some of his most admirable productions: it is at least a pleasing illusion to fancy that we are treading ground on which that great man took his solitary walks, and mused on the falling fortunes of Rome, or the most sublime points of morals and metaphysics*. ་ After many hours spent in a manner most satisfactory to my curiosity, I closed the agreeable tour of the day with a moonlight walk to Puzzuoli. The air was mildly agitated by the wind from the land, which after sunset always succeeds the sea-breeze; the waves dashed gently against the ruined edifices that impede their progress; the reflection of the moon, and some vessels under sail, enlivened the marine prospect, and from the gardens of the vale were wafted the most delicious perfumes. 6. The Lake Fucinus, now named Celano. As soon as the weather would permit, we visited the lake of Celano, so called by the moderns from a town near its north shore, the head of the earldom that comprehended at one time the greatest part of the country of the Marsi, This was the ancient name of the peo ple that inhabited the environs of the lake, allowed by the Romans to be the most intrepid soldiers of their legions, when in friend◄ ship, and the most formidable of their enemies when at variance. It was a common saying, that Rome could neither triumph over the Marsi, nor without them. In the 662d year of Rome, they put themselves at the head of the social war, one of the most obstinate and dangerous oppositions ever made to the progress of the Roman power: it was terminated by a grant of those privileges for which they contended. Their name still subsists in that of the diocese, for the prelate is styled bishop of the Marsi. In ancient times, the lake was called Fucinus, and was under the * From Pliny's topography it is probable that it stood on a spot covered by the eruption of 1538. † These buildings, which for so many ages have withstood the daily assaults of a boisterous element, owe their durability to the cement with which their parts are united; the principal ingredient is a fine volcanical sand, called Puzzolana; that acquires strength and hardness by lying under water; it consists of various metallic, stony, and earthy particles, calcined and triturated in the central furnaces, and is found both in the neighbourhood of Puzzuoli and in that of Rome, protection of a god of the same denomination, whose temple stood on its banks. According to the testimony of ancient authors, it was subject to extraordinary risings and decreasings. The actual circumference is forty-seven miles; the breadth in the largest part, ten, in the narrowest, four; its depth, twelve feet upon an average. But all these have varied prodigiously. Two miles up the plain, behind Avezzano, the fragments of boats, shells, and other marks of its ancient extent, have been casually discovered; and, on the contrary, there are people who remember when it did not flow nearer than within two miles of Avezzano. An immense tract of excellent land is lost at every increase of its level, and if any means could be devised for draining it, or at least reducing its size, the value of the ground recovered for cultivation would be more than an equivalent for any expense incurred in the works. All round this noble piece of water rises a circle of grand moun tains, some of them the highest in Italy, if we except the Alps. The Rocca di Cambio is accounted the most elevated among them; in summer this country must be a delightful place of abode, for the environs of the lake are well inclosed, and the sides of the hills covered with fine woods; its waters abound with fish of various kinds, and thither repair, at stated seasons, innumerable flights of wild fowl. The necessaries of life are good, plentiful, and cheap : scarcely a town but is celebrated for the excellence of some particular species of food. We rode along the edge of the lake, which was excessively agitated by the high wind, and resembled a dark stormy sea; at the distance of a mile and a half from the town we came to the mouth of the emissary or opening made by the order of Claudius Cæsar for the discharge of the waters into the Liris*, which runs * Dio says, the emperor intended to convey the waters into the Tiber; which could only be by means of the Salto, the Velino, and the Nera, through all which they must have passed before they fell into the Tiber, unless he meant to carry them upon arches over the Liris, and through a double chain of hills to the source of the Teverone. The Salto is too far off, and, I imagine, upon much too high a level. Cluverius asserts, that nobody now knows where the emissary was; and that the works shewn for it are no more than the vestiges of a small canal, where the river Pitonius entered the bowels of the mountains, out of which it did not emerge till it reached the valley of Subiaco, where the aqueducts began that conveyed it to Rome, by the name of the Aqua Martia. Pliny tells a in a deep valley on the other side of the hills. The opening is now choaked up, and lies at the foot of the hill, much below the present level of the water; in a line from it up the slope are six perpendi cular wells, and two oblique grooves to the canal, which was driven through the hill into the opposite valley, and there had a vent at Capistrelli, two miles from the lake. The water is said to flow as far as the centre of the hill, and to be there twenty feet deep, but being obstructed by earth fallen in, or want of level, proceeds no further. Oblique collateral galleries were also contrived for the purpose of clearing the channel of rubbish, as the workmen advanced. As the swelling of the lake was attended with incredible damage, the Marsi had often petitioned the senate to drain it; Julius Cæsar would have attempted it, had he lived longer. His successors were averse to the project, till Claudius, who delighted in expensive, difficult enterprizes, undertook it. During the space of eleven years he employed thirty thousand men in digging a passage through the mountain, and when every thing was ready for letting off the water, exhibited a superb naval spectacle on the lake. A great number of condemned criminals were obliged to act the parts of Rhodians and Sicilians in separate fleets, to engage in earnest, and to destroy one another for the entertainment of the court, and the multitude of spectators that covered the hills; a line of well-armed vessels and rafts loaded with soldiers surrounded the scene of action, in order to prevent any of the wretches from escaping; but it was with great difficulty and many threats that they could be brought to an engagement. When this savage diversion wonderful story of this river's rising in the distant mountains of the Peligni, and traversing the Fucine lake, without mixing its waters with it. Those of the lake are themselves limpid and wholesome, and if they were to be conveyed to Rome in pipes, would certainly be as pure and good as any springwater whatever. As the long term of eleven years, with an enormous multitude of hands, was employed in this excavation, it may perhaps have been carried as far as the beginning of the aqueducts in the vale of the Teverone, where the ruins are still to be seen, though at least twelve miles in a straight line from the lake. Frontinus mentions his having discovered the real source of the Aqua Martia, between Carseoli and Subiaco, thirty-six miles from Rome: near Rio Freddo in the Roman state are several wells, or air-holes, that were contrived for the use of the subterraneous conduit, by which its waters were there conveyed through a mountain. VOL. III. was ended, the operations for opening the emissary commenced and the emperor was very near being swept away and drowned by the sudden rushing of the waters towards this vent. Howeve r either through the ignorance or negligence of the engineers, the work did not answer as was expected, and Claudius did not live long enough to have the faults amended: Nero abandoned the scheme through envy. Hadrian is said to have let off the waters of the Fucinus, but none now escape except through hidden channels formed by nature, which are probably subject to be obstructed, and thus occasion a superabundance of water in the lake, till some unknown cause removes the obstructions, and again gives free passage. As three considerable streams fall into the lake, the least obstacle to a discharge must raise the level. 7. Rivers Anio and Liganthin; the celebrated Cascade of the former, and the surrounding Scenery. THE general features of this interesting and classical tract of country, are so elegantly delineated in the following letter, written on the spot, that we shall make no apology for inserting it, though in a few places it may be thought, perhaps, slightly to digress from the immediate subject before us. Rome, May 15, 1795. I have been detained (as you will perceive by the date of this letter) much longer than I expected on my excursion to the Villa of Horace. This was chiefly owing to the weather, which was by no means Italian-But the number of pleasing scenes, and interesting objects, that occur at every step of this little tour, to one who is fond of either classical antiquities, natural history, or landscape, infinitely overpaid me for this trifling mortification. The road lies through Tivoli, which is at the distance of about eighteen miles from Rome: a place of which Horace speaks so often and so affectionately under the name of Tibur. May Tybur. founded by the Argive Chief, Ode 4. Book 2. But in order to take matters regularly, I must first stop you short of Tivoli about two or three miles, where the road is crossed by a sulphureous stream, in smell and taste very much resembling that of Harrowgate. It flows with great rapidity between two steep banks, that have not long since been made to carry it off. Here my poor dog Turque (with whose face you are acquainted by Mr. Tischbein's etching of it) had nearly fallen a sacrifice to my curi. osity, or as you may perhaps call it my levity. Being desirous to see how he would like bathing in a stream of such mauvaise odeur, I threw a stone in, that he might dive for it. But he had no sooner plunged, than the violence of the torrent carried him above a hundred yards down, before we could overtake him, so as to give him any assistance; and even then, the banks were so exceedingly steep, that it was not without difficuly we succeeded in our efforts to get him out. Upon tracing this stream about a mile upwards, we found its source in the little lake, from thence called Lago di Solfatara di Tivoli, which is further remarkable for the phenomena of certain little floating islands, some of which were fortunately driving about in the wind at the time we arrived, and others at anchor in the bays and harbours of this small lake. Our guide informed us they would bear Christians, who very frequently get upon them and push themselves about with a long pole for the amuseinent of strangers. There are remains of some ancient baths, which are known to have been frequented by Augustus; and Galen mentions them as being good for rheumatisms and cutaneous disorders, but at present they are totally abandoned. It is extraordinary that these springs not only supply water for bathing, but literally the materials also for building baths. It appears that they formerly overflowed (as indeed they would do at present, if not carried off by the channel abovementioned) a large tract of land, and by their successive depositions of the cal. careous particles that abound in them, have, in a series of ages, formed immense quarries of an excellent stone for building, which is called Travertino. This was in great use among the Romans, as appears from many of the ruins which remain to this day, and particularly from the Colosseum, or great Amphitheatre of Vespasian, of which I gave you an account in a former letter. I visited a quarry now working |