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Grey towers rise out of this, ruins all overhung with green, and in the midst of the strange circle we may see a silver spring gushing forth and glowing through the Pontine marshes, ending in a sparkling lake far away by the sea-shore. We ask in astonishment what this curious garlanded circle is with its many green hillocks, and are told it is Ninfa Ninfa, the Pompeii of the middle ages."-Gregorovius.

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Instead of returning the same way, it is best to descend from hence to the valley, clambering down through the broken rock and sliding shale, clinging to the myrtle and Judas bushes, into the depths where, nestling under the hill,

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is Ninfa, almost as entirely a ruin as Norba itself. It is an unspeakably quiet scene of sylvan beauty, and there is something unearthly about it which possesses and absorbs every sense.

If fairies exist anywhere, surely Ninfa is their capital; Ninfa, where Flora holds her court, where the only inhabitants are the roses and lilies, and all the thousand flowers which grow so abundantly in the deserted streets, where honeysuckle and jessamine fling their garlands through the windows of every house, and where the very altars of the churches are thrones for the flame-coloured valerian. Outside the walls you would scarcely believe it was a town, so encrusted in verdure is every building, that the houses look like green mounds rising out of the plain. It is as if Nature had built the city for a perpetual Feast of Tabernacles. One tall tower stands near the entrance and watches its reflection

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in the still waters of a pool white with lilies and fringed with forget-me-not.

By the road-side a crystal spring rises

in great abundance in a little basin of ancient brickwork, and falls into the pool, where it turns a mill, and a little farther on becomes a lake, on which Pliny mentions the floating islands in his time, which were called Saltuares, because they were said to move to the time of dancing feet. An inscription on the mill tells that it was built by one of the Gaetani, lord of the place, in 1765. The town must have been inhabited then, yet none can tell now the story of its desertion. It has belonged to the Gaetani since the thirteenth century, and Pope Alexander III. was consecrated here, September 20, 1159. From the tower, say the natives of Norma, "la bella Ninfa," who was disobedient to her parents, flung herself into the pool to evade becoming the sposina of the unsympathetic partito they had chosen for her, and ever since the name of the little city has kept her memory alive. Let it be so, though etymologists suggest the little river Nymphæus as a godfather. The water-nymphs will avenge all insults by the fever-bearing vapours of their lake. Ninfa can never be rebuilt. Even the shepherds cannot dare to pass the night there. Death, garlanded with flowers, is death still. Gregory I., who built a church here in 1216, to "St. Mary of the Myrtle-branch," dedicated it in vain. No sound will ever be heard but the hum of the myriad insects which float amongst the flower-possessed streets and houses, the croaking of the green frogs in the surrounding waters, and the everlasting sighing and rustling of the wind in the tall bulrushes.

"Here is Ninfa, the fairy-like ruin of a town, with its walls, towers, churches, convents, and dwellings half sunk in the marsh, and buried under thickest ivy. Truly this place looks even more charming than Pompeii, for there the houses stare like crumbling mummies, dragged from the volcanic ashes. But over Ninfa waves a balmy sea of flowers;

THE CITY OF FLOWERS.

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every building, every wall, every church, every house is veiled with ivy, and on all the ruins wave the purple banners of the triumphant god of spring.

"It causes an indescribable impression to enter this ivy town, to wander down the grassy, flowery streets, between the walls where the wind plays in the leaves, and no voice is heard, but the cry of the raven in the tower, the splash of the foaming stream Nymphæus, the rustling of the tall reeds by the pond, and the melodious singing and sighing of the blades of grass all around.

"All the streets are filled with flowers, which seem to march in procession to the ruined churches. They climb on every tower, they lie laughing and smiling in all the desolate windows, they barricade every door, for within the houses reside elves, fairies, water-nymphs, and a thousand charming spirits of the fable world. Yellow marigolds, mallows, sweet narcissus; grey-bearded thistles who once dwelt here as monks; white lilies, who were nuns in their lifetime; wild roses, laurestinus, masticks, tall ferns, wreaths of clematis and bramble; the red fox-gloves, which look like enchanted Saracens ; the fantastic caperplant growing in the clefts of the buildings, the sweet wall-flower, the myrtle, and the fragrant mint; brilliant yellow broom, and dark ivy which creeps over all the ruins, and falls over the walls like green cascades, — yes, one may fling oneself into this sea of flowers, quite intoxicated by the perfume, and the most charming fairy power enchains the soul.

"The walls of the town are still standing and encircle it like a great ring, but they are everywhere covered thickly with ivy, and only here and there peeps out a crumbling pinnacle on a square ruined tower. The gates of the town are no less barred and barricaded by the wild vine, the ivy, and the bramble, as if the flowers in Ninfa feared some enemy who wanted to break in upon them, as formerly the Saracen, or the soldiers of Barbarossa, or of the Duke of Alba, and the Colonna. They have entrenched themselves behind these ivy walls; perhaps it may be the swarms of meteors, or will-o'-the-wisps from the Pontine marshes, who by night besiege or storm this enchanted town to carry off the flower spirits into the marshes.

"Many squares and many streets are still standing, with their ruined houses covered with an ivy web, many palaces of a half-gothic architecture, once the dwellings of rich nobles. The churches, the ruins of four or five of which remain, look very strange. I never saw such fantastic ruins; but how can one describe them in words? How shall I Lepict such a brown shattered bell tower, with round windows, or winlows divided by small pillars, with its frieze of the middle ages iormed of sharp-pointed tiles, and with its romantic decorations of ivy

and flowers waving in the wind? or how shall I picture the ruins of the arched niches, or the nave of the church, all overhung with tapestries of flowers?

"These churches are old, they belong to the eleventh or twelfth century if they are not of a still earlier date, for they are built in the simple basilica style. In their deserted space the flowers worship now, and the censers are swung by the bacchanalian roses. From the walls, or perhaps from an ivy-hung tribune, some old fresco paintings still look down. They represent early Christians with palms in their hands, and instruments of martyrdom by their side. With faded nimbi on their pale foreheads, in golden dalmatica, with stole upon their shoulders, they look down morosely from behind their veils of flowers, and seem shocked by the heathen rites which the children of Flora are daring to celebrate in these deserted churches.

"The beetle hums continually his romance of summer, and the cricket chirps incessantly her Anacreontic love-songs. The flowers and beetles yield up these temples no more. A complaint was once brought to S. Bernard that countless swarms of flies had taken possession of a church which was just about to be consecrated, and would not leave it: 'I excommunicate them,' said he; and behold, when the messengers returned to the church all the flies lay dead. But a saintly exorcist would hardly succeed in excommunicating the flowers from the churches of Ninfa, and though the painted martyrs look angry, the ivy is already creeping up and will soon have entirely veiled and walled them in. Of many there is now nothing more visible than the hem of a robe, and the name in old Roman characters :-S. Xystus or S. Cesarius and S. Laurentius. I went into the last of these churches-what a sight! The original mosaic of the pavement with its arabesques and circles or squares seemed now to be imitated by living flowers, and from the shrine where the bones of the saint once lay the Indian vine waves joyously with its bluish red berries.

"Here also the counterpart of Pompeii is not wanting. As there the classic age expresses itself decidedly in the bright frescoes, so in Ninfa the Christian epoch of humanity speaks from the paintings on the walls of the ruins. There they are the attractive forms of life and pleasure: Cupids fishing in the pool, dancing satyrs, crickets driving a little chariot, hovering Bacchantes clashing cymbals, or holding in their hands a mysterious casket, or bearing juicy figs upon a dish, but in the Pompeii of the middle ages the frescoes only represent death and woe. Instead of those cheerful pictures, we find here the melancholy figures of the catacombs, the mythic gods of suffering and martyrdom, in the flames,

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