Romæ Tibur Amem, ventosus. Tibure Romam! quoth the Latin satirist, ridiculing his own foibles, like his neighbour’s, with the laughing, half-indulgent banter that makes him the pleasantest, the chattiest, and the most companionable of classic writers. How he loved the cool retirement of his Sabine home, its grassy glades, its hanging woodlands, its fragrant breezes wandering and whispering through those summer slopes, rich in the countless allurements of a landscape that—
“Like Albunea’s echoing fountain,
All my inmost heart hath ta’en;
Give me Anio’s headlong torrent,
And Tiburnus’ grove and hills,
And its orchards sparkling dewy,
With a thousand wimpling rills,”
as Theodore Martin translates his Horace, or thus, according to Lord Ravensworth—
“Like fair Albunea’s sybil-haunted hall,
By rocky Anio’s echoing waterfall,