Tarquinius Superbus, when Turnus Herdonius, its Deputy to the Federal Council, was drowned in the Aqua Ferentina (Parco Colonna), near Marino. It was the birthplace of Atia, mother of Augustus, and as such is extolled by Cicero in his third Philippic. Having taken the part of Sulla, Ariccia was destroyed by Marius. Sulla built its wall and temple, and his soldiers repopulated it. Ariccia was the second station on the Via Appia. The place suffered severely at the hands of both Goths and Vandals.

Ariccia is now chiefly remarkable for the Palace of the Chigi, built by Bernini for Alexander VII. It is noble and imposing in its proportions, as it rises on huge buttresses from the depths of the ravine. In the interior are some interesting rooms hung with curious stamped leather, and a chamber containing portraits of the twelve nieces of Alexander VII., who were so enchanted at the elevation of their uncle, that they all took the veil immediately to please him. Apartments are let here in the summer months, and can be found very delightful.

Opposite the palace is the well-proportioned Church of the Assumption, also built (1664) by Bernini, with a dome painted by Antonio Raggi, and a few indifferent pictures. Two fountains covered with saxifrage stand in front of the portico. The palace and church form the beautiful group of L'Ariccia so well known from pictures. Between them the town is entered (from Albano) by a grand viaduct, 700 feet long, whence the views are exquisitely lovely, on the left over the Campagna, on the right looking into the depths of the immemorial wood known as the Parco Chigi.

'Le pont monumental remplit un profond ravin pour mettre de plain-pied la route d'Aricia à Albano. Il passe donc par-dessus tout un paysage vu en profondeur, et ce paysage est rempli par une forêt vierge jetée dans un abîme. Une forêt vierge fermée de murs, c'est là une de ces fantaisies que les princes peuvent seuls se passer. Il y a cinquante ans que la main de l'homme n'a abattu une branche et que son pied n'a tracé un sentier dans la forêt Chigi. Pourquoi? Chi lo sa? vous disent les indigènes.

'Au reste, ce caprice-là, qui serait bien concevable de la part d'un propriétaire artiste, est une agréable surprise pour l'artiste qui passe. Sur les flancs du ravin s'échelonnent les têtes vénérables des vieux chênes soutenant dans leur robuste branchage les squelettes penchés de leurs voisins morts, qui tombent en poussière sous une mousse desséchée d'un blanc livide. La lierre court sur ces ruines végétales, et sous l'impénétrable abri de ces réseaux de verdure vigoureuse et de pâles ossements, un pêle-mêle de ronces, d'herbes, et de rochers va se baigner dans le ruisseau sans rivages praticables. Si l'on n'était sur une grande route, avec une ville derrière soi, on se croirait dans une forêt du nouveau monde.'-George Sand, La Daniella.'

'It had been wild weather when I left Rome, and all across the Campagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian aqueduct, lighting up the infinity of its arches like the bridge of chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban Mount, the storm swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of Albano, and graceful darkness of its ilex grove, rose against pure streaks of alternate blue and amber; the upper sky gradually flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep, palpitating azure, half aether and half dew. The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and their masses of entangled and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it colour, it was

conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with burning and buoyant life; each, as it turned to reflect or transmit the sunbeam, first a torch, and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses of the valley, the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around them, breaking over the gray walls of rock into a thousand separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind lifted and let them fall. Every blade of grass burned like the golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke and closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of dark rock-dark though flushed with scarlet lichen-casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and fitful sound; and over all-the multitudinous bars of amber and rose, the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to illumine, were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and orbed repose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea.'-Ruskin, Modern Painters.'

An historic road fringed with cyclamen and forget-me-not, passing under the arch at the back of the Chigi palace, leads up a ravine and (left) to the Convent of the Cappuccini above Albano, from whose lovely ilex groves there are again glorious views. From here started the triumphal processions to Monte Cavo. The convent occupies the site of part of the villa of Domitian, whither Juvenal describes the saturnine Emperor as summoning the imperial council from Rome in the winter of A.D. 84.

Anxiously they asked each other, What news? What the purport of their unexpected summons? What foes of Rome had broken the prince's slumbers-the Chatti or the Sicambri, the Britons or the Dacians? While they are yet waiting for admission, the menials of the palace entered, bearing aloft a huge turbot, a present to the emperor, which they had the mortification of seeing introduced into his presence, while the doors were still shut against themselves. A humble fisherman had found the monsterstranded on the beach, beneath the fane of Venus at Ancona, and had hurried to receive a reward for so rare an offering to the imperial table. When at last the councillors were admitted, the question reserved for their deliberations was no other than this, whether the big fish should be cut in pieces, or served up whole on some enormous platter, constructed in its honour. The cabinet was no doubt sensibly persuaded that the question allowed at least of no delay, and with due expressions of surprise and admiration voted the dish, and set the potter's wheel in motion.'-Merivale, 'Romans under the Empire.'

'Surgitur, et misso proceres exire jubentur
Consilio, quos Albanam dux magnus in arcem
Traxerat attonitos et festinare coactos.'

-Juvenal, 'Sat.' iv. 145.

This palace of Domitian is frequently alluded to in the poets :

'Hoc tibi, Palladiae seu collibus uteris Albae,
Caesar, et hinc Triviam prospicis, inde Thetin,

Mittimus.'

-Martial, Ep.' v. 1.

'Sed quis ab excelsis Trojanae collibus Albae,
Unde suae juxta prospectat moenia Romae
Proximus ille Deus.

--Statius, 'Silv.' v. 2.

The Emperor girdled half the lake with a paved road, remains of which sunk in the soft margin can be traced among the reeds.

One of the best subjects for a picture is the view from under the ilex-trees in front of the convent gate facing Albano and the sea. A door in the wall R. of the lane which leads down to Albano, admits one to the remains of the Amphitheatre, now used as folds for goats, which crowd the recesses of its caverned masonry, and group themselves picturesquely on its walls.

Turning the rocky corner beyond the Cappuccini we come at once upon one of the loveliest scenes in this land of beauty, and look down upon the great lake, sometimes calm without a ripple; at others, lashed into miniature breakers. And on rare occasions a pair of ospreys may be observed fishing.

At the other end of the lake stands (on the rim of the crater, to the left), Castel Gandolfo, embossed against the delicate hues of the distant Campagna. Beneath us, buried in verdure, may be visited the famous Emissarium. On the right, across the lake, and beyond the convent of Palazzuolo (Portuguese Franciscan), rise Rocca di Papa and the Alban Mount. The lake itself, which occupies the crater of an extinct volcano, is 6 miles in circuit, 21 miles long, and 1 miles wide. Concerning its origin, a legend was related to one of the translators of Niebuhr's History,' by a peasant boy, who guided him to Frascati, as follows:

"Where the lake now lies, there once stood a great city. Here, when Jesus Christ came into Italy, He begged alms. None took compassion on Him but an old woman, who gave Him two handfuls of meal. He bade her leave the city; she obeyed: the city instantly sank; and the lake rose in its place." To set the truth of the story beyond dispute, the narrator added, Sta scritto nei libri.'-Niebuhr, 'Hist. of Rome.'

The lakes of Alba and Nemi, like others in the neighbourhood of Rome, are of a peculiar character. In their elevation, lying nestled as it were high up in the bosom of the mountains, they resemble what in Cumberland and Westmoreland are called tarns; but our tarns, like ordinary lakes, have their visible feeders and outlets, their head which receives the streams from the mountain-sides, and their foot by which they discharge themselves, generally in a larger stream, into the valley below. The lakes of Alba and Nemi lie each at the bottom of a perfect basin, and the unbroken rim of this basin allows them no visible outlet. Again, it sometimes happens that lakes so situated have their outlet under ground, and that the stream which drains them appears again to the day after a certain distance, having made its way through the basin of the lake by a tunnel provided for it by nature. This is the case particularly where the prevailing rock is the mountain or metalliferous limestone of Derbyshire, which is full of caverns and fissures; and an instance of it may be seen in the small lake or tarn of Malham in Yorkshire, and another on a much larger scale in the lake of Copais in Bocotia. But the volcanic rocks, in which the lake of Alba lies, do not afford such natural tunnels, or at least they are exceedingly small, and unequal to the discharge of any large quantity of water; so that if any unusual cause swells the lake, it can find no adequate outlet, and rises necessarily to a higher level. The Roman tradition reported that such a rise took place in the year 357; it was caused probably by some volcanic agency, and increased to such a height that the water at last ran over the basin of the hills at its lowest point, and poured down into the Campagna. Traces of such an outlet are said to be still visible; and it is asserted that there are marks of artificial cutting through the rock, as if to enlarge and deepen the passage. This would suppose the ordinary level of the lake in remote times to have been

about two hundred feet higher than it is at present; and if this were so, the actual tunnel was intended not to remedy a new evil, but to alter the old state of the lake for the better, by reducing it for the time to come to a lower level. Possibly the discharge over the edge of the basin became suddenly greater, and so suggested the idea of diverting the water altogether by a different channel. But the whole story of the tunnel, as we have it, is so purely a part of the poetical account of the fall of Veii, that no part of it can be relied on as historical. Admitting that it was wholly worked through the tufa, which is easily wrought, still the labour and expense of such a tunnel must have been considerable; and in the midst of an important war, how could either money or hands have been spared for such a purpose? Again, was the work exclusively a Roman one, or performed by the Romans jointly with the Latins, as an object of common concern to the whole confederacy? The Alban lake can scarcely have been within the domain of Rome; nor can we conceive that the Romans could have been entitled to divert its waters at their pleasure without the consent of the neighbouring cities. But if it were a common work; if the Latins entered heartily into the struggle of Rome with Veii, regarding it as a struggle between their race and that of the Etruscans; if the overflow of the waters of their national lake, the lake which bathed the foot of the Alban mountain, where their national temple stood, and their national solemnities were held, excited an interest in every people of the Latin name, then we may understand how their joint labour and joint contributions may have accomplished the work even in the midst of war; and the Romans, as they disguised on every occasion the true nature of their connection with the Latins, would not fail to represent it as exclusively their own.'-Arnold, 'Hist. of Rome,' vol. i. ch. 23.

Following the beautiful avenue of ilexes, known as the Galleria di Sopra, as far as the Convent of S. Francesco, we shall find a little path winding down through thickets of cistus and genista to the water's edge, where we may examine the Nymphaeum and the famous Emissarium, constructed B.C. 394 during the war with Veii. The extreme beauty of the spot is worthy of the romantic story of its origin. The lake now belongs to Duca di Gallese.

'For seven years and more the Romans had been besieging Veii. Now the summer was far advanced, and all the springs and rivers were very low; when on a sudden the waters of the lake of Alba began to rise; and they rose above its banks, and covered the fields and the houses by the water-side; and still they rose higher and higher, till they reached the top of the hills which surrounded the lake as with a wall, and they overflowed where the hills were lowest; and behold the water of the lake poured down in a mighty torrent into the plain beyond. When the Romans found that the sacrifices which they offered to the gods and powers of the place were of no avail, and their prophets knew not what counsel to give them, and the lake still continued to overflow the hills and to pour into the plain below, then they sent over the sea to Delphi, to ask counsel of the oracle of Apollo, which was famous in every land.

'So the messengers were sent to Delphi. And, meanwhile, the report of the overflowing of the lake was much talked of; so that the people of Veii heard of it. Now, there was an old Veientian, who was skilled in the secrets of the Fates, and it chanced that he was talking from the walls with a Roman centurion whom he had known before in the days of peace; and the Roman spoke of the ruin that was coming upon Veii, and was sorry for the old man his friend; but the old man laughed and said: "Ah! ye think to take Veii; but ye shall not take it till the waters of the Lake of Alba are all spent, and flow out into the sea no more." When the Roman heard this he was much moved by it, for he knew that the old man was a prophet; and the next day he came again to talk with the old man, and he enticed him to come out of the city, and to go aside with him to a lonely place, saying that he had a certain matter of his own concerning which he desired to know the secrets of fate :

and while they were talking together, he seized the old man and carried him off to the Roman camp, and brought him before the generals; and the generals sent him to Rome to the Senate. Then the old man declared all that was in the Fates concerning the overflow of the Lake of Alba; and he told the Senate what they were to do with the water, that it might cease to flow into the sea: "If the lake overflow, and its waters run out into the sea, woe unto Rome; but if it be drawn off, and the waters reach the sea no longer, then it is woe unto Veii." But the Senate would not believe the old man's words till the messengers should come back from Delphi.

After a time the messengers came back, and the answer of the god agreed in all things with the words of the old man at Veii. For it said, "See that the waters be not confined within the basin of the lake; see that they take not their own course and run into the sea. Thou shalt let the water out of the lake, and thou shalt turn it to the watering of thy fields, and thou shalt make courses for it till it be spent and come to nothing." Then the Romans believed the oracle, and they sent workmen, and began to bore through the side of the hills to make a passage for the water. And the water flowed out through this passage underground; and it ceased to flow over the hills; and when it came out from the passage into the plain below, it was received into many courses which had been dug for it, and it watered the fields, and became obedient to the Romans, and was all spent in doing them service, and flowed to the sea no more. And the Romans knew that it was the will of the gods that they should conquer Veii.'-Arnold, Hist. of Rome.'

The entrance to the Emissarium is enclosed within a Nymphaeum of imperial date, such as is beautifully described in the lines of Virgil:

'Fronte sub adversa scopulis pendentibus antrum;
Intus aquae dulces, vivoque sedilia saxo;
Nympharum domus.'

-Aen. i. 167.

A custode (who resides at Castel Gandolfo) is required to open the grating (1 lira). Local folk often set fire to little paper boats, which they call 'fates,' and float them down through the darkness, where they may be seen burning for a long distance. Near the Nymphaeum are ruins of other Roman buildings, known to the country people as Bagni di Diana, Grotte delle Ninfe, &c. Lake trout up to seven pounds may be seen in the tanks here. All probably are remains of the summer retreat of Domitian, who made the lake a pool in his imperial grounds.

Clambering up the hill again, we find the height crested by the fine trees overhanging the wall of the Villa Barberini. The beautiful grounds of this villa may always be visited by strangers, and present a variety of lovely views, from a foreground, half cultivated and half wild, ending in a grand old avenue of stonepines. The ruins, which we see here in such abundance, are remains of the Villa of Pompey, or of the mad masses of building,' as Cicero calls them, belonging to that of Clodius. As we wander here we cannot but call to mind the invocation of Cicero in his speech in behalf of Milo against the owner of this villa.

'And you, hills and groves of Alba, you, I say, I entreat and implore, and you, the ruined shrines of the Albans, so closely knit with all that is revered by the people of Rome, altars which this fellow in his headlong madness had dared to strip and rob of their holy groves, and bury beneath the insane piles of his own buildings. Then it was your shrines, your rites that were honoured, your influence which prevailed, which he had insulted with crime of every kind, and thou, from thy lofty peak, great Jupiter Latiaris, whose lake and