been one solid dome of so great a thickness, the pillars would have been too weak to have sup

ported it. After having surveyed this dome, I went to see the Rotunda, which is generally said to have been the model of it. This church is at present so much changed from the ancient Pantheon, as Pliny has described it, that some have been inclined to think it is not the same temple; but the Cavalier Fontana has abundantly satisfied the world in this particular, and shewn how the ancient figure, and ornaments of the Pantheon, have been changed into what they are at present. This author, who is now esteemed the best of the Roman architects, has lately written a treatise on Vespasian's Amphitheatre, which is not yet printed.

After having seen these two master-pieces of modern and ancient architecture, I have often considered with myself whether the ordinary figure of the heathen, or that of the christian temples be the most beautiful, and the most capable of magnificence, and cannot forbear thinking the cross figure more proper for such spacious buildings than the rotund. I must confess the eye is better filled at first entering the rotund, and takes in the whole beauty and magnificence of the temple at one view. But such as are built in the form of a cross, give us a greater variety of noble prospects. Nor is it easy to conceive a more glorious show in architecture, than what a man meets with in St. Peter's, when he stands under the dome. If he looks upward he is astonished at the spacious hollow of the cupola, and has a vault on every side of him, that makes one of the beautifullest vistas that the eye can possibly pass through. I know that such as are professed admirers of the ancients, will find abundance of chimerical beauties the architects themselves never thought of, as one of the most famous of the moderns in that art tells us, the hole in the roof of the Rotunda is so admirably contrived, that it makes those who are in the temple look like angels, by diffusing the light equally on all sides

of them.

In all the old high-ways that lead from Rome, one sees several little ruins on each side of them, that were