Mount Cimino rose before us soon after leaving Viterbo, and we walked up most of the long and gentle ascent, inhaling the odor of the spicy plants for which it is famous, and looking out sharply for the brigands with which it is always infested. English carriages are constantly robbed on this part of the route of late. The robbers are met usually in parties of ten and twelve, and, a week before we passed, Lady Berwick (the widow of an English nobleman, and a sister of the famous Harriet Wilson) was stopped and plundered in broad mid-day. The excessive distress among the peasantry of these misgoverned States accounts for these things, and one only wonders why there is not even more robbing among such a starving population. This mountain, by the way, and the pretty lake below it, are spoken of in the Æneid: "Cimini cum monte locum," etc. There is an ancient tradition, that in the crescent-shaped valley which the lake fills, there was formerly a city, which was overwhelmed by the rise of the water, and certain authors state that when the lake is clear, the ruins are still to be seen at the bottom.
The sun rose upon us as we reached the mountain above Baccano, on the sixth day of our journey, and, by its clear golden flood, we saw the dome of St. Peter's, at a distance of sixteen miles, towering amid the campagna in all its majestic beauty. We descended into the vast plain, and traversed its gentle undulations for two or three hours. With the forenoon well advanced, we turned into the valley of the Tiber, and saw the home of Raphael, a noble chateau on the side of a hill, near the river, and, in the little plain between, the first peach-trees we had seen, in full blossom. The tomb of Nero is on one side of the road, before crossing the Tiber, and on the other a newly painted and staring restaurant, where the modern Roman cockneys drive for punch and ices. The bridge of Pontemolle, by which we passed into the immediate suburb of Rome, was the ancient Pons Æmilius, and here Cicero arrested the conspirators on their way to join Catiline in his camp. It was on the same bridge, too, that Constantine saw his famous vision, and gained his victory over the tyrant Maxentius.
Two miles over the Via Flaminia, between garden walls that were ornamented with sculpture and inscription in the time of Augustus, brought us to the Porta del Popolo. The square within this noble gate is modern, but very imposing. Two streets diverge before you, as far away as you can see into the heart of the city, a magnificent fountain sends up its waters in the centre, the façades of two handsome churches face you as you enter, and on the right and left are gardens and palaces of princely splendor. Gay and sumptuous equipages cross it in every direction, driving out to the villa Borghese, and up to the Pincian mount, the splendid troops of the Pope are on guard, and the busy and stirring population of modern Rome swell out to its limit like the ebb and flow of the sea. All this disappoints while it impresses the stranger. He has come to Rome—but it was old Rome that he had pictured to his fancy. The Forum, the ruins of her temples, the palaces of her emperors, the homes of her orators, poets, and patriots, the majestic relics of the once mistress of the world, are the features in his anticipation. But he enters by a modern gate to a modern square, and pays his modern coin to a whiskered officer of customs; and in the place of a venerable Belisarius begging an obolus in classic Latin, he is beset by a troop of lusty and filthy lazzaroni entreating for a baioch in the name of the Madonna, and in effeminate Italian. He drives down the Corso, and reads nothing but French signs, and sees all the familiar wares of his own country exposed for sale, and every other person on the pave is an Englishman, with a narrow-rimmed hat and whalebone stick, and with an hour at the Dogama, where his baggage is turned inside out by a snuffy old man who speaks French, and a reception at a hotel where the porter addresses him in his own language, whatever it may be; he goes to bed under Parisian curtains, and tries to dream of the Rome he could not realize while awake.
LETTER LIV.
APPIAN WAY—TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA—ALBANO—TOMB OF THE CURIATII—ARICIA—TEMPLE OF DIANA—FOUNTAIN OF EGERIA—LAKE OF NEMI—VELLETRI—PONTINE MARSHES—CONVENT—CANAL—TERRACINA—SAN FELICE—FONDI—STORY OF JULIA GONZAGA—CICERO'S GARDEN AND TOMB—MOLA—MINTURNA—RUINS OF AN AMPHITHEATRE AND TEMPLE—FALERNIAN MOUNT AND WINE—THE DOCTOR OF ST. AGATHA—CAPUA—ENTRANCE INTO NAPLES—THE QUEEN.
With the intention of returning to Rome for the ceremonies of the holy week, I have merely passed through on my way to Naples. We left it the morning after our arrival, going by the "Appian way" to mount Albano, which borders the Campagna on the south, at a distance of fifteen miles. This celebrated road is lined with the ruined tombs of the Romans. Off at the right, some four or five miles from the city, rises the fortress-like tomb of Cecilia Metella, so exquisitely mused upon by Childe Harold. This, says Sismondi, with the tombs of Adrian and Augustus, became fortresses of banditti, in the thirteenth century, and were taken by Brancallone, the Bolognese governor of Rome, who hanged the marauders from the walls. It looks little like "a woman's grave."
We changed horses at the pretty village of Albano, and, on leaving it, passed an ancient mausoleum, believed to be the tomb of the Curiatii who fought the Horatii on this spot. It is a large structure, and had originally four pyramids on the corners, two of which only remain.