Bowles. uink, the most delightful one that I ever saw. It takes in he whole Campania, and terminates in a full view of the editerranean. You have a sight at the same time of the -Albani pretiosa senectus. Juv. Sat. 13. -Palladiæ seu collibus uteris Albæ. Mar. lib. v. Ep. 1. -Olivæ. Idem, lib. ix. Ep. 16. Jam terras volucremque polum fuga veris aquosi Or in moist Tivoli's retirements find A cooling shade, and a refreshing wind. On the contrary, at present Rome is never fuller of nobility than in summer-time; for the country towns are so infested with unwholesome vapours, that they dare not trust themselves in them while the heats last. There is no question but the air of the Campania would be now as healthful as it was formerly, were there as many fires burning in it, and as many inhabitants to manure the soil. Leaving Rome about the latter end of October, in my way to Sienna, I lay the first night at a little village in the terri. tories of the ancient Veii. Hæc tum nomina erant, nunc sunt sine nomine Campi. The ruins of their capital city are at present so far lost, that the geographers are not aħle to determine exactly the place where they once stood: so literally is that noble prophecy of Lucan fulfilled, of this and other places of Latium. -Gentes Mars iste futuras Lib. vii. A single house to their benighted guest. We here saw the Lake Bacca, that gives rise to the Cremera, on whose banks the Fabii were slain. Tercentum numerabat avos, quos turbine Martis, Near the famed Cremera's disastrous flood, That ran polluted with Patrician blood. We saw afterwards, in the progress of our voyage, the akes of Vico and Bolsena. The last is reckoned one and wenty miles in circuit, and is plentifully stocked with fish und fowl. There are in it a couple of islands, that are perhaps the two floating isles mentioned by Pliny, with that mprobable circumstance of their appearing sometimes like a circle, sometimes like a triangle, but never like a quadrangle. It is easy enough to conceive how they might become ixed, though they once floated ; and it is not very credible, hat the naturalist could be deceived in his account of a lace that lay, as it were, in the neighbourhood of Rome. At one end of this lake stands Montefiascone, the habita-ion of Virgil's Æqui Falisci, Æn. vii., and on the side of it he town of the Volsinians, now called Bolsena. Aut positis nemorosa inter juga Volsiniis. Juv. Sat. 3. -Volsinium stood many green nountains and fruitful valleys, that we had been presented vith for some days before, we saw now nothing but a wild naked prospect of rocks and hills, worn on all sides with cutters and channels, and not a tree or shrub to be met with n a vast circuit of several miles. This savage prospect put ne in mind of the Italian proverb, “ The pope has the flesh, und the Great Duke the bones of Italy.”' Among a large ex tent of these barren mountains I saw but a single spot that was cultivated, on which there stood a convent. SIENNA, LEGHORN, PISA. Sienna stands hig and is adorned with a great many towers of brick, which in the time of the commonwealth were erected to such of the members as had done any considerable service to their country. These towers gave us a sight of the town a great while before we entered it. There is nothing in this city so extraordinary as the cathedral, which a man may view with pleasure after he has seen St. Peter's, though it is quite of another make, and can only be looked upon as one of the master-pieces of Gothic architecture. When a man sees the prodigious pains and expense that our forefathers have been at in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy to himself what miracles of architecture they would have left us, had they been only instructed in the right way; for when the devotion of those ages was much warmer than that of the present, and the riches of the people much more at the disposal of the priests, there was so much money consumed on these Gothic cathedrals, as would have finished a greater variety of noble buildings than have been raised either before or since that time. One would wonder to see the vast labour that has been laid out on this single cathedral. The very spouts are loaden with ornaments; the windows are formed like so many scenes of perspective, with a multitude of little pillars retiring one behind another; the great columns are finely engraven with fruits and foliage that run twisting about them from the very top to the bottom; the whole body of the church is chequered with different lays of white and black marble; the pavement curiously cut out in designs and Scripture stories; and the front covered with such a variety of figures, and overrun with so many little mazes and labyrinths of sculpture, that nothing in the world can make a prettier show to those who prefer false beauties, and affected ornaments, to a noble and majestic simplicity. Over against this church stands a large hospital, erected by a shoemaker, who has been beatified, though never sainted. There stands a figure of him superscribed, sutor ultra crepidam. I shall speak nothing of the extent of this city, the cleanliness of its to n a I h g a A fl ace. eets, nor the beauty of its piazza, which so many travelers ve described. As this is the last republic that fell under e subjection of the Duke of Florence, so is it still supposed retain many hankerings after its ancient liberty : for this ason, when the keys and pageants of the Duke's towns and vernments pass in procession before him, on St. John ptist's day, I was told that Sienna comes in the rear of dominions, and is pushed forward by those who follow, show the reluctancy it has to appear in such a solemnity. shall say nothing of the many gross and absurd traditions St. Catherine of Sienna, who is the great saint of this I think there is as much pleasure in hearing a man 1 his dreams, as in reading accounts of this nature: a traller that thinks them worth his observation may fill a book th them at every town in Italy. From Sienna we went forward to Leghorn, where the two rts, the bagnio, and Donatelli's statue of the Great Duke, idst the four slaves chained to his pedestal, are very noble hts. The square is one of the largest, and will be one of e most beautiful in Italy, when this statue is erected in it, d a town-house built at one end of it to front the church at stands at the other. They are at a continual expense cleanse the ports, and keep them from being choked up, ich they do by the help of several engines that are always work, and employ many of the Great Duke's slaves. Whater part of the harbour they scoop in, it has an influence on the rest, for the sea immediately works the whole bottom a level. They draw a double advantage from the dirt that Eaken up, as it clears the port, and at the same time dries several marshes about the town, where they lay it from e to time. One can scarce imagine how great profits the uke of Tuscany receives from this single place, which are generally thought so considerable, because it passes for ree port. But it is very well known how the Great Duke, a late occasion, notwithstanding the privileges of the rchants, drew no small sums of money out of them; ugh still, in respect of the exorbitant dues that are paid most other ports, it deservedly retains the name of free. brings into his dominions a great increase of people from other nations. They reckon in it near ten thousand vs, many of them very rich, and so great traffickers, that · English factors complain they have most of our country 은 r t f t |
