S. AUGUSTINE AT OSTIA.

45

iniquities which led to the death of Messalina. In his time the sand was already beginning to accumulate at the mouth of the Tiber, and Ostia was soon after ruined, paling before the prosperity of Porto. In consequence of the changes in the mouth of the Tiber, which has no longer the graceful course and the woody banks described by Virgil, it is difficult to ascertain the site of the ancient harbour. It is even disputed through how many channels the river entered the sea; Dionysius, in his "Periegesis," declares that it had only one; Ovid alludes to two.

"Ostia contigerat, qua se Tiberinus in altum

Dividit, et campo liberiore natat."-Fast. iv. 291.

"Fluminis ad flexum veniunt ; Tiberina priores

Ostia dixerunt, unde sinister abit."-Fast. iv. 329.

But from these classical recollections the Christian pilgrim will turn with enthusiasm to later memories, as precious and beautiful as any that the Campagna of Rome can afford, and he will see Augustine, with his holy mother, Monica, sitting, as in Ary Scheffer's picture, at "a curtain window," discoursing alone, together, very sweetly, and, "forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth to those things which are before," inquiring in the presence of the Truth of what sort the eternal life of the saints was to be, and "gasping with the mouths of their hearts" after the heavenly streams of the fountain of life. Then, as the world and all its delights become contemptible in the nearness into which their converse draws them to the unseen, he will hear the calm voice of Monica in the twilight telling her son that her earthly hopes and mission are fulfilled, and that she is only waiting to depart, "since that is accomplished for which she had desired to linger awhile in this life, that she

might see him a Catholic Christian before she died." He will remember that five days after this conversation, Monica lay in Ostia upon her death-bed, and waking from a long swoon, and looking fixedly on her two sons standing by her, "with grief amazed," said to Augustine, "Here thou shalt bury thy mother;" and that to those who asked whether she was not afraid to leave her body so far from her own city, she replied, "Nothing is far to God; nor is it to be feared lest at the end of the world He should not recognize whence to raise me up." And here "on the ninth day of her sickness, and the fifty-sixth year of her age, was that religious and holy soul freed from the body." The bones of Monica were moved afterwards to Rome, to the church which was dedicated to her son's memory; but it is Ostia which will always be connected with the last scenes of that most holy life, and at Ostia that Augustine describes the "mighty sorrow which flowed into his heart," the tears and outcries of "the boy Adeodatus,"* as the beloved mother sank into her last sleep; how Euodius calmed their grief by taking up the Psalter, and how all the mourning household sang the psalm, "I will sing of mercy and judgment to thee, O Lord," around the silent corpse; and lastly, how the body was carried to the burial, and they "went and returned without tears-for the bitterness of sorrow could not exude out of the heart."

With these recollections in our minds, let us leave Ostia. It is a curious and deeply interesting, but not a beautiful place, and it is a strange contrast, when we have returned once more to the old fortress, and, turning sharply round its walls, traversed the two miles of desolate campagna between

• The son of Augustine.

APPROACH TO CASTEL FUSANO.

47

it and the pine-wood, to find in Castel Fusano an absolute climax of poetical loveliness. The peasants do all their field labour here in gangs, men and women together, and most picturesque they look, for the costumes which are. dying out in Rome are universally worn here, and all the women have their heads shaded by white panni, and are dressed in bright pink and blue petticoats and laced bodices. They have hard work to fight against the deep-rooted asphodels, which overrun whole pastures and destroy the grass, and they have also the constantly recurring malaria to struggle against, borne up every night by the poisonous vapours of the marsh, which renders Ostia almost uninhabitable even to the natives in summer, and death to the stranger who attempts to pass the night there.

A bridge, decorated with the arms of the Chigis, takes us across the last arm of the Stagno, with a huge avenue of pines ending on a green lawn, in the midst of which stands the mysterious, desolate Chigi palace, occupying the site of the beloved Laurentine villa of Pliny. No road, no path

even, leads to its portal; but all around is green turf, and it looks like the house where the enchanted princess went to sleep with all her attendants for five hundred years, and where she must be asleep still. Round the house, at intervals, stand gigantic red vases, like Morgiana's oil-jars, filled with yuccas and aloes. Over the parapet wall stone figures look down, set there to scare away the Saracens, it is said, but for centuries they have seen nothing but a few stranger tourists or sportsmen, and the wains of beautiful meek-eyed oxen drawing timber from the forest. All beyond is a vast expanse of wood, huge pines stretching out their immense green umbrellas over the lower trees; stupendous ilexes contorted by time into a thousand strange vagaries; bay-trees bowed with age, and cork-trees grey with lichen— patriarchs even in this patriarchal forest. And beneath these greater potentates such a wealth of beautiful shrubs as is almost indescribable-arbutus, lentisc, phillyrea; tall Mediterranean heath, waving vast plumes of white blossom far overhead, sweet daphne, scenting all around with its pale pink blossoms; myrtle growing in thickets of its own; smilax and honeysuckle, leaping from tree to tree, and forming themselves into a thousand lovely wreaths, and, beneath all, such a carpet of pink cyclamen, that the air is heavy with its perfume, and we may sit down and fill our hands and baskets with the flowers without moving from a single spot. A road, a mile long, paved with blocks of lava plundered from the Via Severiana, leads from the back of the palace to the sea, and we must follow it, partly to see the famous rosemary which Pliny describes, and which still grows close to the shore in such abundance, and partly for the sake of a glimpse of the grand Mediterranean itself (so

SHORE OF CASTEL FUSANO.

49

refreshing after the close air of Roman streets), which rolls in here with long waves upon a heavy sandy shore, where a few fishermen have their huts, built of myrtle from the wood, and bound together with the reeds of the Stagno. But all the forest is delightful, and one cannot wander enough into its deep recesses, where some giant of the wood is reflected in a solitary pool, or where the trees reach overhead into long aisles like a vast cathedral of Nature. If time can be given, it is well worth while to follow on horseback the heavy road which leads continuously through the forest to Porto d'Anzio, by Ardea and Pratica; but in this case it will be necessary to have permission to sleep at Castel Fusano. Such an excursion will give leisure to dwell upon the beauties which are generally seen so hurriedly. Virgil should be taken as a companion, who describes the very pines, which cast such long shadows, in his "Æneid,"

"Evertunt actas ad sidera pinus,"

and with the poet as a fellow-traveller, perhaps the very desertion and solitude will act as a charm, and the intense silence, only broken by the songs of the birds and the chirp of the cicala.

* xi. 136.

VOL. I.

4