think, the most delightful one that I ever saw. It takes in the whole Campania, and terminates in a full view of the Mediterranean. You have a sight at the same time of the Alban lake, which lies just by in an oval figure of about seven miles round, and, by reason of the continued circuit of high mountains that encompass it, looks like the area of some vast amphitheatre. This, together with the several green hills and naked rocks within the neighbourhood, makes the most agreeable confusion imaginable. Albano keeps up its credit still for wine, which, perhaps, would be as good as it was anciently, did they preserve it to as great an age; but as for olives there are now very few here, though they are in great plenty at Tivoli. -Albani pretiosa senectus. Juv. Sat. 13. Idem, Sat. 5. Perhaps to-morrow he may change his wine, Bowles. Whose title, and whose age, with mould o'ergrown, Albanæ The places mentioned in this chapter were all of them formerly the cool retirements of the Romans, where they used to hide themselves among the woods and mountains, during the excessive heats of their summer; as Baja was the general winter rendezvous. Jam terras volucremque polum fuga veris aquosi Hos Præneste sacrum, nemus hos glaciale Dianæ, Albanos quoque Tusculosque colles SIL. iv. 1. MAR. lib. iv. 64. All shun the raging dog-star's sultry heat, Or in moist Tivoli's retirements find A cooling shade, and a refreshing wind. On the contrary, at present Rome is never fuller of nobility than in summer-time; for the country towns are so infested with unwholesome vapours, that they dare not trust themselves in them while the heats last. There is no question but the air of the Campania would be now as healthful as it was formerly, were there as many fires burning in it, and as many inhabitants to manure the soil. Leaving Rome about the latter end of October, in my way to Sienna, I lay the first night at a little village in the territories of the ancient Veii. Hæc tum nomina erant, nunc sunt sine nomine Campi. The ruins of their capital city are at present so far lost, that the geographers are not able to determine exactly the place where they once stood: so literally is that noble prophecy of Lucan fulfilled, of this and other places of Latium. -Gentes Mars iste futuras Obruet, et populos ævi venientis in orbem Fabula nomen erit: Gabios, Veïosque, Coramque, Rus vacuum, quod non habitet nisi nocte coactâ Succeeding nations by the sword shall die, Shall scarce afford, for needful hours of rest, Lib. vii. We here saw the Lake Bacca, that gives rise to the Cremera, on whose banks the Fabii were slain. Tercentum numerabat avos, quos turbine Martis, Fabius a numerous ancestry could tell, Three hundred heroes that in battle fell, SIL. IT. lib. 1. Near the famed Cremera's disastrous flood, That ran polluted with Patrician blood. We saw afterwards, in the progress of our voyage, the lakes of Vico and Bolsena. The last is reckoned one and twenty miles in circuit, and is plentifully stocked with fish and fowl. There are in it a couple of islands, that are perhaps the two floating isles mentioned by Pliny, with that improbable circumstance of their appearing sometimes like a circle, sometimes like a triangle, but never like a quadrangle. It is easy enough to conceive how they might become fixed, though they once floated; and it is not very credible, that the naturalist could be deceived in his account of a place that lay, as it were, in the neighbourhood of Rome. At one end of this lake stands Montefiascone, the habitation of Virgil's Equi Falisci, Æn. vii., and on the side of it the town of the Volsinians, now called Bolsena. Aut positis nemorosa inter juga Volsiniis. -Volsinium stood Juv. Sat. 3. Covered with mountains, and enclosed with wood. I saw in the church-yard of Bolsena an antique funeral monument (of that kind which they called a sarcophagus) very entire, and what is particular, engraven on all sides with a curious representation of a bacchanal. Had the inhabitants observed a couple of lewd figures at one end of it, they would not have thought it a proper ornament for the place where it now stands. After having travelled hence to Aquapendente, that stands in a wonderful pleasant situation, we came to the little brook which separates the pope's dominions from the Great Duke's. The frontier castle of Radicofani is seated on the highest mountain in the country, and is as well fortified as the situation of the place will permit. We here found the natural face of the country quite changed from what we had been entertained with in the pope's dominions. For instead of the many beautiful scenes of green mountains and fruitful valleys, that we had been presented with for some days before, we saw now nothing but a wild naked prospect of rocks and hills, worn on all sides with gutters and channels, and not a tree or shrub to be met with in a vast circuit of several miles. This savage prospect put me in mind of the Italian proverb, "The pope has the flesh, and the Great Duke the bones of Italy." "Among a large ex tent of these barren mountains I saw but a single spot that was cultivated, on which there stood a convent. 1 SIENNA, LEGHORN, PISA. Sienna stands high, and is adorned with a great many towers of brick, which in the time of the commonwealth were erected to such of the members as had done any considerable service to their country. These towers gave us a sight of the town a great while before we entered it. There is nothing in this city so extraordinary as the cathedral, which a man may view with pleasure after he has seen St. Peter's, though it is quite of another make, and can only be looked upon as one of the master-pieces of Gothic architecture. When a man sees the prodigious pains and expense that our forefathers have been at in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy to himself what miracles of architecture they would have left us, had they been only instructed in the right way; for when the devotion of those ages was much warmer than that of the present, and the riches of the people much more at the disposal of the priests, there was so much money consumed on these Gothic cathedrals, as would have finished a greater variety of noble buildings than have been raised either before or since that time. One would wonder to see the vast labour that has been laid out on this single cathedral. The very spouts are loaden with ornaments; the windows are formed like so many scenes of perspective, with a multitude of little pillars retiring one behind another; the great columns are finely engraven with fruits and foliage that run twisting about them from the very top to the bottom; the whole body of the church is chequered with different lays of white and black marble; the pavement curiously cut out in designs and Scripture stories; and the front covered with such a variety of figures, and overrun with so many little mazes and labyrinths of sculpture, that nothing in the world can make a prettier show to those who prefer false beauties, and affected ornaments, to a noble and majestic simplicity. Over against this church stands a large hospital, erected by a shoemaker, who has been beatified, though never sainted. There stands a figure of him superscribed, sutor ultra crepidam. I shall speak nothing of the extent of this city, the cleanliness of its streets, nor the beauty of its piazza, which so many travellers have described. As this is the last republic that fell under the subjection of the Duke of Florence, so is it still supposed to retain many hankerings after its ancient liberty: for this reason, when the keys and pageants of the Duke's towns and governments pass in procession before him, on St. John Baptist's day, I was told that Sienna comes in the rear of his dominions, and is pushed forward by those who follow, to show the reluctancy it has to appear in such a solemnity. I shall say nothing of the many gross and absurd traditions of St. Catherine of Sienna, who is the great saint of this place. I think there is as much pleasure in hearing a man tell his dreams, as in reading accounts of this nature: a tra veller that thinks them worth his observation may fill a book with them at every town in Italy. From Sienna we went forward to Leghorn, where the two ports, the bagnio, and Donatelli's statue of the Great Duke, amidst the four slaves chained to his pedestal, are very noble sights. The square is one of the largest, and will be one of the most beautiful in Italy, when this statue is erected in it, and a town-house built at one end of it to front the church that stands at the other. They are at a continual expense to cleanse the ports, and keep them from being choked up, which they do by the help of several engines that are always at work, and employ many of the Great Duke's slaves. Whatever part of the harbour they scoop in, it has an influence on all the rest, for the sea immediately works the whole bottom to a level. They draw a double advantage from the dirt that is taken up, as it clears the port, and at the same time dries up several marshes about the town, where they lay it from time to time. One can scarce imagine how great profits the Duke of Tuscany receives from this single place, which are not generally thought so considerable, because it passes for a free port. But it is very well known how the Great Duke, on a late occasion, notwithstanding the privileges of the merchants, drew no small sums of money out of them; though still, in respect of the exorbitant dues that are paid at most other ports, it deservedly retains the name of free. It brings into his dominions a great increase of people from all other nations. They reckon in it near ten thousand Jews, many of them very rich, and so great traffickers, that our English factors complain they have most of our country |
