mortality began amongst the regiment of Zouaves who had so courageously devoted themselves to the dead, and almost all of them perished -chiefly, it is said, because, owing to the rapid succession of deaths, and the impossibility of finding grave-diggers, the corpses buried on the first day in one large grave had to be packed to give more space!

On the 13th the cholera catastrophe at Albano had reached such a degree that the most necessary relations of social existence might be said to be annihilated. With the exception of the Gonfaloniere, who took flight early, all the local authorities were either ill or dead, and the Pope had sent out Monsignor Apolloni, as special commissary, to assume the government of the town. The last of the bakers who had the courage to remain in Albano and carry on his trade died on the 12th, so that to prevent the surviving inhabitants from starving, bread and other provisions had to be sent out from Rome.

After the 14th the cholera began to abate, having carried off more than one-tenth of the population.-From the Letters of the "Times Correspondent."

The monument of Cardinal Altieri is the only object of interest in the Cathedral, which stands in a small square behind the principal street. It is inscribed :—

Ludovicus de Alteriis, Card. S.E.R. Episc. Albanus, Pastor bonus cum in medium gregem dira sæviente lue advolasset, præclarum vitæ cursum morte magnanima consummavit sanctissime,

III Id. Aug. MDCCCLXVII. Vixit annos LXII.

Celebrated among the bishops of Albano was Pietro Aldobrandini (S. Pietro Igneo), who walked through fire at Settimo in 1067, to prove a charge of simony against Pietro di Pavia, bishop of Florence.

The festa of S. Pancrazio-the patron of Albano-is kept here with great solemnity.

"From the cathedral issued, at an early hour, a procession whose length almost corresponded to that of the town itself. There were little girls in tinsel finery, with butterfly-wings, intended to represent angels, and chubby little boys who toddled along in the disguise of Carmelite friars, curiously contrasting with the gravity of friars full grown, bearded

capuchins, venerable canons, and full-armed soldiers. There was the Gonfaloniere with his two councillors; the local magistracy, in long robes of black silk and velvet lined with silver tissue, with flat black caps, looking not unlike some of Titian's portraits; and another conspicuous group, very different, formed by young girls in long white satin dresses, with veils covering not only the head but the lower part of the face, each attended by a buxom matron in the gayest local costume-a brightcoloured bodice, white linen veil folded square over the brow, and ample folds of muslin round the largely-developed bust, their full-blown charms further set off by a profusion of gold ornaments chiselled in a style resembling those in Etruscan museums precisely such figures as Pinelli and many other artists have delighted to introduce in genre pictures illustrative of Italian life and scenery. The younger females were those selected to receive small dowries out of a fund appropriated to charity, such donations being annually conferred at the religious seasons in Albano. Next to the female group came about a hundred members of a lay fraternity in their peculiar costume with hoods, carrying large crucifixes and banners painted on both sides with sacred figures life-size, and, finally, the principal group of clergy, the first in dignity supporting under a crimson canopy a bust of silver-gilt containing the skull of S. Pancrazio."-Hemans' Catholic Italy.

On the right of the main street, on entering the Roman gate, is the Villa Doria, whose grounds, abounding in ancient ilex groves, and in fragments of ruin of imperial date, are of the most extreme beauty.

About a mile below the town the ruins of the Castello Savelli crown a conical hill above the plain, and form a pleasant object for a short excursion. The great family

of the Savelli continued to be lords of Albano till the middle of the sixteenth century, when tragical circumstances led to their extinction. The young and handsome heir of the house was betrothed to the daughter of the Marchese del Vasto of Naples, who had a dowry of 800,000 crowns. But while waiting for his bride to attain her thirteenth year, when the marriage was to be solemnized, he became passionately in love with a beautiful young girl of Albano, of humble but respectable parentage. Her father, fearing the

addresses of his young lord, hastened her marriage with one Cristoforo, a vassal of the Savelli. But the young count continued to persecute her with his attentions, took a house. immediately opposite to the married pair, and wrote con- . stantly in the hope of softening the object of his love. She remained faithful to her husband, to whom she showed all the letters of the count: but Cristoforo constantly mistrusted her, and was full of jealousies. One day he borrowed her flounced petticoat (guardinfante) and other attire, and forced her to write a letter to Savelli appointing an assignation, persuading her that he only intended to humiliate him by a disappointment.

Savelli arrived at the rendezvous and was received by Cristoforo in his wife's dress, who shot him through the heart, cut his throat, and dragged the corpse to the front of the Savelli palace, where he left it weltering in its blood. On the discovery of the murder all the inhabitants of Albano were shut up in their houses to prevent flight. Cristoforo had made good his escape, but his innocent wife and all her family were arrested and frequently put to the torture, in the hope of extorting the whereabouts of the fugitive, of which they were really ignorant. After six months' imprisonment, the relatives were set at liberty, but the wife was condemned to death, and was only saved by the intervention of the Duchess of Parma, who received her into her service, from whence she was transferred to that of the Duchess of Modena.

The bereaved father never recovered the shock of his son's murder, and died in a lunatic asylum, and the only survivor of the Savelli having no heir, all the property of that ancient race passed to the family of Chigi.

CHAPTER III.

MONTE CAVO, NEMI, AND CIVITA LAVINIA.

(Donkeys should be taken for the excursion from Albano to Monte Cavo and Nemi, except by very good walkers-price, four francs each, the donkey-man four francs, the guide seven francs, for the day. Civita Lavinia will form a pleasant separate drive for the afternoon from Albano-a carriage ought not to cost more than seven or eight francs.

Those who ascend Monte Cavo from Rome, and return thither in the same day, may take the morning train to Frascati, or, still better, drive thither, and send on their carriages to the Hotel de Russie at Albano (as being the hotel nearest to the "galleries" and the Roman gate). They may then take donkeys at Frascati (price, five francs for the day), and ascend Monte Cavo by Rocca di Papa. After passing some time at the temple, they may descend by the Madonna del Tufo, Palazzuola, and skirting the Alban Lake, visit Castel Gandolfo, and ride through the "galleries" to Albano. Good walkers may also see Nemi the same day, but this is too great a hurry to be commended. The rest is an easy day's work, and allows time for returning to Rome in the evening from Albano, where the horses will have rested for many hours. Those who do not bring a carriage from Rome, and intend returning by the railway, must recollect that the Albano station is 24 miles distant from the town, and that fatigue and distance, as well as expense, are thus greatly increased.)

SCENDING the stony path which leads from Albano to the Cappuccini, and reaching the corner whence we overlook the glassy lake, sleeping in its deep wooded hollow, let us turn to the right by the tempting path which winds through the woods and rocks, between banks which in spring are quite carpeted with cyclamen, violets, hepaticas, and every

VOL. I.

6

shade of anemone, while higher up, amid the richly flowering laurestinus and genista, patches of brilliant pink "honesty glow in the sunshine. At every turn the flowers become lovelier, and the fore-grounds more as if they were waiting for an artist to paint them, till, passing between some jagged masses of rock, which have fallen down from the higher cliffs long ago, but have been half buried for centuries under luxuriant drapery of ferns and moss, we reach, above the southern end of the lake, the Franciscan monastery of Palazzuola.

Here we may allow our donkeys to rest for a few minutes on the little rounded platform which so beautifully overlooks the lake, and stop to examine a Consular Tomb cut in the rock, which overhangs the garden of the convent, and which resembles in style many of the tombs in Etruria. It is attributed to Caius Cornelius Scipio Hispallus, consul and pontifex-maximus, though he died at Cumæ, on the very slight ground that he was first attacked with his fatal illness, paralysis, while on a pilgrimage to the temple of the Alban Mount, in B.C. 176.

A path winding upwards through the woods leads from hence to the little sanctuary of the Madonna del Tufo, much frequented by the country people, whence a beautiful terrace fringed with ilexes extends to the picturesque village of Rocca di Papa, which occupies an isolated sugar-loaf rock standing out from the rest of the mountain-side and crowned by the ruins of a castle, which for two centuries was a stronghold of the Colonnas, but afterwards (1487) passed into the hands of the Orsini.

"All know that, in those ages, the poor and weak had the choice of being assassinated in two ways, but they were obliged to choose; either