so cold, so alley-like, into which the sun never falls, and where a chill wind forces its deadly breath into our lungs-left her, tired of the sight of those immense seven-storied, yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary in domestic life seems magnified and multiplied, and weary of climbing those staircases which ascend from a ground-floor of cook-shops, cobblers'-stalls, stables, and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists, just beneath the unattainable sky--left her, worn out with shivering at the cheerless and smoky fireside by day, and feasting with our own substance the ravenous population of a Roman bed at night-left her, sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had endured till now, and sick at stomach of sour bread, sour wine, rancid butter, and bad cookery, needlessly bestowed on evil meats-left her, disgusted with the pretence of holiness and the reality of nastiness, each equally omnipresent-left her, half lifeless from the languid atmosphere, the vital principle of which has been used up long ago or corrupted by myriads of slaughters-left her, crushed down in spirit by the desolation of her ruin and the hopelessness of her future-left her, in short, hating her with all our might, and adding our individual curse to the infinite anathema which her old crimes have unmistakably brought down ;-when we have left Rome in such a mood as this, we are astonished by the discovery, by-and-by, that our heartstrings have mysteriously attached themselves to the Eternal City, and are drawing us thitherward again, as if it were more familiar, more intimately our home, than even the spot where we were born.'

This is the attractive and sympathetic power of Rome which Byron so fully appreciated

'Oh Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and controul
In their shut breasts their petty misery.

What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples. Ye
Whose agonies are evils of a day-

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose sacred dust was scattered long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,

Old Tiber! through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress!

The impressiveness of an arrival at the Eternal City was formerly enhanced by the solemn singularity of the country through which it was slowly approached. Those who arrive at Rome now by the railway,' says Mrs. Craven in her 'Anne Severin,' 'and rush like a whirlwind into a station, cannot imagine the effect which the words

"Ecco Roma" formerly produced when, on arriving at the point in the road from which the Eternal City could be descried for the first time, the postillion stopped his horses, and, pointing it out to the traveller in the distance, pronounced them with that Roman accent which is grave and sonorous as the name of Rome itself.'

'How pleasing,' says Cardinal Wiseman, was the usual indication to early travellers, by voice and outstretched whip, embodied in the well-known exclamation of every vetturino, "Ecco Roma." To one "lasso maris et viarum," like Horace, these words brought the first promise of approaching rest. A few more miles of weary hills, every one of which, from its summit, gave a more swelling and majestic outline to what so far constituted "Roma," that is, the great cupola, not of the church, but of the city, its only discernible part, cutting, like a huge peak, into the clear wintry sky, and the long journey was ended, and ended by the full realisation of well-cherished hopes.'

Most travellers, perhaps, in the old days, came by sea from Marseilles and arrived from Civita Vecchia, by the dreary road which leads through Palo, and near the base of the hills upon which stands Cervetri, the ancient Caere, from the junction of whose name and customs the word 'ceremony' has arisen,-so especially useful in the great neighbouring city. This road from Civita Vecchia,' writes Miss Edwards, 'lies among shapeless hillocks, shaggy with bush and briar. Far away on one side gleams a line of soft blue sea on the other lie mountains as blue, but not more distant. Not a sound stirs the stagnant air. Not a tree, not a housetop, breaks the wide monotony. The dust lies beneath the wheels like a carpet, and follows like a cloud. The grass is yellow, the weeds are parched; and where there have been wayside pools, the ground is cracked and dry. Now we pass a crumbling fragment of something that may have been a tomb or temple centuries ago. Now we come upon a little wide-eyed peasant boy keeping goats among the ruins, like Giotto of old. Presently a buffalo lifts his black mane above the neighbouring hillock, and rushes away before we can do more than point to the spot on which we saw it. Thus the day attains its noon, and the sun hangs overhead like a brazen shield, brilliant but cold. Thus, too, we reach the brow of a long and steep ascent, where our driver pulls up to rest his weary beasts. The sea has now faded almost out of sight; the mountains look larger and nearer, with streaks of snow upon their summits, the Campagna reaches on and on and shows no sign of limit or of verdure; while, in the midst of the clear air, half way, so it would seem, between you and the purple Sabine range, rises one solemn solitary dome. Can it be the dome of S. Peter's?'

The great feature of the Civita Vecchia route was that, after all the utter desolation and dreariness of many miles of the least interesting part of the Campagna, the traveller was almost stunned by the transition, when, on suddenly passing the Porta Cavalleggieri, he found himself in the piazza of S. Peter's, with its widespreading colonnades and high-springing fountains; indeed, the

first building he saw was S. Peter's, the first house that of the Pope, the palace of the Vatican. But the more gradual approach by land from Viterbo and Tuscany possessed equal, if not superior, interest. 'When we turned the summit above Viterbo,' wrote Dr. Arnold, 'and opened on the view on the other side, it might be called the first approach to Rome. At the distance of more than forty miles, it was, of course, impossible to see the town, and, besides, the distance was hazy; but we were looking on the scene of the Roman history; we were standing on the outward edge of the frame of the great picture; and though the features of it were not to be traced distinctly, yet we had the consciousness that they were before us. Here, too, we first saw the Mediterranean, the Alban hills, I think, in the remote distance, and just beneath us, on the left, Soracte, an outlier of the Apennines, which has got to the right bank of the Tiber, and stands out by itself most magnificently. Close under us, in front, was the Ciminian lake, the crater of an extinct volcano, surrounded, as they all are, with their basin of wooded hills, and lying like a beautiful mirror stretched out before us. Then there was the grand beauty of Italian scenery, the depth of the valleys, the endless variety of the mountain outline, and the towns perched upon the mountain summits, and this now seen under a mottled sky, which threw an ever-varying light and shadow over the valley beneath, and all the freshness of the young spring. We descended along one of the rims of this lake to Ronciglione, and from thence, still descending on the whole, to Monterosi. Here the famous

Campagna begins, and it certainly is one of the most striking tracts of country I ever beheld. It is by no means a perfect flat, except between Rome and the sea; but rather like the Bagshot Heath country, ridges of hills, with intermediate valleys, and the road often running between high, steep banks, and sometimes crossing sluggish streams sunk in a deep bed. All these banks are overgrown with broom, now in full flower; and the same plant was luxuriant everywhere. There seemed no apparent reason why the country should be so desolate; the grass was growing richly everywhere. There was no marsh anywhere visible, but all looked as fresh and healthy as any of our chalk downs in England. But it is a wide wilderness; no villages, scarcely any houses, and here and there a lonely ruin of a single square tower, which I suppose used to serve as strongholds for men and cattle in the plundering warfare in the Middle Ages. It was after crowning the top of one of these lines of hills, a little on the Roman side of Baccano, at five minutes after six, according to my watch, that we had the first view of Rome itself. I expected to see S. Peter's rising above the line of the horizon, as York Minster does; but instead of that, it was within the horizon, and so was much less conspicuous, and from the nature of the ground, it looked mean and stumpy. Nothing else marked the site of the city, but the trees of the gardens, and a number of white villas specking the opposite bank of the Tiber for some little distance above the town, and then suddenly ceasing. But the whole scene that burst upon our view, when taken in all its parts, was most interesting.

Full in front rose the Alban hills, the white villas on their sides distinctly visible, even at that distance, which was more than thirty miles. On the left were the Apennines, and Tivoli was distinctly to be seen on the summit of its mountain, on one of the lowest and nearest parts of the chain. On the right, and all before us, lay the Campagna, whose perfectly level outline was succeeded by that of the sea, which was scarcely more so. It began now to get dark, and as there is hardly any twilight, it was dark soon after we left La Storta, the last post before you enter Rome. The air blew fresh and cool, and we had a pleasant drive over the remaining part of the Campagna, till we descended into the valley of the Tiber, and crossed it by the Milvian bridge. About two miles farther on we reached the walls of Rome, and entered it by the Porta del Popolo.'

Niebuhr, coming the same way, says: 'It was with solemn feelings that this morning, from the barren heights of the moory Campagna, I first caught sight of the cupola of S. Peter's, and then of the city from the bridge, where all the majesty of her buildings and her history seem to lie spread out before the eye of the stranger; and afterwards entered by the Porta del Popolo.'

Madame de Staël gives us the impression which the same subject would produce on a different type of character:

'Le Comte d'Erfeuil faisait de comiques lamentations sur les environs de Rome. "Quoi," disait-il, "point de maison de campagne, point de voiture, rien qui annonce le voisinage d'une grande ville! Ah! bon Dieu, quelle tristesse!" En approchant de Rome, les postillons s'écrièrent avec transport : "Voyez, voyez, c'est la coupole de Saint-Pierre!" Les Napolitains montrent aussi le Vésuve; et la mer fait de même l'orgueil des habitans des côtes. "On croirait voir le dôme des Invalides," s'écria le Comte d'Erfeuil.'

It was by this approach that most of its distinguished pilgrims have entered the capital of the Catholic world: monks, who came hither to obtain the foundation of their Orders; saints, who thirsted to worship at the shrines of their predecessors, or who came to receive the crown of martyrdom; priests and bishops from distant lands— many coming in turn to receive here the highest dignity which Christendom could offer; kings and emperors, to ask coronation at the hands of the reigning pontiff; and, among all these, came by this road, in the full fervour of Catholic enthusiasm, Martin Luther, the future enemy of Rome, then its devoted adherent. 'When Luther came to Rome,' says Ampère, in his 'Portraits de Rome à divers âges,' 'the future reformer was a young monk, obscure and fervent; he had no presentiment, when he set foot in the great Babylon, that ten years later he would burn the bull of the Pope in the public square of Wittenberg. His heart experienced nothing but pious emotions; he addressed to Rome in salutation the ancient hymn of the pilgrims; he cried, "I salute thee, O holy Rome, Rome venerable through the blood and the tombs of the martyrs." But after having prostrated on the threshold, he raised himself, he entered into the temple, he did not find the God he looked for; the

city of the saints and martyrs was a city of murderers and prostitutes. The arts which marked this corruption were powerless over the stolid senses, and scandalised the austere spirit of the German monk; he scarcely gave a passing glance at the ruins of pagan Rome, and, inwardly horrified by all that he saw, he quitted Rome in a frame of mind very different from that which he brought with him; he knelt then with the devotion of the pilgrims, now he returned in a disposition like that of the frondeurs of the Middle Ages, but more serious than theirs. This Rome of which he had been the dupe, and concerning which he was disabused, should hear of him again; the day would come when, amid the merry toasts at his table, he would cry three times, "I would not have missed going to Rome for a thousand florins, for I should always have been uneasy lest I should have been rendering injustice to the Pope."

Till late years life in Rome seemed to be free from many of the petty troubles which beset it in other places; and there are still few foreign towns which offer so many comforts and advantages to its English visitors. The hotels, indeed, are expensive, and the rent of apartments is high; but when the latter is once paid, living is rather cheap than otherwise, especially for those who do not object to dine from a trattoria and to drive in hackney-carriages. Prices, however, are enormously raised since the end of the last century, when Alfieri only paid ten scudi a month for the whole Strozzi palace, furnished, with the stables, and the use of the villa.

The climate of Rome is very variable. If the scirocco blows, it is mild and very relaxing; but the winters are more apt to be subject to the severe cold of the tramontana, which requires even greater precaution and care than that of an English winter. Nothing can be more mistaken than the impression that those who go to Italy are sure to find there a mild and congenial temperature. The climate of Rome has been subject to severity, even from the earliest times of its history. Dionysius speaks of one year in the time of the Republic when the snow at Rome lay seven feet deep, and many men and cattle died of the cold.1 Another year the snow lay for forty days, trees perished, and cattle died of hunger.2 Present times are a great improvement on these: snow seldom lies upon the ground for many hours together, and the beautiful fountains of the city are only hung with icicles long enough to allow the photographers to represent them thus; but still the climate is not to be trifled with, and violent transitions from the hot sunshine to the cool shade of the street often prove fatal. No one but dogs and Englishmen,' say the Romans, 'ever walk in the sun.'

Even under Tiberius, three temples of Fever were in existence, but the malaria, which is so much dreaded by the natives, generally lies dormant during the winter months, and seldom affects strangers unless they live in some of the new quarters of the city near recent excavations, or are inordinately imprudent in sitting out in the sunset. With the heats of the late summer this insidious