are of marble, radiantly white; and two, especially beautiful, are loaded with exquisite bas-reliefs. On the stucco-wall that incloses them are little emblematic figures, of a relief exceedingly low, of dead and dying animals, and little winged genii, and female forms bending in groups in some funereal office. The higher reliefs represent, one a nautical subject, and the other a Bacchanalian one. Within the cell stand the cinerary urns, sometimes one, sometimes more. It is said that paintings were found within ; which are now, as has been everything moveable in Pompeii, removed, and scattered about in royal museums. were the most impressive things of all. The wild woods surround them on either side; and along the broad stones of the paved road which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it were, like the step of ghosts. The radiance and magnificence of these dwellings of the dead, the white freshness of the scarcely finished marble, the impassioned or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them, contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses of those who were living when Vesuvius overwhelmed them.

These tombs

I have forgotten the amphitheatre, which is of great magnitude, though much inferior to the Coliseum. I now understand why the Greeks were such great poets; and, above all, I can account, it seems to me, for the harmony, the unity, the perfection, the uniform excellence, of all their works of art. They lived in a perpetual commerce with external nature, and nourished themselves upon the spirit of its forms. Their theatres were all open to the mountains and the sky. Their columns, the ideal types of a sacred forest, with its roof of interwoven tracery, admitted the light and wind; the odour and the freshness of the country penetrated the cities. Their temples were mostly upaithric; and the flying clouds, the stars, or the deep sky, were seen above. O, but for that series of wretched wars which terminated in the Roman conquest of the world; but for the Christian religion, which put the finishing stroke on the ancient system; but for those changes that conducted Athens to its ruin,— to what an eminence might not humanity have arrived!

In a short time I hope to tell you something of the museum of this city.

maxim of Horace,
"nil admirari

You see how ill I follow the at least in its literal sense : which I should say, "properes est una "-to prevent there ever being anything admirable in the world. Fortunately Plato is of my opinion; and I had rather err with Plato than be right with Horace.

At this moment that you are rem. much interested in beg you would writ You will be able no insight into the p permitted you at A very slight opinion. revolution in Spain. from Catalonia, and was massacred; tha surrounded Madrid party gained head murdered by the Ind all by this time. T

here.

Cobbett is

influence increase or so powerful a genius most odious moral qu

We have reports h ministry-to what d my national interest vindicate my most sa chancery court. I suppose now we s spring, whether Hunt I shall hear nothing particularly if he do nouvelles.

I am under an Engl have a disease of the We keep horses, as absolutely essential to married our Italian se the man was a great mously: this event w advice.

I have scarcely been
Adieu-Y

LETTI
To T.

MY DEAR P.,-I wro our departure from Na journeys, with our own one day at Mola di Gae di Cicerone, from being Villa, whose immense s sea, and are scattered a Nothing can be lovelier terraces of the inn. C

* A Swiss girl whom we ha two years before, at Geneva.

mountains, whose bases slope into an inclined plane of olive and orange copses-the latter forming, as it were, an emerald sky of leaves, starred with innumerable globes of their ripening fruit, whose rich splendour contrasted with the deep green folinge; on the other the sea-bounded on one side by the antique town of Gaeta, and the other by what appears to be an island, the promontory of Circe. From Gaeta to Terracina the whole scene y is of the most sublime character. At Terracina, precipitous conical crags of immense height shoot into the sky and overhang the sea. At Albano, we arrived again in sight of Rome. Arches after arches in unending lines stretching across the uninhabited wilderness, the blue defined line of the mountains seen between them; masses of nameless ruin standing like rocks out of the plain; and the plain itself, with its billowy and unequal surface, announced the neighbourhood of Rome. And what shall I say to you of Rome? If I speak of the inanimate ruins, the rude stones piled upon stones, which are the sepulchres of the fame of those who once arrayed them with the beauty which has faded, will you believe me insensible to the vital, the almost breathing creations of genius yet subsisting in their perfection? What has become, you will ask, of the Apollo, the Gladiator, the Venus of the Capitol What of the Apollo di Belvedere, the Laocoon What of Raffael and Guido! These things are best spoken of when the mind has drunk in the spirit of their forms; and little indeed can I, who must devote no more than a few months to the contemplation of them, hope to know or feel of their profound beauty.

I think I told you of the Coliseum, and its impressions on me on my first visit to this city. The next most considerable relic of antiquity, considered as a ruin, is the Thermæ of Caracalla. These consist of six enormous chambers, above 200 feet in height, and each enclosing a vast space like that of a field. There are, in addition, a number of towers and labyrinthine recesses, hidden and woven over by the wild growth of weeds and ivy. Never was any desolation more sublime and lovely. The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines filled up with flowering shrubs, whose thick twisted roots are knotted in the rifts of the stones. At every step the aerial pinnacles of shattered stone group into new combinations of effect, and tower above the lofty yet level walls, as the distant mountains change their aspect to one travelling rapidly along the plain. The perpendicalar walls resemble nothing more than that cliff of Bisham wood, that is overgrown with wood, and yet is stony and precipitous-you know the one I

mean; not the chalk-pit, but the spot that has the pretty copse of fir-trees and privet-bushes at its base, and where H and I scrambled up, and you, to my infinite discontent, would go home. These walls surround green and level spaces of lawn, on which some elms have grown, and which are interspersed towards their skirts by masses of the fallen ruin, overtwined with the broad leaves of the creeping weeds. The blue sky canopies it, and is as the everlasting roof of these enormous halls.

But the most interesting effect remains. In one of the buttresses, that supports an immense and lofty arch, "which bridges the very winds of heaven," are the crumbling remains of an antique winding staircase, whose sides are open in many places to the precipice. This you ascend, and arrive on the summit of these piles. There grow on every side thick entangled wildernesses of myrtle, and the myrletus, and bay, and the flowering laurestinus, whose white blossoms are just developed, the white fig, and a thousand nameless plants sown by the wandering winds. These woods are intersected on every side by paths, like sheeptracks through the copse-wood of steep mountains, which wind to every part of the immense labyrinth. From the midst rise those pinnacles and masses, themselves like mountains, which have been seen from below. In one place you wind along a narrow strip of weed-grown ruin: on one side is the immensity of earth and sky, on the other a narrow chasm, which is bounded by an arch of enormous size, fringed by the many-coloured foliage and blossoms, and supporting a lofty and irregular pyramid, overgrown like itself with the all-prevailing vegetation. Around rise other crags and other peaks, all arrayed, and the deformity of their vast desolation softened down, by the undecaying investiture of nature. Come to Rome. It is a scene by which expression is overpowered; which words cannot convey. Still further, winding up one half of the shattered pyramids, by the path through the blooming copsewood, you come to a little mossy lawn, surrounded by the wild shrubs; it is overgrown with anemonies, wall-flowers, and violets, whose stalks pierce the starry moss, and with radiant blue flowers, whose names I know not, and which scatter through the air the divinest odour, which, as you recline under the shade of the ruin, produces sensations of voluptuous faintness, like the combinations of sweet music. The paths still wind on, threading the perplexed windings, other labyrinths, other lawns, and deep dells of wood, and lofty rocks, and terrific chasms. When I tell you that these ruins cover several acres, and that the paths above penetrate at least half their

extent, your imagination will fill up all that I am of their own spe unable to express of this astonishing scene.

I speak of these things not in the order in which I visited them, but in that of the impression which they made on me, or perhaps chance directs. The ruins of the ancient Forum are so far fortunate that they have not been walled up in the modern city. They stand in an open, lonesome place, bounded on one side by the modern city, and the other by the Palatine Mount, covered with shapeless masses of ruin. The tourists tell you all about these things, and I am afraid of stumbling on their language when I enumerate what is so well known. There remain eight granite columns of the Ionic order, with their entablature, of the temple of Concord, founded by Camillus. I fear that the immense expense demanded by these columns forbids us to hope that they are the remains of any edifice dedicated by that most perfect and virtuous of inen. It is supposed to have been repaired under the Eastern Emperors; alas, what a contrast of recollections! Near them stand those Corinthian fluted columns, which supported the angle of a temple; the architrave and entablature are worked with delicate sculpture. Beyond, to the south, is another solitary column; and still more distant, three more, supporting the wreck of an entablature. Descending from the Capitol to the Forum, is the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, less perfect than that of Constantine, though from its proportions and magnitude a most impressive monument. That of Constantine, or rather of Titus, (for the relief and sculpture, and even the colossal images of Dacian captives, were torn by a decree of the senate from an arch dedicated to the latter, to adorn that of this stupid and wicked monster, Constantine, one of whose chief merits consists in establishing a religion, the destroyer of those arts which would have rendered so base a spoliation innecessary) is the most perfect. It is an admirable work of art. It is built of the finest marble, and the outline of the reliefs is in many parts as perfect as if just finished. Four Corinthian fluted columns support, on each side, a bold entablature, whose bases are loaded with reliefs of captives in every attitude of humiliation and slavery. The compartments above express, in bolder relief, the enjoyment of success; the conqueror on his throne, or in his chariot, or nodding over the crushed multitudes, who writhe under his horses' hoofs, as those below express the torture and abjectness of defeat. There are three arches, whose roofs are panneled with fretwork, and their sides adorned with similar reliefs. The keystone of these arches is supported each by two winged figures of Victory, whose hair floats on the wind

|

stretched, bearing meet. They look subject extremitie which is the exha lation, which it is Never were monu the purpose for expressing that n which is called at

I walk forth in th Italian evening, and through this scene. and the warm sprin all sweet, from the Orion through the of Concord, and th down the modern b ones that interfere the scene. On the s two colossal statuewith his horse, finely to those of Monte Ca you know we saw to is close to our loda walk.

What shall I say is yet the capital o palaces and temples which any other city glorious than they. nences that surround

domes, and palaces, a even to the horizon; desert, and mighty ru own desolation, in the religions and the ha sublime loneliness.

C

heard, the loftiest buil it is inferior in archit though not wholly exhibits littleness on a respect opposed to an propensity to admire myself out of this opi

see of the interior impression as a whol I cannot even think is considerably higher miles of London; an an astonishing monum of man. Its colonnad there are two fountai columns of water to a sky, and falling on the they spring, fill the wh

which at noon is thronged with innumerable rain-
bows. In the midst stands an obelisk. In front
is the palace-like façade of St. Peter's, certainly
magnificent; and there is produced, on the whole,
an architectural combination unequalled in the
world. But the dome of the temple is concealed,
except at a very great distance, by the façade and
the inferior part of the building, and that diabolical
contrivance they call an attic.

The effect of the Pantheon is totally the reverse
of that of St. Peter's. Though not a fourth part
of the size, it is, as it were, the visible image of the
universe; in the perfection of its proportions, as
'when you regard the unmeasured dome of heaven,
the idea of magnitude is swallowed up and lost.
It is open to the sky, and its wide dome is lighted
by the ever-changing illumination of the air. The
clouds of noon fly over it, and at night the keen
stars are seen through the azure darkness, hanging
immoveably, or driving after the driving moon
among the clouds. We visited it by moonlight;
it is supported by sixteen columns, fluted and
Corinthian, of a certain rare and beautiful yellow
marble, exquisitely polished, called here giallo
antico. Above these are the niches for the statues
of the twelve gods. This is the only defect of this
sublime temple; there ought to have been no
interval between the commencement of the dome
and the cornice, supported by the columns. Thus
there would have been no diversion from the
magnificent simplicity of its form. This im-
provement is alone wanting to have completed
the unity of the idea.

The fountains of Rome are, in themselves, mag-
nificent combinations of art, such as alone it were
worth coming to see. That in the Piazza Navona,
a large square, is composed of enormous fragments
of rock, piled on each other, and penetrated as by
caverns. This mass supports an Egyptian obelisk
of immense height. On the four corners of the
rock recline, in different attitudes, colossal figures
representing the four divisions of the globe. The
water bursts from the crevices beneath them.
They are sculptured with great spirit; one
impatiently tearing a veil from his eyes; another
with his hands stretched upwards. The Fontana
di Trevi is the most celebrated, and is rather a
waterfall than a fountain; gushing out from masses
of rock, with a gigantic figure of Neptune; and
below are two river gods, checking two winged
horses, struggling up from among the rocks and
waters. The whole is not ill conceived nor executed;
but you know not how delicate the imagination
becomes by dieting with antiquity day after day!
The only things that sustain the comparison are
Rafael, Guido, and Salvator Rosa.

The fountain on the Quirinal, or rather the group formed by the statues, obelisk and the fountain, is, however, the most admirable of all. From the Piazza Quirinale, or rather Monte Cavallo, you see the boundless ocean of domes, spires, and columns, which is the City, Rome. On a pedestal of white marble rises an obelisk of red granite, piercing the blue sky. Before it is a vast basin of porphyry, in the midst of which rises a column of the purest water, which collects into itself all the overhanging colours of the sky, and breaks them into a thousand prismatic hues and graduated shadows they fall together with its dashing waterdrops into the outer basin. The elevated situation of this fountain produces, I imagine, this effect of colour. On each side, on an elevated pedestal, stand the statues of Castor and Pollux, each in the act of taming his horse; which are said, but I believe wholly without authority, to be the work of Phidias and Praxiteles. These figures combine the irresistible energy with the sublime and perfect loveliness supposed to have belonged to their divine nature. The reins no longer exist, but the position of their hands and the sustained and calm command of their regard, seem to require no mechanical aid to enforce obedience. The countenances at so great a height are scarcely visible, and I have a better idea of that of which we saw a cast together in London, than of the other. But the sublime and living majesty of their limbs and mien, the nervous and fiery animation of the horses they restrain, seen in the blue sky of Italy, and overlooking the city of Rome, surrounded by the light and the music of that crystalline fountain, no cast can communicate.

These figures were found at the Baths of Constantine; but, of course, are of remote antiquity. I do not acquiesce however in the practice of attributing to Phidias, or Praxiteles, or Scopas, or some great master, any admirable work that may be found. We find little of what remained, and perhaps the works of these were such as greatly surpassed all that we conceive of most perfect and admirable in what little has escaped the deluge. If I am too jealous of the honour of the Greeks, our masters and creators, the gods whom we should worship,-pardon me.

I have said what I feel without entering into any critical discussions of the ruins of Rome, and the mere outside of this inexhaustible mine of thought and feeling. Hobhouse, Eustace, and Forsyth, will tell all the shew-knowledge about it," the common stuff of the earth." By-the-bye, Forsyth is worth reading, as I judge from a chapter or two 1 have seen. I cannot get the book here.

I ought to have observed that the central aret