tum. Classical antiquity has enshrouded the superstitions of Greece with a web of its own tissue and colouring; and it requires the eye of truth itself to look with suitable abhorrence upon the idolatries of the city of Minerva. But we are left to see man in all his native misery, and discern all his vehement tendencies to evil, when not corrected by divine revelation, in the Britons of the time of Cæsar. It is well that some such visible monument should stand to shew us what our fathers were, and what we should have been, without the process of moral renovation, which our religion has commenced. It is well that it should stand in solitude, and that Christianity should raise around it—not a temple more splendid than that of Jupiter Capitolinus-but the encouraging, reviving scene of a population reformed from hellish orgies, recovered from debasing superstitions, vivified by moral principle, and glowing with such a heart

of benevolence, as sends a flow of warm and reviving charity throughout the world.

The moral contrast is not strong between Pæstum two thousand years ago, and Pæstum now. Let Stonehenge, then, stand a perpetual monument, to prove how unlike Christianity has made the inhabitants of England to their Pagan an

cestors.

Few places combine within such narrow limits so rich a train of various meditation, for persons of whatever disposition or habit, as this city upon the Gulf of Salerno. At a point, removed from the sight of civilized life, surrounded with the relics of men who lived in the highest stage of luxury, he who can only admire the skill which raised an architrave, and he who

has fancy enough to picture the living scene of a Grecian city while sitting on its tomb, will find no other interruption than the rapid movement, now and then, of a beautiful lizard, which he has startled from basking in the sunshine. The still sea at a distance, and the dark mountains upon the opposite side, are both so

far

away, that not even the dashing of the water, or the wandering of the clouds, distracts the soul from the present vision. The noxious Mal'aria has thinned the region of its inhabitants, and left it to excite, by its solitude, an unbroken chain of musing in one who, in his pilgrimage over Italy, pauses at this remote point.

It was from Pæstum that I was to turn my face homeward. The eye, which is insatiable, had beheld the choicest wonders of the world, and it was suitable that the last object should be such a ruin,—simple and majestic, like the Pantheon-lasting as the Coliseum-and lonely as the trackless desart.

A journey in Italy may be compared not unaptly with the course of human life. The plains of Lombardy, and the vale of Arno, are rich, and smooth, and beautiful as youth; we come to Rome for the sights, and experience, and reflections, which suit manhood; we return after the bustle of life to the comforts congenial to age, and which are provided in sunshine, and air, and the bounties of nature, as we find them at Naples; and we at last behold Pæstum, as the soberest evening scene, which shuts up our wearisome pilgrimage, and ends our toil.

The fate of empires and cities concerns us little in comparison with our own destiny; for

each man's bosom is a little world, and is all the world to him.

POMPEII.

IN returning from the ruins of Pæstum, we pass along the sea-shore, as it is said, near the site of the gardens of the Hesperides; and certainly the groves of orange trees, burdened with ripe fruit in February, were no bad specimen of the fields which required a guard of dragons. The ravages of the Mal'aria are such, that between Ebauli and the sea-shore, there is only a scattered and sickly population, spread over a level uninteresting district; but we have a great variety of scenery, as we come back to a peopled region. The bay of Sorrento deserves to be compared with the bay of Naples. The precipitous hills, narrow ravines, and superabundant verdure, besides Italian air and sky, made this part of the journey delightful.