cuite, représentant le combat d'un lion et d'un dragon. Je dédaignai de remplir mes poches d'autres débris ; il y en avait trop pour me tenter. La colline n'est qu'un amas de ces débris, et la pluie qui lave les che mins en met chaque jour à nu de nouvelles couches. Ce sol, quoique souvent fouillé en divers endroits, doit cacher encore des richesses.

"Le plateau supérieur est une vaste bruyère. C'était jadis, probablement, le beau quartier de la ville, car cette steppe est semée de dalles ou de moellons de marbre blanc. Le chemin était, sans doute, la belle rue patricienne. Des fondations de maisons des deux côtés attestent qu'elle était étroite, comme toutes celles des villes antiques. Au bout de cette plaine, le chemin aboutit au théâtre. Il est petit, mais d'une jolie coupe romaine. L'orchestre, les degrés de l'hémicycle sont entiers, ainsi que la base des constructions de la scène et les marches latérales pour y monter. L'avant-scène et les voies de dégagement nécessaires à l'action scénique sont sur place et suffisamment indiquées par leurs bases, pour faire comprendre l'usage de ces théâtres, la place des choeurs et même celle du décor.

"Derrière le théâtre est une piscine parfaitement entière sauf la voûte. On est là en pleine ville romaine. On n'a plus qu'à atteindre le faîte de la montagne pour trouver la partie pélasgique, la ville de Télégone, fils d'Ulysse et de Circé.

"Là, ces ruines prennent un autre caractère, un autre intérêt. C'est la cité primitive, c'est-à-dire la citadelle escarpée ; repaire d'une bande d'aventuriers, berceau d'une societé future. Les temples et les tombeaux des ancêtres y étaient sous la protection du fort. La montagne, semée de bases de colonnes qui indiquent l'emplacement des édifices sacrés, et bordée de blocs bruts dont l'arrangement dessine encore des ramparts, des poternes, et des portes, s'incline rapidement vers d'autres gorges bientôt relevées en collines et en montagnes plus hautes. Ce sont les monts Albains. Dans une de ces prairies humides où paissent les troupeaux, était le lac Régille, on ne sait pas où précisément. sort de la jeune Rome, aux prises avec celui des antiques nationalités du Latium, a été décidé là, quelque part, dans ces agrestes solitudes. Soixante-dix mille hommes ont combattu pour être ou n'être pas, et le destin de Rome, qui en ce terrible jour, écrasa les forces de trente cités latines, a passé sur l'Agro Tusculan comme l'orage, dont la trace est vite effacée par l'herbe et les fleurs nouvelles.”—George Sand, La Daniella.

Le

Behind the theatre rises the steep hill which was once crowned by the Arx of Tusculum, which was of great strength in early times. It was besieged by the Æquians in B.C.

457, and only taken when the garrison were starved out. In B.C. 374 it was successfully defended against the Latins. Dionysius mentions the advantage it received from its lofty position, which enabled its defenders to see a Roman army as it issued from the Porta Latina. The view is indeed most beautiful, over plain and mountains, the foreground formed by the remains of

"the white streets of Tusculum,

The proudest town of all,"

scattered sparsely amongst the furze and thorn-bushes, but the ruins which now exist belong chiefly not to early times but to the medieval fortress of the Dukes of Tusculum.

Including the Arx, the town of Tusculum was about 1 mile in circuit. The Roman poets ascribe the foundation of the city to Telegonus, the son of Circe and Ulysses.

"Inter Aricinos Albanaque tempora constant,
Factaque Telegoni moenia celsa manu."

Tusculum was remarkable for the steadiness of its friendship for Rome, which was only interrupted in B.C. 379, when in consequence of a number of Tusculans having been

Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome.

↑ See also Horace, Epode i. 29, and Statius, Silv. i. 3, 83.

found amongst the prisoners made in the Volscian campaign, war was declared, and Camillus was sent against the city.

"But the Tusculans would not accept this declaration of hostilities, and opposed the Roman arms in a manner that has scarcely been paralleled before or since. When Camillus entered their territory he found the peasants engaged in their usual avocations; provisions of all sorts were offered to his army, the gates of the town were standing open; and as the legions defiled through the streets in all the panoply of war, the citizens within, like the countrymen without, were seen intent upon their daily business, the schools resounded with the hum of pupils, and not the slightest token of hostile preparation could be discerned. Then Camillus invited the Tusculan dictator to Rome. When he appeared before the senate in the Curia Hostilia, not only were the existing treaties with Tusculum confirmed, but the Roman franchise was shortly afterwards bestowed upon it, a privilege at that time rarely conferred." -Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography.

"In the times of the Latin League, from the fall of Alba to the battle of the Lake Regillus, Tusculum was the most prominent town in Latium. It suffered, like the other towns in Latium, a complete eclipse during the late. Republic and the Imperial times; but in the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, under the Counts of Tusculum, it be came again a place of great importance and power, no less than seven popes of the house of Tusculum having sat in the chair of S. Peter. The final destruction of the city is placed by Nibby, following the ac count given in the records of the Podestà of Reggio, in 1191, on the 1st of April, in which year the city was given up to the Romans by the Emperor Henry VI., and, after the withdrawal of the German garrison, was sacked and razed to the ground. Those of the inhabitants who escaped collected round the Church of S. Sebastian, at the foot of the hill, in the district called Frascati, whence the town of Frascati took its origin and name."-Burn, The Roman Campagna.

"We had wandered long among those hills,

Watching the white goats on precipitous heights,
Half-hid among the bushes, or their young
Tending new-yeaned and we had paused to hear
The deep-toned music of the convent bells,
And wound through many a verdant forest path,
Gathering the crocus and anemone,

With that fresh gladness, which when flowers are new

In the first spring, they bring us, till at last
We issued out upon an eminence,

Commanding prospect large on every side;
But largest where the world's great city lay,
Whose features, undistinguishable now,
Allowed no recognition, save where the eye
Could mark the white front of the Lateran
Facing this way, or rested on the dome,
The broad stupendous dome, high over all.
And as a sea around an island's roots
Spreads, so the level champaign round the town
Stretched every way, a level plain, and green
With the new vegetation of the spring;
Nor by the summer ardours scorched as yet,
Which shot from southern suns, too soon dry up
The beauty and the freshness of the plains;
But to the right the ridge of Apennine,

Its higher farther summits all snow-crowned,

Rose, with white clouds above them, as might seem Another range of more aërial hills.

These things were at a distance, but more near
And at our feet signs of the tide of life,
That once was here, and now had ebbed away-
Pavements entire, without one stone displaced,
Where yet there had not rolled a chariot-wheel
For many hundred years; rich cornices,
Elaborate friezes of rare workmanship,

And broken shafts of columns, that along

This highway side lay prone; vaults that were rooms,

And hollowed from the turf, and cased in stone,

Seats and gradations of a theatre,

Which emptied of its population now

Shall never be refilled and all these things,

Memorials of the busy life of man,

Or of his ample means for pomp and pride,

Scattered among the solitary hills,

And lying open to the sun and showers,

And only visited at intervals

By wandering herds, or pilgrims like ourselves
From distant lands; with now no signs of life,
Save where the goldfinch built his shallow nest

CAMALDOLI.

'Mid the low bushes, or where timidly

The rapid lizard glanced between the stones-
All saying that the fashion of this world
Passes away; that not Philosophy

Nor Eloquence can guard their dearest haunts
From the rude touch of desecrating Time.
What marvel, when the very fanes of God,
The outward temples of the Holy One,
Claim no exemption from the general doom,
But lie in ruinous heaps; when nothing stands,
Nor may endure to the end, except alone

The spiritual temple built with living stones?”

Archbishop Trench.

113

Descending from the Arx, a path to the right leads. through woods full of flowers to the Camaldoli, but nobody can pass the cross at the foot of the hill on which the convent stands, upon pain of excommunication. Here Cardinal Passionei lived in retirement, and occupied himself by collecting eight hundred inscriptions found amongst the ruins of Tusculum.

The whole of the inhabitants of the Camaldoli were carried off during an audacious outbreak of brigandage in the reign of Pius VII., but escaped during a skirmish with the Papal troops sent to their rescue. Since then the buildings have been surrounded with defensive walls with loopholes for the discharge of fire-arms. The aspect of the place is beautifully described by Cardinal Wiseman.

"The English college possesses a country house, deliciously situated in the village of Monte-Porzio. Like most villages in the Tusculan territory, this crowns a knoll, which in this instance looks as if it had been kneaded up from the valleys beneath it, so round, so shapely, so richly bosoming does it swell upwards; and so luxuriously clothed is it with the three gifts whereby 'men are multiplied' (Ps. iv. 8), that the village and its church seem not to sit upon a rocky summit, but to be half sunk into the lap of the olive, the vine, and the waving corn, that reach the very houses. While the entrance and front of this villa are 8

VOL. I.