A mile from Albano lies Aricia, in a country of the loveliest rural beauty. Here was the famous temple of Diana, and here were the lake and grove sacred to the "virgin huntress," and consecrated as her home by peculiar worship. The fountain of Egeria is here, where Numa communed with the nymph, and the lake of Nemi, on the borders of which the temple stood, and which was called Diana's mirror (speculum Dianæ), is at this day, perhaps, one of the sweetest gems of natural scenery in the world.
We slept at Velletri, a pretty town of some twelve thousand inhabitants, which stands on a hill-side, leaning down to the Pontine marshes. It was one of the grand days of carnival, and the streets were full of masks, walking up and down in their ridiculous dresses, and committing every sort of foolery. The next morning, by daylight, we were upon the Pontine marshes, the long thirty miles level of which we passed in an unbroken trot, one part of a day's journey of seventy-five miles, done by the same horses, at the rate of six miles in the hour! They are small, compact animals, and look in good condition, though they do as much habitually.
At a distance of fifteen miles from Velletri, we passed a convent, which is built opposite the spot where St. Paul was met by his friends, on his journey from the seaside to Rome. The canal upon which Horace embarked on his celebrated journey to Brundusium, runs parallel with the road for its whole distance. This marshy desert is inhabited by a race of as wretched beings, perhaps, as are to be found upon the face of the earth. The pestiferous miasma of the pools is certain destruction to health, and the few who are needed at the distant post-houses, crawl out to the road-side like so many victims from a pest-house, stooping with weakness, hollow-eyed, and apparently insensible to everything. The feathered race seems exempt from its influence, and the quantities of game of every known description are incredible. The ground was alive with wild geese, turkeys, pigeons, plover, ducks, and numerous birds we did not know, as far as the eye could distinguish. The travelling books caution against sleeping in the carriage while passing these marshes, but we found it next to impossible to resist the heavy drowsiness of the air.
At Terracina the marshes end, and the long avenue of elms terminates at the foot of a romantic precipice, which is washed by the Mediterranean. The town is most picturesquely built between the rocky wall and the sea. We dined with the hollow murmur of the surf in our ears, and then, presenting our passports, entered the kingdom of Naples. This Terracina, by the way, was the ancient Anxur, which Horace describes in his line—
"Impositum late saxis candentibus Anxur."
For twenty or thirty miles before arriving at Terracina, we had seen before us the headland of Circœum, lying like a mountain island off the shore. It is usually called San Felice, from the small town seated upon it. This was the ancient abode of the "daughter of the sun," and here were imprisoned, according to Homer, the champions of Ulysses, after their metamorphoses.
From Terracina to Fondi, we followed the old Appian way, a road hedged with flowering myrtles and orange trees laden with fruit. Fondi itself is dirtier than imagination could picture it, and the scowling men in the streets look like myrmidons of Fra Diavolo, their celebrated countryman. This town, however, was the scene of the romantic story of the beautiful Julia Gonzaga, and was destroyed by the corsair Barbarossa, who had intended to present the rarest beauty of Italy to the Sultan. It was to the rocky mountains above the town that she escaped in her night-dress, and lay concealed till the pirate's departure.
In leaving Fondi, we passed the ruined walls of a garden said to have belonged to Cicero, whose tomb is only three leagues distant. Night came on before we reached the tomb, and we were compelled to promise ourselves a pilgrimage to it on our return.
We slept at Mola, and here Cicero was assassinated. The ruins of his country-house are still here. The town lies in the lap of a graceful bay, and in all Italy, it is said, there is no spot more favored by nature. The mountains shelter it from the winds of the north; the soil produces, spontaneously, the orange, the myrtle, the olive, delicious grapes, jasmine, and many odoriferous herbs. This and its neighborhood was called, by the great orator and statesman who selected it for his retreat, "the most beautiful patrimony of the Romans." The Mediterranean spreads out from its bosom, the lovely islands near Naples bound its view, Vesuvius sends up its smoke and fire in the south, and back from its hills stretches a country fertile and beautiful as a paradise. This is a place of great resort for the English and other travellers in the summer. The old palaces are turned into hotels, and we entered our inn through an avenue of shrubs that must have been planted and trimmed for a century.