Prated by Benner Ser

TIVOLI.

Parvum parva decent. Mihi jam non regia Roma

Sed vacuum Tibur placet.

HORACE.

TIVOLI, the Richmond of Rome, is situated about eighteen miles distant from that city. It is the Tibur of the ancients, and was considered, from the number of villas by which the road to it was lined, as a sort of suburb of Rome. Those edifices have now disappeared, and the road lies through pasture lands, occasionally exhibiting the ruins of the aqueducts which formerly conveyed the waters of the Anio to the city. It also displayed, some years since, the unsightly spectacle of the limbs of mangled malefactors who had been executed for the numerous robberies committed in the neighbourhood of Tivoli, which was long remarkable for such outrages. Before arriving at Tivoli the traveller twice crosses the Teverone or Anio over the two bridges, the Ponte Mamolo and the Ponte Lucano. Near the latter stands the circular monument of the Plautia family, a structure resembling in plan the Moles Hadriani. It is a picturesque object, and has been frequently represented by landscape painters.

The town of Tivoli is situated upon a mountain, forming part of the range of the Apennines. The rocks of which this mountain is partially composed owe their origin to the calcareous deposit of the waters of the

Teverone, which, in situations exposed to their influence, leave an annual incrustation of about half an inch. The impression of a cart-wheel is shown in the rock, formed by the incrustation of the deposit round the wheel. This substance is precisely similar to the Travertine or Tiburtine stone, quarries of which are worked in this neighbourhood, and of which the most magnificent edifices of ancient and modern Rome, the Colosseum, and St. Peter's are built. In a block of this stone an iron crow was discovered, left in all probability by some Roman quarry-slave, and in process of time encrusted by the waters of the Teverone.

The most remarkable objects near Tivoli are the Temple of the Sibyl, the Cascades, and the Grotto of Neptune. Many curious remains of antiquity are also found in its neighbourhood, amongst which are the celebrated villa of Hadrian and the Sabine farm of Horace.

Upon a rocky eminence, opposite to the cascades, is situated the Temple of the Sibyl. Such is the traditional name by which these beautiful ruins have been long distinguished. Some antiquarians, however, have been of opinion that Vesta was the goddess to whom the edifice was dedicated, and have given the name of the Temple of the Sibyl to some inconsiderable ruins in the neighbourhood. There appear, however, to be no very cogent reasons for rejecting the name which tradition (no uncertain guide in such difficulties) has assigned to the circular temple. The only inscription on the ruins are the letters L. GELLIO L. F., from which it has been conjectured that the temple was at some period restored by L. Gellius. The architecture has been referred to