distance; these form a succession of landscapes superior, in the delight produced, to the richest cabinet of Claude's. Tivoli cannot be de'scribed: no true portrait of it exists: all views alter and embellish it : they are poetical translations of the matchless original. Indeed, when you come to detail the hill, some defect of harmony will ever be found in the foreground or distance, something in the swell or channelling of its sides, something in the growth or the grouping of its trees, which painters, referring every object to its effect on canvas, will often condemn as bad Nature. In fact, the beauties of the landscape are all accidental. Nature, intent on more important ends, does nothing exclusively to please the eye. No stream flows exactly as the artist would wish it: he wants mountains where he finds only hills: he wants hills where he finds a plain. Nature gives him but scattered elements, the composition is his own."-Forsyth. Close to the gate of the town, on the right, is the picturesque five-towered Castle, built by Pius II. (1458-64). A street, full of medieval fragments, leads to the Regina and on to the Sibylla, which all artists will prefer, and which has never merited the description of George Sand : "L'affreuse auberge de la Sibylle, un vrai coupe-gorge de l'OperaComique." It stands on the very edge of the precipice :— "The green steep whence Anio leaps In floods of snow-white foam." Macaulay. This is an almost isolated quarter of the town, occupying a distinct point of rock, called Castro Vetere, which is supposed to have been the arx or citadel of ancient Tibur -the Sicelion of Dionysius. Here, on the verge of the abyss, with coloured cloths hanging out over its parapetwall, as we have so often seen it in pictures, stands the beautiful-the most beautiful-little building, which has been known for ages as the Temple of the Sibyl. It was once encircled by 18 Corinthian columns, and of these 10 TEMPLES OF TIVOLI. 195 Close still remain. In its delicate form and its rich orange colour, standing out against the opposite heights of Monte Peschiavatore, it is impossible to conceive anything more picturesque, and the situation is sublime, perched on the very edge of the cliff, overhung with masses of clematis and ivy, through which portions of the ruined arch of a bridge are just visible, while below the river foams and roars. behind the circular temple is another little oblong temple of travertine, with Ionic columns, now turned into the Church of S. Giorgio. Those who contend that the circular temple was dedicated to Vesta, or to Hercules Saxonus, call this the Temple of the Sibyl: others say it is the Temple of Tiburtus, the founder of the city; others, that it was built in honour of Drusilla, sister of Caligula. We know from Varro that the 10th and last of the Sibyls, whose name was Albunea, was worshipped at Tivoli, and her temple seems to be coupled by the poets with the shrine of Tiburtus above the Anio. "Illis ipse antris Anienus fonte relicto, * Nocte sub arcana glaucos exutus amictus, Close to the temples a gate will admit visitors into the beautiful walks begun by General Miollis, and finished under the Papal government. Those who are not equal to a long round, should not enter upon these, and in taking a local guide it should be recollected that there is scarcely the slightest ground for anything they say, and that the names. they give to villas and temples are generally the merest conjecture. Nibby. Dintorni, iii. 205. The walks, however, are charming, and lead by a gradual descent to the caves called the Grottoes of Neptune and the Sirens, into the chasm beneath which the Anio fell magnificently till 1826,* when an inundation which carried away a church and twenty-six houses led the Papal government to divert the course of the river in order to prevent the temples from being carried away also, and to open the new artificial cascade, 320 feet high, in 1834. The Anio at Tivoli, as the Velino at Terni, has extraordinary petrifying properties, and the mass of stalactites and petrified vegetation hanging everywhere from the rocks adds greatly to their wild picturesqueness. "Puisque vous me dites que vous avez sous les yeux tous les guides et itinéraires de l'Italie pour suivre mon humble pérégrination, je dois vous prévenir que, dans aucun vous ne trouverez une description exacte de ces grottes, par la raison que les éboulements, les tremblements de terre, et les travaux indispensables à la sécurité de la ville, menacée de s'écrouler aussi, ou d'être emportée par l'Anio, ont souvent changé leur aspect. Je vais tâcher de vous donner succinctement une idée exacte; car, en dépit des nouveaux itinéraires qui prétendent que ces lieux ont perdu leur principal intérêt, ils sont encore une des plus ravissantes merveilles de la terre. "Je vous ai parlé d'un puits de verdure; c'est ce bocage, d'environ un mille de tour à son sommet, que l'on a arrangé dans l'entonnoir d'un ancien cratère. L'abîme est donc tapissé de plantations vigoureuses, bien libres et bien sauvrages, descendant sur les flancs de montagne presque à pic, au moyen des zig-zags d'un sentier doux aux pieds, tout bordé d'herbes et de fleurs rustiques, soutenu par les terrasses naturelles du roc pittoresque, et se dégageant à chaque instant des bosquets qui l'ombragent pour vous laisser regarder le torrent sous vos pieds, le rocher perpendiculaire à votre droite, et le joli temple de la Sibylle au-dessus de votre tête. C'est à la fois d'une grâce et d'une majesté, d'une âpreté et d'une fraicheur qui résument bien les caractères de la nature italienne. Il me semble qu'il n'y a ici rien d'austère et de terrible qui ne soit tout à coup tempéré on dissimulé par des voluptés souriantes. This fall, though natural, was itself the result of an inundation in A.D. 105, which is recorded by Pliny the Younger. (Ep. viii. 17.) FALLS OF THE ANIO. 197 "Quand on a descendu environ les deux tiers du sentier, il vous conduit à l'entrée d'une grotte latérale complétement inaperçue jusque-là. Cette grotte est un couloir, une galerie naturelle que le torrent a rencontrée dans la roche, et qui semble avoir été une des bouches du cratère dont le puits de verdure tout entier aurait été le foyer principal. "De quelles scènes effroyables, de quelles dévorantes éjaculations, de quels craquements, de quels rugissements, de quels bouillonnements affreux cette ravissante cavité de Tivoli a dû être le théâtre ! Il me semblait qu'elle devait son charme actuel à la pensée, j'allais presque dire au souvenir évoqué en moi, des ténébreuses horreurs de sa formation première. C'est là une ruine du passé autrement imposante que les débris des temples et des aqueducs; mais les ruines de la nature ont encore sur celles de nos œuvres cette supériorité que le temps bâtit sur elles, comme des monuments nouveaux, les merveilles de la végétation, les frais édifices de la forme et de la couleur, les véritables temples de la vie. "Par cette caverne, un bras d'Anio se précipite et roule, avec un bruit magnifique, sur des lames de rocher qu'il s'est chargé d'aplanir et de creuser à son usage. A deux cents pieds plus haut, il traverse tranquillement la ville et met en mouvement plusieurs usines; mais, tout au beau milieu des maisons et des jardins, il rencontre cette coulée volcanique, s'y engouffre, et vient se briser au bas du grand rocher, sur les débris de son couronnement détaché, qui gisent là dans un désordre grandiose." -George Sand, La Daniella. "Above the cold deep dell into which you dive to see the mysteries of Anio's urn, raised high on a pedestal of sharply-cut rock and seated as on a throne of velvet verdure, towers, like a pinnacle projected on the deep blue sky, the graceful temple of the Sibyl, that most exquisite specimen of art crowning nature, in perfect harmony of beauties."Cardinal Wiseman. The small ruins of two Roman bridges were rendered visible when the course of the river was changed. Ascending again the upper road beyond the falls, guides, on no authority whatever, point out some ruins as those of the Villa of Vopiscus, a poet of the time of Domitian. That he had a property at Tibur, we know from the verses of Statius, who has left a pleasant account of the villa of his friend: his grounds appear to have extended on both sides of the river. Ingenium quam mite solo! quæ forma beatis Hic æterna quies, nullis hic jura procellis, Nusquam fervor aquis. Datur hic transmittere visus Silv. 1. 3. We now turn round the base of Monte Catillo to that of Monte Peschiavatore and the point opposite the Cascatelle, which is known to have borne the name of Quintiliolo in the 10th century, and where a little church is still called La Madonna di Quintiliolo. It is possible this name may be derived from Quintilius Varus, and that his villa, mentioned by Horace (ode 1. 18) as near the town, may have been in this neighbourhood. Remains of a sumptuous villa with inlaid pavements and statues-especially two Fauns now in the Vatican-have certainly been found here. Nothing can exceed the loveliness of the views from the road which leads from Tivoli by the chapel of S. Antonia to the Madonna di Quintiliolo. On the opposite height rises the town with its temples, its old houses and churches, clinging to the edge of the cliffs, which are overhung with |