varying shadow and light over the valley beneath, and all the freshness of the young spring. We descended along one of the rims of this lake to Ronciglione, and from thence still descending on the whole to Monterossi. Here the famous Campagna begins, and it certainly is one of the most striking tracts of country I ever beheld. It is by no means a perfect flat, except between Rome and the sea; but rather like the Bagshot Heath country-ridges of hills with intermediate valleys, and the road often running between high steep banks, and sometimes crossing sluggish streams sunk in a deep bed. All these banks were overgrown with the broom, now in full flower; and the same plant was luxuriant everywhere. There seemed no apparent reason why the country should be so desolate; the grass was growing richly everywhere, there was no marsh anywhere visible, but all looked as fresh and healthy as any of our chalk downs in England. But it is a wide wilderness, no villages, scarcely any houses, and here and there a lonely ruin of a single square tower, which I suppose used to serve as strong-holds for men and cattle in the plundering warfare of the middle ages. It was after crowning the top of one of these lines of hills, a little on the Roman side of Baccano, at five minutes after six, according to my watch, that we had the first view of Rome itself. I expected to see St. Peter's rising above the line of the horizon as York Minster does, but instead of that, it was within the horizon, and so was much less conspicuous, and, only a part of the dome being visible from the nature of the ground, it looked mean and stumpy. Nothing else marked the site of the city, but the trees of the gardens about it, sunk by the distance into one dark mass, and the number of white villas, specking the opposite bank of the Tiber for some little distance above the town, and then suddenly ceasing. But the whole scene that burst upon our view, when taken in all its parts, was most interesting. Full in front rose the Alban hills, the white villas on their sides distinctly visible even at that distance, which was more than thirty miles. On the left were the Apennines, and Tivoli was distinctly to be seen on the summit of its mountain, on one of the lowest and nearest points of the chain. On the right and all before us lay the Campagna, whose perfectly level outline was succeeded by that of the sea, which was scarcely more so. It began now to get dark, and, as there is hardly any twilight, it was dark soon after we left La Storta, the last post before you enter Rome. The

air blew fresh and cool, and we had a pleasant drive over the remaining part of the Campagna till we descended into the valley of the Tiber, and crossed it by the Milvian bridge. About two miles further on we reached the walls of Rome, and entered by the Porta del Popolo.

4.

Rome, April, 1827.

After dinner Bunsen called for us in his carriage and took us to his house first on the Capitol, the different windows of which command the different views of ancient and modern Rome. Never shall I forget the view of the former; we looked down on the Forum, and just opposite were the Palatine and the Aventine, with the ruins of the palace of the Cæsars on the one, and houses intermixed with gardens on the other. The mass of the Colosseum rose beyond the Forum, and, beyond all, the wide plain of the Campagna to the sea. On the left rose the Alban hills bright in the setting sun, which played full upon Frascati and Albano, and the trees which edge the lake; and, further away in the distance, it lit up the old town of Lavicum. Then we descended into the Forum, the light fast fading away and throwing a kindred soberness over the scene of ruin. The soil has risen from rubbish at least fifteen feet, so that no wonder that the hills look lower than they used to do, having been never very considerable at the first. There it was, one scene of desolation, from the massy foundation-stones of the Capitoline Temple, which were laid by Tarquinius the Proud, to a single pillar erected in honor of Phocas, the Eastern Emperor, in the fifth century. What the fragments of pillars belonged to, perhaps we never can know; but that I think matters little. I care not whether it was a Temple of Jupiter Stator, or the Basilica Julia, but one knows that one is on the ground of the Forum, under the Capitol, the place where the tribes assembled, and the orators spoke; the scene, in short, of all the internal struggles of the Roman people. We passed on to the Arch of Titus. Amongst the reliefs, there is the figure of a man bearing the golden candlestick from the Temple of Jerusalem as one of the spoils of the triumph. Yet He who abandoned His visible and local Temple to the hands of the heathen for the sins of His nominal worshippers, has taken to Him His great power and has gotten Him glory by destroying the idols of Rome as He had done the idols of Babylon; and the golden candlestick burns and shall burn

U

with an everlasting light, while the enemies of His holy name, Babylon, Rome, or the carcass of sin in every land which the eagles of His wrath will surely find out, perish forever from before Him. We return to our inn to dress, and then went again to Bunsen's evening party. We came home about eleven; I wrote some Journal, and went to bed soon after twelve. Such was my first day in Rome; and if I were to leave it to-morrow, I should think that one day was well worth the journey. But you cannot tell how poor all the objects of the North of Italy seem in comparison with what I find here; I do not mean as to scenery or actual beauty, but in interest. When I leave Rome I could willingly sleep all the way to Laleham; that so I might bring home my recollection of this place "unmixed with baser matter."

May 2, 1827.

5. . . . . After dinner we started again in our carriage to the Ponte Molle, about two miles out of Rome. All the way the road runs under a steep and cliffy bank, which is the continuation of the Collis Hortulorum in Rome itself, and which turns off at the Ponte Molle, and forms the boundary of the Tiber for some way to the northward, the cliffs, however, being succeeded by grass slopes. On the right bank, after crossing the Monte Molle, the road which we followed ran southwest towards St. Peter's and the Vatican, between the Tiber and the Ponte Mario. The Monte Mario is the highest point of the same line of hills, of which the Vatican and Janiculum form parts: it is a line intersected with many valleys of denudation, making several curves, and as it were little bays and creeks in it, like the hills on the right bank of the Thames behind Chertsey, which coming forward at St. Anne's, fall back in a very irregular line behind Stroud and Thorpe Green, and then come forward again with a higher and steeper side close to the Thames at Cooper's Hill. The Monte Mario is like Cooper's Hill, the highest, boldest, and most prominent part of the line; it is about the height and steepness too of Cooper's Hill, and has the Tiber just at the foot of it, like the Thames at Anchorwick. To keep up the resemblance there is a sort of a terrace at the top of the Monte Mario planted with cypresses, and a villa, though dilapidated, crowns the summit, as also at our old friend above Egham. Here we stood, on a most delicious evening, the ilex and the gum-cistus in great profusion about us, the slope

below full of olives and vines, the cypresses over our heads, and before our eyes all that one has ever read of in Roman History the course of the Tiber between the low hills that bound it, coming down from Fidenæ, and receiving the Allia and the Anio; beyond, the Apennines, the distant and higher summits still quite white with snow; in front, the Alban hills; on the right, the Campagna to the sea, and just beneath us the whole length of Rome, ancient and modern-St. Peter's and the Colosseum rising as the representatives of each-the Pantheon, the Aventine, the Quirinal, all the well-known objects distinctly laid before us. One may safely say that the world cannot contain many views of such mingled beauty and interest as this.

6. . . . . . From the Aventine we again visited the Colosseum, which I admired most exceedingly, but I cannot describe its effect. Then to the Church of St. John at the Lateran gate, before which stands the highest of the Egyptian obelisks, brought by Constantine to Rome. Near to this Church also is the Scala Santa, or pretended staircase of Pilate's house at Jerusalem. It is cased with wood, and people may only ascend to it on their knees, as I saw several persons doing. Then we went to St. Maria Maggiore, to Maria degli Angeli at the baths of Diocletian, and from thence I was deposited again at I care very little for the sight of their churches, and nothing at all for the recollection of them. St. John at the Lateran is, I think, the finest; and the form of the Greek Cross at St. Maria degli Angeli is much better for these buildings than that of the Latin. But precious marbles, and precious stones, and gilding, and rich coloring, are to me like the kaleidoscope, and no more; and these churches are almost as inferior to ours, in my judgment, as their worship is to ours I saw these two lines painted on the wall in the street to-day, near an image of the Virgin: "Chi vuole in morte aver Gesu per Padre, Onori in vita la sua Santa Madre."

I declare I do not know what name of abhorrence can be too strong for a religion which, holding the very bread of life in its hands, thus feeds the people with poison. I say "the bread of life;" for in some things the indestructible virtue of Christ's Gospel breaks through all their pollutions of it; and I have seen frequent placards also - but printed papers, not printed on the walls, and therefore, perhaps, the work of some good individual. "Iddio ci vede. Eternita." This is a sort

of seed scattered by the wayside, which certainly would not have been found in heathen Rome.

7. . . . . . I fear that our countrymen, and especially our unmarried countrymen, who live long abroad, are not in the best possible moral state, however much they may do in science and literature; which comes back to my old opinion, that such pursuits will not do for a man's main business, and that they must be used in subordination to a clearly-perceived Christian end, and looked upon as of most subordinate value, or else they become as fatal as absolute idleness. In fact, the house is spiritually empty, so long as the pearl of great price is not there, although it may be hung with all the decorations of earthly knowledge. But, in saying this I do not allude to

but to a class; I heard him say nothing amiss except negatively; and I have great reason to thank him for his civility. But it is so delightful to meet with a man like Bunsen, with whom I know that all is right, that perhaps the contrast of those with whom I cannot feel the same certainty is the more striking.

8. We found the Savignys at home, and I had some considerable talk with Savigny about the Roman Law, which was satisfactory to me on this account, that I found that I knew enough of the subject to understand what its difficulties were, and that in conversing with the most profound master of the Roman Law in Europe, I found that I had been examining the right sources of information. He thought that the Tribes voted upon laws down to a late period of the Emperor's gov

ernment.

Rome, May, 1827.

9. Lastly, we ascended to the top of the Colosseum, Bunsen leaving us at the door, to go home; and I seated myself with -, just above the main entrance, towards the Forum, and there took my farewell look over Rome. It was a delicious evening, and everything was looking to advantage; the huge Colosseum just under me, the tufts of ilex and aliternus, and other shrubs that fringe the ruins everywhere in the lower parts, while the outside wall, with its top of gigantic stones, lifts itself high above, and seems like a mountain barrier of bare rock, inclosing a green and varied valley, I sat and gazed upon the scene with an intense and mingled feeling. The world could show nothing grander; it was one which for years I had longed to see, and I was now looking