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e are bound for Naples! And we cross the
threshold of the Eternal City at yonder gate, the
Gate of San Giovanni Laterano, where the two
last objects that attract the notice of a depart-
ing visitor, and the two first objects that attract the notice
of an arriving one, are a proud church and a decaying
ruin - good emblems of Rome.

Our way lies over the Campagna, which looks more
solemn on a bright blue day like this, than beneath a
darker sky; the great extent of ruin being plainer to the
eye: and the sunshine through the arches of the broken
aqueducts, showing other broken arches shining through
them in the melancholy distance. When we have traversed
it, and look back from Albano, its dark undulating sur-
face lies below us like a stagnant lake, or like a broad
dull Lethe flowing round the walls of Rome, and separat-
ing it from all the world! How often have the Legions,
in triumphant march, gone glittering across that purple
waste, so silent and unpeopled now! How often has the
train of captives looked, with sinking hearts, upon the
distant city and beheld its population pouring out, to
hail the return of their conqueror! What riot, sensual-
ity and murder, have run mad in the vast Palaces now

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