Varia, (to which as to the county town, he mentions, Epist. 14, B. 1. that his village used to send five heads or families to transact provincial business) preserves apparently its name even unto this day. Vicovaro in Italian signifying the town of Varus, to whom it is probable it belonged, and the more so as Varus had a country seat so near as Tivoli.. Bardella, as appears by an inscription dug up about the year 1760, stands on the scite of the autient Maudela *. This circu cumstance, together with the resemblance in sound between the names Digentia and Licenza, as pronounced by the natives, seems to prove that this is the river of which Horace speaks. B. 2. Sat. t. "As often as the cool stream of Digentia refreshes me which Mandela drinks, a town wrinkled with cold," &c. Again, Horace ends his epistle to Fuscus, B. 1. E. 10, saying, "I write this to you from behind the mouldering fane of Vacuna." Now Varro asserts that the goddess Vacuna, worshipped by the Sabines, meant Victory; and it appears by an inscription found about thirty years ago, in digging about the ruins, commonly supposed by geographers to have been those of the temple of Vacuna, that the temple of Victory on that spot was rebuilt by the Emperor Vespasian, about a hundred years after the time of Horace, who speaks of it as in ruins †. Add to this that it is within an easy walk of the spot upon the borders of the Licenza, so marked out as the farm of Horace. * The inscription (which is on marble, and was found in the angle, formed by the confluence of the Licenza and Taverone) runs literally thus-Val. Maxima Mater Domni predia Valeria dulcissima Filia quæ vixit annis xxxvi Men. ii. D. xii. in prediis suis MASSE MANDELANE Sep. retorum Hercules Quesq n pace. As it is impossible even for a classical scholar unaccustomed to the initial contractions and changes of letters frequent among the ancients, to make sense of this inscription (which Chaupy infers from its stile, the form of the letters, and the Christian phrase of quiescant in pace, to have been written about the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century). I here subjoin that which he argues with much ingenuity and plausibility, was intended to be the reading at full length, viz. Valeria Maxima Dotibus omnibus prædita, Valeria dulcissima filia quæ vixit annos 36 menses 2. dies 12. in prædiis suis (quæ vor.) Massa Mandelanæ Sepulchrum restituit et ornavit Valerius Maximus Hercules. Whatever may be thought of the sense of the inscription, the vicinity of MANDELA is fortunately established by it beyond all possible doubt. The inscription is Imp. Cæsar Vespasianus Aug. Pontifex Maximus Trib, Potestatis Censor Edem Victoria Vetustate dilapsam sua impensa restituit. If these antiquarian proofs were less strong, the place itself would bear no feeble testimony to its having been the seat of Horace, as there is not any one of the numerous descriptions he has left of it, to which it does not at this day perfectly answer. Of these I was better enabled to judge by reading Horace upon the spot, and it will, probably, as you are so fond of reading him at home, be the pleasantest method I can take of describing the modern appearance of the place, to refer you to his own descriptions of it in its ancient state. In the 16th Epist. Book 1, he says to his friend Guinctius, “Lest you should ask whether my farm feeds its owner by tillage, or enriches him with olives, with orchards and pasture, or the elm clothed with vines-I will describe to you at length the form and situation of it. "It is surrounded by mountains uninterrupted except by a shady valley of which the sun rising beholds the right side, and warms the left with his retreating car. What if it produces kindly cornels and wild plums, while the oak and holm oak delight the cattle with their fruit, and their master with their shade. You would say that Tarentum itself was brought hither with all its groves. There is a spring fit to give name to a river, cooler and purer than which Hebrus not encircles Thrace. It flows useful in pains of the head and indigestions. These retreats, pleasant, and even (if you will believe me) delightful, keep me in health during the unwholesome hours of September." Upon this text I make no further comment than to observe, that all the trees here mentioned are found so plentifully as to appear the spontaneous growth of the country, though the difference of culture probably has introduced such a number of olives, walnuts, and chesnuts, that they would hardly have escaped the mention of so accurate a painter of nature as Horace, if they had existed so plentifully in his time. In every other respect the situation answers as perfectly as if the description had been just written; and the circumstance of the vines being raised on elms, continues to this day, though at so small a distance as Tivoli, the custom is universally to prop them upon reeds, of which they make large plantations for that purpose. The spring is not only "fit to give name to the stream that waters the valley of Licenza, but is sometimes so abundant as to oc casion an overflow of the low ground which it encircles, conformably to what Horace says in reckoning the occupations of his bailiff, Ep. 14. B. 1. "The river, after a fall of rain, affords an additional employment for your idleness, to be taught at the expense of many a mound to spare the sunny meadow." The bailiff's complaint that "that corner of the land would bear pepper and frankincense sooner than the grape," is thus far just, that the grapes do not succeed so kindly as the hardier fruit trees, and still produce that rough kind of wine which Horace so frequently describes. THIS WAS MY WISH; a farm not over large, Book 2nd. Sat. 6. In an orchard, through which trickles the water from the neighbouring spring crowned with the incumbent woods of Lucretilis, is found a considerable fragment of mosaic pavement, which may, with the highest degree of probability, be deemed a relic of the house of Horace. The ground is well strewed with fragments of various marbles, such as might be supposed to ornament the retreat of the elegant favourite of Mæcenas; at the same time that no massy or magnifi. cent ruins remain to give the lie to his professions of philosophic moderation. I have picked up some specimens which I hope to bring you home, and a bit of glass, which appears much of the same sort with that found amongst the ruins of Herculaneum. Adjoining the vineyard is a beautiful little chesnut grove, at the foot of which winds the river I must now beg leave to call the Digentia. In this delightful spot, which through different openings of the trees presents almost every object worthy of note in the descriptions of Horace, relative to this place-you will readily believe I passed a few hours very agreeably, without any other company than that of Horace. I had taken up my lodging at the house of the arch-priest, who is a Portuguese ex-jesuit, a very civil man and not ill-formed. I had the pleasure of finding in his library (which by the bye was the only spare bed-room he had to offer me, and between the books and the bed you might set a chair, but not turn it) a set of Chaupy's essays upon the antiquities of the place, which upon the spot were interesting and particularly satisfactory, as they tended to confirm all the reasons above stated, concerning the identity of the spot. During my stay with the arch-priest, I made several pilgrimages to the most interesting spots in the neighbourhood, particularly to the ruins of the restored Temple of Vacuna, which are now only known to be such by the inscription before mentioned to have been dug up there. As Horace says nothing more of the temple than that it was in a ruinous state, and that he wrote behind it. I had little more to interest my imagination than to form to myself the landscape, such as it probably presented itself to him at the time of writing, and hope in some degree to communicate my idea of it to you by the help of a rough sketch which I made upon the spot. Upon this excursion I was unexpectedly attended by two lads of the village, whose curiosity appeared to be so strongly excited concerning me, that I could not find in my heart to send them away; particularly as from their sprightly naiveté I could scarcely help fau cying them to be the lineal descendants of the verna procaces (frolic hinds) whose sallies appear to have afforded pleasure even to the mind of Horace. Upon our return we were overtaken by a smart shower, which obliged us to take shelter in a hermitage near the chapel of Madonna delle Case. The hermit was (as usual) an ecclesiastic; and upon my putting some questions to him respecting the salubrity of the situation, answered, we take "reverendissima cura della salute?") (a most reverend care of our health :) This reminded me so forcibly of Falstaff's advice to the Lord Chief Justice, that I could not refrain from a smile, which I fear he thought heretically sarcastic, as he immediately added, (crossing himself very devoutly)" cioè primò della salute dell'anima, è poi di quella del corpo," that is, "first of the soul's health, and afterwards that of the body." My visit to Fonte-bello, the source of the Digentia, that tumbles down a rocky gill of the mountain Lucretilis, pleased me exceedingly. I seemed to have found the original of the picture Horace has given us in the 13th Ode of Book 3, to the Fountain of Blaudusiæ. A regard for the truth obliges me to confess, that it has been very plausibly contended by Chaupy that the Fons Blandusiæ was not at the Sabine Farm, but in the neighbourhood of the birthplace of Horace. This is, however, not only contrary to the opinions of (I believe) all his commentators, but (in some degree) to the evidence of Horace himself. For he tells us that he did not commence poet till his paternal estate had been confiscated; it is surely therefore less likely that he should write an ode and promise a sacrifice, to a fountain in an estate that he had lost, than in one he had since acquired, and to whose situation he was so partial. Notwithstanding what I have seen of Chaupy's works, I had rather err with other geographers than think right with him and thus far I acknowledge prejudice: but on the whole, the reasons I have given induce me to think that in following I do not err with the multitude. The whole of the Lucretilis is so pleasant, that Faunus (vid. Ode 17. B, I.) could have no great loss in changing Lycæus for it, being now covered, as thickly as it was in the time of Horace, with goats that wander in its groves, to crop the arbutus which abounds there, with the same impunity. The epithet of "the leaning Ustica" most happily distinguishes this situation from Tivoli, which he calls "supiue," and the expression of "valle reducta," has a propriety when applied to this place, which the " withdrawing vale" seems not fully to express in English. Ode 22. Book I. Horace mentions the circumstance of his having met a wolf upon the mountain, when he had accidentally strolled beyond his boundary-and those animals are not yet thoroughly extirpated from the vast woods that cover the heights of the mountain. [Bradstreet's Sabine Farm.] 7. The River Po, or Eridanus. THE PO, Padus, or Eridanus, for under all these names it has been celebrated in history and poetry of the greatest excellence, is the largest and most extensive river of Italy. In the infant state of the Roman republic, its banks were inhabited towards the head of the river by the Salassi, and lower down by the Insubres; both powerful people, who had frequent, and at times, successful contests |