the lonely square towers of this district, old refuges for men and cattle in the middle ages. We descend gradually ; the sides of the slopes both right and left (for we are on a ridge) are prettily clothed with copsewood. I have just seen the Naples road beyond Rome, the back of the Monte Mario, the towers of the churches at the Posta del Popolo. And now, just past the fourth milestone, S. Peter's has opened from behind Monte Mario, and we go down by zig and zag towards the level of the Tiber. It brings us down into a pretty green valley watered by the Acqua Traversa, where, for the first time, we have a few vines on the slope above. The Acqua Traversa joins the Tiber above the Milvian bridge, so we cross him and go up out of his little valley on the right. And here we find the first houses which seem like the approach to a city. There are the cypresses on the Monte Mario, and here is the Tiber and the Milvian bridge. We are crossing the Tiber now, and now we are in the AGER ROMANUS. Garden walls and ordinary suburb houses line the road on both sides, but the Collis Hortulorum rises prettily on the left with its little cliffs, its cypresses, copsewood and broom. The Porta del Popolo is in sight, and then Passport and Dogana must be minded, so here I stop for the present, 1.20. ROME, July 9. Again this date, my dearest, one of the most solemn and interesting to me that my hand can ever write, and now even more interesting than when I saw it last. 7. The Pantheon I had never seen before, and I admire it greatly; its vastness, and the opening at the top which admitted the view of the cloudless sky, both struck me particularly. Of the works of art at the Vatican, I ought not to speak, but I was glad to find that I could understand the Apollo better than when I last saw it. S. Stefano Rotondo on the Cælian, so called from its shape, consists of two rows of concentric pillars, and contains the old Mosaic of our Lord, of which I spoke in my former journal. It exhibits, also, in a series of pictures all round the church, the martyrdoms of the Christians in the so-called Persecutions, with a general picture of the most eminent martyrs since the triumph of Christianity. No doubt many of the particular stories thus painted, will bear no critical examination: it is likely enough, too, that Gibbon has truly accused the general statements of exaggeration. But this is a thankless labour, such as Lingard and others have undertaken with respect to the St. Bartholomew massacre, and the Irish massacre of 1642. Divide the sum total of reported martyrs by twenty-by fifty if you will-but after all you have a number of persons of all ages and sexes suffering cruel torments and death for conscience sake and for Christ's, and by their sufferings manifestly, with God's blessing, ensuring the triumph of Christ's Gospel. Neither do I think that we consider the excellence of this martyr spirit half enough. I do not think that pleasure is a sina: the Stoics of old, and the ascetic Christians since, who have said so, (see the answers of that excellent man, Pope Gregory the Great, to Augustine's questions, as given at length by Bede,) have, in saying so, overstepped the simplicity and the wisdom of Christian truth. But, though pleasure is not a sin, yet surely the contemplation of suffering for Christ's sake is a thing most needful for us in our days, from whom in our daily life suffering seems so far removed. And, as God's grace enabled rich and delicate persons, women, and even children, to endure all extremities of pain and reproach in times past, so there is the same grace no less mighty now; and if we do not He had, however, a great respect for the later Stoics:-" It is common to ridicule them," he said; "but their triumph over bodily pain was one of the noblest efforts after good ever made by man, without revelation. He that said to pain, Thou art no evil to me, so long as I can endure thee,'-it was given him from God." close ourselves against it, it might in us be no less glorified in a time of trial. And that such time of trial will come, my children, in your days, if not in mine, I do believe fully, both from the teaching of man's wisdom, and of God's. And, therefore, pictures of martyrdoms are, I think, very wholesome,-not to be sneered at, nor yet to be looked on as a mere excitement,-but a sober reminder to us of what Satan can do to hurt, and what Christ's grace can enable the weakest of His people to bear. Neither should we forget those who, by their sufferings, were more than conquerors, not for themselves only, but for us, in securing to us the safe and triumphant existence of Christ's blessed faith-in securing to us the possibilitynay, the actual enjoyment, had it not been for the Antichrist of the Priesthood-of Christ's holy and glorious ixxanoia, the congregation and commonwealth of Christ's people. July 12, 1840. but 8. . . . . . And I see Sezza on its mountain seat; here is a more sacred spot, Appii Forum, where St. Paul met his friends, when, having landed at Puteoli, he went Here the ancient and on by the Appian road to Rome. the present roads are the same,-here, then, the Apostle Paul, with Luke and with Timothy, travelled along, a prisoner, under a centurion guard, to carry his appeal to Cæsar. How much resulted from that journey—the manifestation of Christ's name ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ πραιτωρίῳ, the four precious Epistles ad Ephesios, ad Philippenses, ad Colossenses, ad Philemona; and on the other hand, owing to his long absence, the growth of Judaism, that is, of priestcraft, in the eastern churches, never, alas! to be wholly put down. 9. ... M a spot as Mola di Gaieta. July 13, 1840. says that she never saw so beautiful I should say so too, in suo genere; but Fox How and Chiavenna are so different, that I cannot compare them; so again are Rome from S. Pietro in Montori,-Oxford, from the pretty field, or from St. John's Gardens,-London, from Westminster Bridge, and Paris, from the Quays. But Mola is one of those spots which are of a beauty not to be forgotten while one lives. "At Mola is what is called Cicero's Villa. There is no greater folly than to attempt to connect particular spots in this uncertain way with great names; and no one, who represents to his own mind the succession of events and ages which have passed, will attempt to do it upon conjecture, the chances being thousands to one against correctness. There can be no traditions, from the long period when such things were forgotten and uncared for; and what seems to be tradition, in fact, originates in what antiquarians have told the people. People do not enough consider the long periods of the Roman empire after Augustus's time, the century of the greatest activity under Trajan, and the Antonines, when the Republic and the Augustan age were considered as ancient times, then Severus and his time,-then Diocletian and Theodosius,when the Roman laws were in full vigour." Naples, July 14, 1840. 10. While we are waiting for dinner, my dearest I will write two or three lines of journal. Here we actually are, looking out upon what but presents images which, with a very little play of fancy, might all be shaped into a fearful drama of Pleasure, Sin, and Death. The Pleasure is everywhere,-nowhere is nature more lovely, or man, as far as appears, more enjoying; the Sin is in the sty of Capreæ, in the dissoluteness of Baia and Pompeii,-in the black treachery which, in this ill-omened country, stained the fame even of Nelson,-in the unmatchable horrors of the White Jacobins of 1799,-in the general absence of any recollections of piety, virtue, or wisdom-for " he that is not with me is against me." And the Death stands manifest in his awfulness in Vesuvius,-in his loathsomeness or at the abominable Campo Santo. Far be it from me, from my friends, to live or to sojourn long in such a place; the very contradictory, as it seems to me, of the hill Difficulty, and of the house Beautiful, and of the Land of Beulah. But, behold, we are again in voiture, going along the edge of the sea in the port of Naples, and going out to Salerno. Clouds are on the mountains which form the south-east side of the bay; but Vesuvius is clear, and quite quiet,-not a wreath of smoke ascends from him. Since I wrote this, in the last five minutes, there is a faint curl of smoke visible. Striking it is to observe the thousand white houses round his base, and the green of copsewood which runs half way up him, and up to the very summit of his neighbour, the Monte Somma,- and then to look at the desolate blackness of his own cone. July 15, 1840. 11. We have just left Pompeii, after have spent two hours in walking over the ruins. Now, what has struck me most in this extraordinary scene, speaking historically? That is, what knowledge does one gain from seeing an ancient town destroyed in the first century of the Christian era, thus laid open before us? I do not think that there is much. I observed the streets crossing one another at right angles; I observed the walls of the town just keeping the crown of the hill, and the suburbs and the tombs falling away directly from the gates: I observed the shops in front of the houses, the streets narrow, the rooms in the houses very small; the dining-room in one of the best was twenty feet by eighteen nearly. The Forum was large for the size of the town; and the temples and public buildings occupied a space proportionably greater than with us. I observed the Impluvium, forming a small space in the midst of the Atrium. And I think, farther, that Pompeii is just a thing for pictures to represent adequately; I could understand it from Gell's book; but no book can give me the impressions or the |