Vatican; and what edifice ever exceeded it in the importance of the events which had their origin within its walls? The castle of St. Angelo, built above the mausoleum of the Emperor Adrian, next bursts upon the sight, and recalls to mind the eventful times when the church waged war with nations and their sovereigns, and the Fathers of Christendom found themselves surrounded, and their lives put in peril by banded legions. With this recollection arises another as the eye rests on the image of the angel which crowns the turrets of the castle, and wonder is mixed up with the remembrance that both the name and ensign of the fortress arose from the pretended visit of an angel to Gregory the Great. Immediately after these prominent objects, the thousand turrets, palaces, obelisks, and temples of Rome rise into view; and the spectator pauses, awe-struck with the crowded grandeur of the scene.

Directly before him is the Campagna, a wide and almost unvaried plain, covered with a kind of rank grass and herbage, which gives it the appearance of a vast burialplace without tombs. Far away in this waste lies the vast city we are contemplating, and beyond it swell the bright and picturesque hills, amid which the Latin muse made her favourite retreat. To the south rises the Alban mount, now Mount Cavo, green and woody as when its shades surrounded the temple of Jupiter Latialis. To the left of this mountain is Frescati, or Tusculum; and to the east swell the Sabine hills and the Apennines, the former adorned with the lovely villas of Tivoli and Palestrina; while between these and the hills of Viterbo,