that I ever saw. It takes in the whole Campania, and terminates in a full view of the Mediterranean. You have a sight at the same time of the Alban lake, which lies just by in an oval figure of about seven miles round, and, by reason of the continued circuit of high mountains that encompass it, looks like the area of some vast amphitheatre. This, together with the several green hills and naked rocks within the neighbourhood makes the most agreeable confusion imaginable. Albano keeps up its credit still for wine, which perhaps would be as good as it was anciently, did they preserve it to as great an age; but as for olives there are now very few here, though they are in great plenty at Tivoli.

-Albani pretiosa senectus,

Juv. Sat. 13.

Cras bibet Albanis aliquid de montibus aut de
Setinis, cujus patriam titulumque senectus
Delevit multa veteris fuligine testæ.

Idem. Sat. 5,

Perhaps to-morrow he may change his wine,
And drink old sparkling Alban, or Setine,
Whose title, and whose age, with mould o'ergrown,
The good old cask for ever keeps unknown.

-Palladiæ seu collibus uteris Albe.

BOWLES.

MAR. lib. 5. ep. 1.

Olive. Idem, lib. 9. ep. 16.

Albane

The places mentioned in this chapter were all of them formerly the cool retirements of the Romans, where they used to hide themselves among the woods and mountains, during the excessive heats of their summer; as Baja was the general winter rendezvous.

Jam terras volucremque polum fuga veris aquosi
Laxat, et Icariis cœlum latratibus urit.

Ardua jam dense rarescunt mania Romæ :

Hos Praneste sacrum, nemus hos glaciale Diana,

Algidus aut horrens aut Tuscula protegit umbra,
Tiburis hi lucos, amanaque frigora captant. SIL. 4. P

Albanos quoque Tusculosque colles
Et quodcunque jacet sub urbe frigus.
Fidenas veteres, brevesque Rubras,
Et quod Virgineo cruore gaudet
Anne pomiferum nemus Perenna.

Mar. lib. e. 28.

All shun the raging dog-star's sultry heat,
And from the half-unpeopled town retreat;
Some hid in Nemi's gloomy forest lie,
To Palestrina some for shelter fly,
Others to catch the breeze of breathing air,
To Tusculum or Algido repair;

Or in moist Tivoli's retirements find
A cooling shade and a refreshing wind.

On the contrary, at present, Rome is never fuller of nobility than in summer time; for the coun try towns are so infested with unwholesome vapours, that they dare not trust themselves in them while the heats last. There is no question but the air of Campania would be now as healthful as it was formerly, were there as many fires burning in it, and as many inhabitants to manure the soil. ing Rome about the latter end of October, in my way to Sienna, I lay the first night at a little village in the territories of the ancient Veii.

Leav

Hæc tum nomina erant ; nunc sunt sine nomine Campi.

The ruins of their capital city are at present so far lost, that the geographers are not able to determine exactly the place where they once stood: so, literally, is that noble prophecy of Lucan fulfilled, of this and other places of Latium.

Gentes Mars iste futuras

Obruet, et populos ævi venientis in orbem
Erepto natale feret, tunc omne Latinum

Fabula nomen erit: Gabios, Veiosque, Coramque,

Pulvere vix tecta poterunt monstrare ruinæ,
Albanosque lares, Laurentinosque penates
Rus vacuum, quod non habitet nisi nocte coactâ
Invitus-

Succeeding nations by the sword shall die,
And swallow'd up in dark oblivion lie:
Almighty Latium, with her cities crown'd,
Shall like an antiquated fable sound;
The Veïan and the Gabian tow'rs shall fall,
And one promiscuous ruin cover all,
Nor, after length of years, a stone betray
The place where once the very ruins lay:
High Alba's walls, and the Lavinian strand,
(A lonely desert, and an empty land)

Shall scarce afford, for needful hours of rest,
A single house to their benighted guest.

Lib. 7..

We here saw the lake Bacca, that gives rise to the Cremera, on whose banks the Fabii were slain.

Tercentum numerabat avoș, quos turbine Martis,
Abstulit una dies, cùm fors non æqua labori
Patricio Cremera maculavit sanguine ripas.

SIL. IT. lib. 1.

Fabius a num❜rous ancestry could tell,
Three hundred heroes that in battle fell,
Near the fam'd Cremera's disastrous flood,
That ran polluted with Patrician blood.

of our

The last

We saw afterwards, in the progress voyage, the lakes of Vico and Bolsena. is reckoned one and twenty miles in the circuit, and is plentifully stocked with fish and fowl. There are in it a couple of islands, that are perhaps the two floating isles mentioned by Pliny, with that improbable circumstance of their appearing sometimes like a circle, sometimes like a triangle, but never like a quadrangle. It is easy enough to conceive how they might become fixed, though they once floated; and it is not very credible, that the

naturalist could be deceived in his account of a place that lay, as it were, in the neighbourhood of Rome. At one end of this lake stands Montefiascone, the habitation of Virgil's Equi Falisci, En. 7. and on the side of it the town of the Volsinians, now called Bolsena.

Aut positis nemorosa inter juga Volsiniis.

Volsinium stood

Juv. Sat. 3.

Cover'd with mountains, and enclos'd with wood.

I saw in the church-yard of Bolsena an antique funeral monument (of that kind which they called a sarcophagus) very entire, and what is particular, engraven on all sides with a curious representation of a bacchanal. Had the inhabitants observed a couple of lewd figures at one end of it, they would not have thought it a proper ornament for the place where it now stands. After having travelled hence to Aquapendente, that stands in a wonderful pleasant situation, we came to the little brook which separates the pope's dominions from the great duke's. The frontier castle of Radicofani is seated on the highest mountain in the country, and is as well fortified as the situation of the place will permit. We here found the natural face of the country quite changed from what we had been entertained with in the pope's dominions; for, instead of the many beautiful scenes of green mountains and fruitful valleys, that we had been presented with for some days before, we saw nothing but a wild, naked prospect of rocks and hills, worn on all sides with gutters and channels, and not a tree or shrub to be met with in a vast circuit of several miles. This savage prospect put me in mind of the Italian proverb, that 'The pope has the flesh, and the great

duke the bones of Italy.' Among a large extent of these barren mountains I saw but a single spot that was cultivated, on which there stood a convent.

SIENNA, LEGHORN, PISA.

Sienna stands high, and is adorned with a great many towers of brick, which, in the time of the commonwealth, were erected to such of the members as had done any considerable service to their country. These towers gave us a sight of the town a great while before we entered it. There is nothing in this city so extraordinary as the cathedral, which a man may view with pleasure after he has seen St. Peter's, though it is quite of another make, and can only be looked upon as one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture. When a man sees the prodigious pains and expense that our fore-fathers have been at in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy to himself what miracles of architecture they would have left us, had they only been instructed in the right way; for when the devotion of those ages was much warmer than that of the present, and the riches of the people much more at the disposal of the priests, there was so much money consumed on these Gothic cathedrals, as would have finished a greater variety of noble buildings than have been raised either before or since

that time.

One would wonder to see the vast labour that has been laid out on this single cathedral. The very spouts are loaden with ornaments; the windows are formed like so many scenes of perspective, with a