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above it. Within, facing a little lawn, are the western façade. of the church, and the grey front of the monastery, which now contains only 30 monks instead of the 300 to which it is accustomed.

"In contemplating such a monastery as this, so separated from the world, a peculiar feeling is awakened. For nowhere is the past so perfectly real and almost tangible. Time seems indeed to have stood still, and the moral atmosphere of a long past age and race to have remained collected here. The former occupations of the monks, singing, prayer, silence, work, they continue to the present day, in the same garb, in the same spot, and with the same monotonous activity. The history of the world has changed, but they take no part in it, it is enough for them that the church, the bishops, the pope at Rome, continue as before. Their immediate surroundings are unchanged, Veroli, Posi, and San Giovanni, with their churches and saints, still stand as before; pilgrims knock at the door of the monastery as before. The fear of the Saracens, the robber counts, and the condottieri no longer torments them, but has given way to the dread of revolution, more pitiless than robberchief or Saracen. For formerly it was a question of plundering and devastation with fire and sword, now it is existence or non-existence. Besides this the monastic lands are diminished, and thereby the external influence of the church contracted. Indeed such a monastery is like a parchment chronicle, wherein the miniatures, like shadows, are animated with life."-Gregorovius.

Tradition derives the name of Casamari from casa amara, the bitter house, because of the perpetual silence which is enforced there; but the name is really Casa Marii, since it was founded by a member of the famous family of Arpino. It first belonged to Benedictines, but was given to Cistercians in 1152 by Eugenius III.

The foundation-stone of the church was laid in `1203. It is approached by a staircase which leads to an arched portico. Here, on the right, is a statue of Pius VI., and, opposite it, an inscription in honour of the benefits conferred upon Casamari by Pius IX. The interior is lofty, simple,

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and severe. The delicate cream-coloured tint of the travertine is as fresh as when it was built. There are no pictures, niches, or chapels, and it might, as Gregorovius observes, be a Protestant cathedral in Germany. The nave is separated from the aisles by seven clustered columns, on the capitals of which are some curious masonic-marks. At the fifth column a screen of wrought-iron cuts off the clausura. On the floor are curious chains of tiles ornamented with the bees of the Barberini.

From the right transept we entered the beautiful cloister, surrounded by Romanesque arches, with columns all different, as at the Lateran. The ceiling of the chapter-house is supported by splendid clustered columns, and is marvellously well preserved. Here also we seemed to be in the north and it was unnatural to emerge upon the stony hillside, and look upon the delicate amethystine distances, lighted up by a sky without any shadows. Our visit was a great amusement to the monks, who were very anxious to make the most of their lions. Ladies were not allowed to see the chapter-house, but were shown the ancient vaulted Refectory supported by huge columns, and above it the Dormitory, now turned into a vast granary.

As the sun was setting we drove away from the melancholy valley of the Amasena, with its dismal poplars, and ascended into the hills towards Veroli, the ancient Verulæ. This is a magnificently situated city, and most picturesque externally. Our horses had to scramble like cats up its semiperpendicular street, and finally fell down on one another, which gave us time to walk out beyond the gates towards Rome, and see the last after-glow over the valley, standing beneath the crowd of strangely clustered houses and old

Romanesque churches which line the natural rock-ramparts of the town. There is a great Seminario at Veroli, and the road was crowded with ecclesiastics, scholars in their different dresses of miniature priests, watched over by their professors; and following them were canons and curati, and even the bishop of Veroli, attended by his footmen, as if he were taking a walk on the Pincio.

Alatri had a weird look as we ascended its hill in the starlight the Titanic platform of the Cyclopean walls engraved upon the clear sky. In its narrow streets few people were still moving and work was over. Only some young men arm-in-arm were singing stornelli in loud ringing voices. Close under the shadow of the old fortress, which forms so great a feature of the street with its Gothic windows and cornices, we found a little inn, kept by a most obliging landlady, with two handsome daughters in the national dress.

We were astir early in the morning, and went up the hill, while the goats were being milked for breakfast, to have another look at the grand Cyclopean walls, and by the time we returned all Alatri was awake, crowds of women in their white panni, and men in their red waistcoats, pointed sandals, and with bunches of flowers stuck in their high felt hats, were thronging the streets, and the chief labour of life here was begun, the weaving of woollen cloth for jackets and the great gaily-striped blankets so much worn by the poorer classes in this district. Our horses waited for us outside the gates, for they would have fallen on the lava pavement, though they scrambled easily up the jagged rocks, and lanes like torrent beds of loose stones piled one upon another, to which we afterwards came. Soon after

IL POZZO DI SANTULLA.

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leaving Alatri, the bridle-road into the mountains enters the wildest country imaginable: no vegetation, save here and there a tuft of wild lavender, and some of the small yellow marigolds which Italians call "primo fiore," grows upon the scorched rocks. The path skirts a ravine, winding high amongst its precipices, where a false step would be fatal. Steeper and steeper becomes the stony way, and wilder and wilder the valley, till at length Collepardo comes in sight, a large village, perched on a cliff, at a tremendous height above the Cosa, with black broken walls (proving that even this poverty-stricken place was not safe from robbers), a ruined gate earthquake-rent, and here and there some tiny gardens and a few sad-looking olive-trees, planted where the scanty soil will allow.

About a mile from the village (by a path which turns to the left before entering it) is the strange hole called the Pozzo di Santulla. It is a pit in the rock, about 400 yards round and 200 feet deep, hung with vast stalactites and fringed at the top with ilex. Once (as may be seen in a published engraving by Don Baldassare Buoncompagni) it was filled with trees, though there could only have been room for very few now all these are gone, and the bottom is covered with grass. It is quite inaccessible except by ropes, but goats are occasionally let down, and drawn up when they have eaten all there is. If a tiger, as is said, once existed here, it must soon have died of hunger. The Pozzo, says tradition, was once a vast threshing-floor, on which the people impiously threshed corn upon the festa of the Assumption, when the outraged Madonna caused it to sink into the earth with all who were upon it, and it remains to this day a memorial of her wrath. Alas! there is little doubt that the

pit was really caused by some strange volcanic action. The account of this place in Murray's Handbook, describing it as nearly half a mile in circuit, &c. (it is here called "Pozzo d' Antullo "--but of course the description is intended for La Santulla), is strangely exaggerated, and will mislead many travellers. Still it is a spot worth visiting, and very weird and amazing. The graphic description of Gregorovius applies to its former condition.

"Nature has brought together many wonders near Collepardo, for only a short distance from the stalactite cave is that celebrated well of Italy the Pozzo di Santulla, close by the road to the Carthusian monastery. After a half-hour's ride (from the village) between gardens and over an elevated rocky plain, I found myself suddenly on the edge of a steep circular pit, which vividly recalled the great Latomia of Syracuse. About fifteen hundred paces in circumference, this strange well sinks to a depth of over a hundred and fifty feet, and presents at the bottom a dark green forest of tree-tops and creepers, which when a breeze is wafted down, ripple like the waves of the sea.

"The sun shed streaks of light from the clearest sky into its depths, and I saw white butterflies merrily playing about over this sunken forest. Blooming creepers hung from the branches of these trees, which are said to rise more than thirty feet from the bottom, and yet from above only look like bushes. The inaccessible flowers, the wild labyrinthine paths through the dark thicket, the fluttering of the birds which inhabit it, entice the fancy, which represents this underground magic grove as a fairy paradise or a garden for Oberon and Titania. There abundant springs take their mysterious course, and keep the plants continually green, while the basin draws down and collects the night dews. With admiration the eye follows the walls down to the giddy depth; they take strange and fantastic forms like stalactites, and are overgrown with dwarf oaks, golden-flowered broom, and mastick bushes. They are adorned with all colours of the rainbow, for the rock is now soft silver grey, now burning red, again dark blue, yellow, and deep black. This well, together with the wild mountain scenery which surrounds the horizon, forms a scene which words would fail to express; here, the brown district of Collepardo looking melancholy behind green trees; there, long vistas of rocky valleys; further off, gigantic and quiet mountains majestic in form, with solitary golden eagles soaring round the untrodden peaks, or fantastic mists spreading their white veils around.

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