the other side of a range of mountains, rendered Baiæ a natural paradise to the emperors. It was improved as we see. Temples to Venus, Diana, and Mercury; the villas of Marius, of Hortensius, of Cæsar, of Lucullus, and others whose masters are disputed, follow each other in rival beauty of situation. The ruins are not much now, except the temple of Venus, which is one of the most picturesque fragments of antiquity I have ever seen. The long vines hang through the rent in its circular roof, and the bright flowers cling to the crevices in its still half-splendid walls with the very poetry of decay. Our guide here proposed a lunch. We sat down on the immense stone which has fallen from the ceiling, and in a few minutes the rough table was spread with a hundred open oysters from Fusaro, (near Lake Avernus,) bottles at will of lagrima Christi from Vesuvius; boiled crabs from the shore beneath the temple of Mercury; fish from the Lucrine Lake, and bread from Pozzuoli. The meal was not less classic than refreshing. We drank to the goddess, (the only one in mythology by the way, whose worship has not fallen into contempt,) and leaving twenty ragged descendants of ancient Baie to feast on the remains, mounted our donkeys and started overland for Elysium.

We passed the villa of Hortensius, to which Nero invited his mother, with the design of murdering her; visited the immense subterranean chambers in which water was kept for the Roman fleet; the horrid prisons called the Cento Camerelle of the emperors, and then mounting the hill at the extremity of the cape, the Stygian lake lay off on the right, a broad and gloomy pool, and around its banks spread the Elysian fields, the very home and centre of classic fable. An overflowed marsh and an adjacent corn-field will give you a perfect idea of it. The sun was setting while we swallowed our disappointment, and we turned our donkeys' heads towards Naples.

We left the city again this morning by the grotto of Pausilippo, to visit the celebrated Grotto del Cani. It is about three miles off, on the borders of a pretty lake, once the crater of a volcano. On the way there arose a violent debate in the party on the propriety of subjecting the poor dogs to the distress of the common experiment. We had

not yet decided the point when we stopped before the door of the keeper's house. Two miserable-looking terriers had set up a howl, accompanied with a ferocious and halfcomplaining bark from our first appearance around the turn of the road, and the appeal was effectual. We dismounted

and walked towards the grotto, determined to refuse to see the phenomenon. Our scruples were unnecessary. The door was surrounded with another party less merciful; and as we approached, two dogs were dragged out by the heels, and thrown lifeless on the grass. We gathered round them, and while the old woman coolly locked the door of the grotto, the poor animals began to kick, and, after a few convulsions, struggled to their feet and crept feebly away. Fresh dogs were offered to our party, but we contented ourselves with the more innocent experiments. The mephitic air of this cave rises to a foot above the surface of the ground, and a torch put into it was immediately extinguished. It has been described too often, however, to need a repetition. We took a long stroll around the lake, which was covered with wild-fowl, visited the remains of a villa of Lucullus on the opposite shore, and returned to Naples to dinner.

FRONT OF ST. PETER'S-EQUIPAGES OF THE CARDINALS-BEGGARS -BODY OF THE CHURCH-TOMB OF ST. PETER-THE TIBERFORTRESS-TOMB OF ADRIAN-JEWS' QUARTER-FORUM—BARBERINI PALACE-PORTRAIT OF BEATRICE CENCI-HER MELANCHOLY HISTORY-PICTURE OF THE FORNARINA LIKENESS OF GIORGIONE'S MISTRESS-JOSEPH AND POTIPHAR'S WIFE THE PALACES DORIA AND SCIARRA-PORTRAIT OF OLIVIA WALDACHINI OF

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A CELEBRATED WIDOW -OF SEMIRAMIS-CLAUDE'S LANDSCAPES--BRILL'S-BREUGHEL'S-NOTTI'S " WOMAN CATCHING FLEAS "DA VINCI'S QUEEN GIOVANNA-PORTRAIT OF A FEMALE DORIA-PRINCE DORIA-PALACE SCIARRA-BRILL AND BOTH'S LANDSCAPES-CLAUDE'S-PICTURE OF NOAH INTOXICATED ROMANA'S FORNARINA-DA VINCI'S TWO PICTURES.

MARCH, 1833.

DRAWN in twenty different directions on starting from my lodgings this morning, I found myself undecided where to

pass my day, in front of St. Peter's. Some gorgeous ceremony was just over, and the sumptuous equipages of the cardinals, blazing in the sun with their mountings of gold and silver, were driving up and dashing away from the end of the long colonnades, producing any effect upon the mind rather than a devout one. I stood admiring their fiery horses and gay liveries, till the last rattled from the square, and then mounted to the deserted church. Its vast vestibule was filled with beggars, diseased in every conceivable manner, halting, groping, and crawling about in search of strangers of whom to implore charity-a contrast to the splendid pavement beneath, and the gold and marble above and around, which would reconcile one to see the "mighty dome" melted into alms, and his Holiness reduced to a plain chapel and a rusty cassock.

Lifting the curtain, I stood in the body of the church. There were perhaps twenty persons, at different distances, on its immense floor, the farthest off (six hundred and fourteen feet from me!) looking like a pigmy in the far perspective. St. Peter's is less like a church than a collection of large churches inclosed under a gigantic roof. The chapels at the sides are larger than most houses of public worship in our country, and of these there may be eight or ten, not included in the effect of the vast interior. One is lost in it. It is a city of columns and sculpture and mosaic. Its walls are encrusted with precious stones and masterly workmanship to the very top, and its wealth may be conceived, when you remember that, standing in the centre and raising your eyes aloft, there are four hundred and forty feet between you and the roof of the dome—the height, almost, of a mountain.

I walked up towards the tomb of St. Peter, passing in my way a solitary worshipper here and there, upon his knees, and arrested constantly by the exquisite beauty of the statuary with which the columns are carved. Accustomed, as we are in America, to churches filled with pews, it is hardly possible to imagine the noble effect of a vast mosaic floor, unincumbered even with a chair, and only broken by a few prostrate figures, just specking its wide area. All catholic churches are without fixed seats, and St. Peter's seems scarce measurable to the eye, it is so far and clear, from one extremity to the other.

I passed the hundred lamps burning over the tomb of St. Peter; the lovely female statue, (covered with a bronze drapery, because its exquisite beauty was thought dangerous to the morality of the young priests) reclining upon the tomb of Paul III.; the ethereal figures of Canova's geniuses weeping at the door of the tomb of the Stuarts; (where sleeps the unfortunate Charles Edward) the thousand, thousand rich and beautiful monuments of art and taste crowding every corner of this wondrous church-I passed them, I say, with the same lost and unexamining, unparticularizing feeling which I cannot overcome in this placea mind quite borne off its feet, and confused and overwhelmed with the tide of astonishment-the one grand impression of the whole. I dare say, a little more familiarity with St. Peter's will do away the feeling, but I left the church, after two hours' loitering in its aisles, despairing, and scarce wishing to examine or make a note.

Those beautiful fountains, moistening the air over the whole area of the column-encircled front!-and that tall Egyptian pyramid, sending up its slender and perfect spire between! One lingers about, and turns again and again to gaze around him, as he leaves St. Peter's in wonder and admiration.

I crossed the Tiber at the fortress-tomb of Adrian, and, threading the long street at the western side of Rome, passed through the Jews' quarter, and entered the Forum. The sun lay warm among the ruins of the great temples and columns of ancient Rome, and, seating myself on a fragment of an antique frieze, near the noble arch of Septimius Severus, I gazed on the scene, for the first time, by daylight. I had been in Rome, on my first visit, during the full moon, and my impressions of the Forum with this romantic enhancement were vivid in my memory. One would think it enough to be upon the spot at any time, with light to see it; but what with modern excavations, fresh banks of earth, carts, boys playing at marbles, and wooden sentry-boxes; and what with the Parisian promenade, made by the French through the centre, the imagination is too disturbed and hindered in daylight. The moon gives it all one covering of gray and silver. The old columns stand up in all their solitary majesty, wrecks of beauty and taste; silence leaves the fancy to find a voice for

itself; and from the palaces of the Cæsars to the prisons of the Capitol, the old train of emperors, senators, conspirators, and citizens, are summoned with but half a thought, and the magic glass is filled with moving and re-animated Rome. There, beneath those walls, on the right, in the Mamertine prisons, perished Jugurtha, (and there, too, were imprisoned St. Paul and St. Peter, and opposite, upon the Palatine-hill, lived the mighty masters of Rome, in the Palaces of the Cæsars ;" and beneath the majestic arch beyond, were led, as a seal of their slavery, the captives from Jerusalem; and in these temples, whose ruins cast their shadows at my feet, walked and discoursed Cicero and the philosophers, Brutus and the patriots, Catiline and the conspirators, Augustus and the scholars and poets, and the great stranger in Rome, St. Paul, gazing at the false altars, and burning in his heart to reveal to them the "unknown God." What men have crossed the shadows of these very columns! and what thoughts, that have moved the world, have been born beneath them!

The Barberini palace contains three or four masterpieces of painting. The most celebrated is the portrait of Beatrice Cenci, by Guido. The melancholy and strange history of this beautiful girl has been told in a variety of ways, and is probably familiar to every reader. Guido saw her on

her way to execution, and has painted her as she was dressed, in the gray habit and head-dress made by her own hands, and finished but an hour before she put it on. There are engravings and copies of the picture all over the world, but none that I have seen give any idea of the excessive gentleness and serenity of the countenance. The eyes retain traces of weeping: but the child-like mouth, the soft girlish lines of features that look as if they never had worn more than the one expression of youthfulness and affection, are all in repose; and the head is turned over the shoulder with as simple a sweetness as if she had but looked back to say a good-night before going to her chamber to sleep. She little looks like what she was-one of the firmest and boldest spirits whose history is recorded. After murdering her father for his fiendish attempts upon her virtue, she endured every torture rather than disgrace her family by

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