(286) If the bay of Naples is still beautiful, if it still deserves the epithet of pulcherrimus, -what must it not once have been;* and who, as he sails round it, can imagine it to himself as it was, when not only the villas of the Romans were in their splendor,ț but the temples; when those of Herculaneum and Pompeii and Baiæ and Puteoli, and how many more, were standing, each on its eminence or on the margin of the sea; while, with choral music and with a magnificence that had exhausted the wealth of kingdoms, ‡ the galleys of the imperial court were anchoring in the shade, or moving up and down in the sunshine. (287) Virgil. (288) Quarum sacra fero, ingenti percussus amore. (289) The Tarantella. (290) Capreæ. (291) Tiberius. (292) "How often, to demonstrate his power, does he employ the meanest of his instruments; as in Egypt, when he called forth, not the serpents and the monsters of Africa, but vermin from the very dust!" (293) The elder Pliny. See the letter in which his nephew relates to Tacitus the circumstances of his death. In the morning of that day Vesuvius was covered with the most luxuriant vegetation; § every elm had its vine, every vine (for it was in the month of August) its clusters; nor in the cities below was there a thought of danger, though their interment was so soon to take place. In Pompeii, if we may believe Dion Cassius, the people were sitting in the theatre when the work of destruction began. (294) Pompeii. (295) Pansa, the Edile, according to some of the interpreters; but the inscription at the entrance is very obscure. Cilicia, was the bearer of a letter to It is remarkable that Cicero, when on his way to Atticus "ex Pansæ Pompeiano." || (Ad. Att. v. 3.) and that in the street, as we passed along, we might have met him, coming or going, every pilgrim to Pompeii must wish to believe. But, delighting in the coast and in his own Pompeianum (Ad. Att. ii. 1), he could be no stranger in that city; and often must he have received there such homage as ours. (296) In a time of revolution he could not escape unhurt; but to the last he preserved his gayety of mind through every change of fortune; living right hospitably when he had the means to do so, and, when he could not entertain, dining as he is here represented, with his velvet friends- en famille. (297) La Croce Bianca. "Antequam Vesuvius mons, ardescens, faciem loci verteret.' Tacit. "Annal. iv. 67. + With their groves and porticos they were everywhere along the shore, "erat enim frequens amœnitas oræ ;" and what. a neighborhood must have been there in the last days of the Commonwealth, when such men as Cæsar, and Pompey, and Lucullus, and Cicero, and Hortensius, and Brutus, were continually retiring thither from the cares of public life! "Gemmatis puppibus, versicoloribus velis," &c. -Sueton. "Calig." 37. § Martial. IV. 44. According to Grævius. The manuscripts disagree. (298) "Ce pourroit être," says Bayle, "la matière d'un joli problême: on pourroit examiner si cette fille avançoit, ou si elle retardoit le profit de ses auditeurs, en leur cachant son beau visage. Il y auroit cent choses à dire pour et contre là-dessus." (299) I cannot here omit some lines by a friend of mine now no more. For who would make his life a life of toil For wealth, o'erbalanced with a thousand cares; Or fame, vain breath of a misjudging world; A yoke upon his free unbroken spirit, And gall himself with trammels and the rubs Lewesdon Hill. (300) The temples of Pæstum are three in number; and have survived, nearly nine centuries, the total destruction of the city. Tradition is silent concerning them; but they must have existed now between two and three thousand years. (301) Spartacus. See Plutarch in the Life of Crassus. (302) The violets of Pæstum were as proverbial as the roses. Martial mentions them with the honey of Hybla. (303) The introduction to his Treatise on Glory. Cic. ad Att. xvi. 6. For an account of the loss of that treatise, see Petrarch, Epist. Rer. Senilium, xv. 1, and Bayle, Dict., in Aleyonius. (304) They are said to have been discovered by accident about the middle of the last century. (305) Originally a Greek city under that name, and afterwards a Roman city under the name of Pæstum. It was surprised and destroyed by the Saracens at the beginning of the tenth century. (306) Athanæus, xiv. (307) The Mal'aria. (308) Tasso. Sorrento, his birthplace, is on the south side of the Gulf of Naples. (309) "Amalfi fell, after three hundred years of prosperity; but the poverty of one thousand fishermen is yet dignified by the remains of an arsenal, a cathedral, and the palaces of royal merchants." Gibbon. (310) China. After this line, in the MS. That wall, so massive, so interminable, An allusion to the porcelain and the tea of the Chinese. (311) There is at this day in Syracuse a street called La Strada degli Amalfitani. (313) By degrees, says Giannone, they made themselves famous through the world. The Tarini Amalfitani were a coin familiar to all nations; and their maritime code regulated everywhere the commerce of the sea. Many churches in the East were by them built and endowed; by them was founded in Palestine that most renowned military Order of St. John of Jerusalem; and who does not know that the mariner's compass was invented by a citizen of Amalfi ? Glorious was their course, And long the track of light they left behind them. (314) The Abbey of Monte Cassino is the most ancient and venerable house of the Benedictine order. It is situated within fifteen leagues of Naples, on the inland road to Rome; and no house is more hospitable. (315) This story if a story it may be called-is fictitious; and I have done little more than give it as I received it. (316) Michael Angelo. (317) There are many miraculous pictures in Italy, but none, I believe, were ever before described as malignant in their influence. At Arezzo, in the Church of St. Angelo, there is indeed over the great altar a fresco-painting of the fall of the angels, which has a singular story belonging to it. It was painted in the fourteenth century by Spinello Aretino, who has there represented Lucifer as changed into a shape so monstrous and terrible that he is said in that very shape to have haunted the artist in his dreams, and to have hastened his death; crying, night after night, "Where hast thou seen me in a shape so monstrous?" In the upper part St. Michael is seen in combat with the dragon: the fatal transformation is in the lower part of the picture. - Vasari. (318) Then degraded, and belonging to a Vetturino. (319) A Florentine family of great antiquity. In the sixty-third novel of Franco Sacchetti we read that a stranger, suddenly entering Giotto's study, threw down a shield and departed, saying, "Paint me my arms in that shield ;" and that Giotto, looking after him, exclaimed, 66 Who is he? What is he? He says, Paint me my arms, as if he were one of the Bardi! What arms does he bear ?" (320) A large boat for rowing and sailing, much used in the Mediterranean. (321) Paganino Doria, Nicolo Pisani; those great seamen, who balanced for so many years the fortunes of Genoa and Venice. (322) Every reader of Spanish poetry is acquainted with that affecting romance of Gongora, “Amarrado al duro banco," &c. Lord Holland has translated it in his excellent Life of Lope de Vega. (323) There is a custom on the continent well worthy of notice. In Boulogne we read, as we ramble through it, "Ici est mort l'Auteur de Gil Blas;" in Rouen, "Ici est né Pierre Corneille; " in Geneva, "Ici est né Jean-Jacques Rousseau ;" and in Dijon there is the Maison Bossuet; in Paris, the Quai Voltaire. Very rare are such memorials among us : and yet, wherever we meet with them, in whatever country they were, or of whatever age, we should surely say that they were evidences of refinement and sensibility in the people. The house of Pindar was spared when temple and tower Went to the ground; and its ruins were held sacred to the last. According to Pausanias, they were still to be seen in the second century. (324) The Piazza Doria, or, as it is now called, the Piazza di San Matteo, insignificant as it may be thought, is to me the most interesting place in Genoa. It was there that Doria assembled the people, when he gave them their liberty (Sigonii Vita Doriæ); and on one side of it is the church he lies buried in, on the other a house, originally of very small dimensions, with this inscription: S. C. Andreæ de Auria Patriæ Liberatori Munus Publicum. The streets of old Genoa, like those of Venice, were constructed only for foot-passengers. (325) When I saw it in 1822, a basket-maker lived on the ground-floor, and over him a seller of chocolate. (326) Alluding to the palace which he built afterwards, and in which he twice entertained the Emperor Charles the Fifth. It is the most magnificent edifice on the Bay of Genoa. (327) Fiesco. For an account of his conspiracy, see Robertson's History of Charles the Fifth. (328) Such as the Gabelles formerly in France; "où le droit," says Montesquieu, "excédoit de dix-sept fois la valeur de la marchandise." Salt is an article of which none know the value who have not known the want of it. (329) Who he is I have yet to learn. The story was told to me many years ago by a great reader of the old annalists; but I have searched everywhere for it in vain. (330) Written at Susa, May 1, 1822. (331) The Po. "Chaque maison est pourvue de bateaux, et lorsque l'inondation s'annonce," &c. -Lettres de Chateauvieux. (332) It was somewhere in the Maremma, a region so fatal to so many, that the unhappy Pia, a Siennese lady of the family of Tolommei, fell a sacrifice to the jealousy of her husband. Thither he conveyed her in the sultry time, "tra'l Luglio e'l Settembre ;' having resolved in his heart that she should perish there, even though he perished there with her. Not a word escaped from him on the way, not a syllable in answer to her remonstrances or her tears; and in sullen silence he watched patiently by her till she died. "Siena mi fe; disfecemi Maremma. Salsi colui, che'nnanellata pria, Disposando, m'avea con la sua gemma." The Maremma is continually in the mind of Dante; now as swarming with serpents, and now as employed in its great work of destruction. (333) The temples of Pæstum. (334) Who has travelled and cannot say with Catullus, "O quid solutis est beatius curis ? Quum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino Labore fessi venimus arem ad nostrum, (335) After this line, in the MS. What though his ancestors, early or late, |