taking our wine, we hazarded many sapient remarks on the occurrence which had happened ;—and in the midst of these ruminations, who should burst into our room but the leader of the trio whom we had seen a few hours previously on the mountain's side! The denouement was rapid and satisfactory. The suspected robbers were merely dealers in petrefactions, that abound in a neighbouring mountain, and who keep a sharp look-out for English travellers, whom they regularly visit at Radicofani. PONTINE MARSHES. "Et quos pestifera Pomptini uligine Campi.” The brigand-looking groups of Velletri proved as harmless as the mountaineers of Tuscany-we safely descended to the marshes—and were soon in sight of the TORRE DE TRÉ PONTI, where we observed, at some distance, the squalid caliban borderers collecting wild beasts from the fens, and beating as well as swearing them into office, as post-horses, for our accommodation! Four of these savage and unseemly creatures being pinioned to the large, and two to the small carriage, away they flew-kicking, flinging, plunging, and snorting-curveting in fitful and fearful sallies from side to side of the road-one moment within an inch of dashing us to pieces against the trunk of an elm or a poplar—the next, within an ace of hurling us headlong over a perpendicular bank into the yawning canal below-keeping us in perpetual, and not the most agreeable suspense, between a broken neck and a watery grave! Thus we darted across the Pontine Fens, with little less velocity than that of an arrow from a bow-traversing a space of 28 miles (nearly the distance between London and Chatham) in two hours and forty minutes—a journey which, in the Augustan age, and in the pride of the VIA Appia, occupied Horace during sixteen tedious hours, while listening to the croaking of frogs, the brawlings of boat-men, the maledictions of muleteers—the buzzing of gnats Mali culices ranæque palustres— and what was far worse, while submitting to the depredations on personal property inflicted by those douaniers of antiquity, the bugs, the fleas—and a certain animal Quod versu dicere non est. And here I would venture to make a remark or two on the famous " 'journey to Brundusium," so much of which is dedicated to the passage across the Pontine Marshes. Horace places it among his satires—and it is one of PONTINE MARSHES. 195 the keenest of the Roman poet. It is in my humble opinion, a satire on itineraries and itinerants in general. It is almost entirely taken up with INNS and EGOTISM, the everlasting topics of travellers. First, the favourite of Augustus and flatterer of Tiberius-the poet-laureat of at least two reigns— acquaints posterity that he was badly accommodated at Aricia-that his fellow-traveller was one of the most learned of the Greeks-that the water was detestible at the Forum Appii-that the gnats and frogs prevented his sleep in the passage-boat-that he mixed with the best society at Terracina—that CAPITO treated him to a luxurious supper at Mamurræ-that he and Virgil met the next day, and beslavered each other for half an hour "O qui complexus, et gaudia quanta fuerunt ! " that Mecenas went to play at tennis, while he and Virgil went to sleep-that he was highly delighted with the low buffoonery of two mountebanks at the villa of Cocceius, and protracted his supper to a tolerably late hour-that he was burnt out at Beneventum by the chimney taking fire-that the water was bad, and the bread excellent at Æquotuticum—that the rains had rendered the road very heavy between Rubi and Barium—and finally that, having put all these most interesting events on record, he arrived at the end of his journey-BRUNDUsium. I have passed over the indecencies of the itinerary, because most of the English printers refuse to soil their types with them. Of the personal indelicacies, a single specimen is sufficient. It was important for posterity to know that one of the most renowned bards of antiquity had got bleared eyes, and applied a black-wash to them on the journey to Brundusium! "Hic oculis EGO nigra meis Collyria Lippus That Horace meant all this as a biting irony on the itineraries of travellers, I have not the smallest doubt. Why else should the " ITER AD Brundusium" be placed as his fifth satire? To my mind it indicates that travellers should rather exhibit their thoughts than their persons-reflections on surrounding objects, rather than little petty details of their dinners and suppers on the road, the honours they received, or the personal inconveniences which they experienced. In an itinerary, it is impossible to entirely avoid these personal adventures, and some egotism-I only mean to say that they should not be too often or too minutely detailed. But, however rapid was our course across this pestiferous tract-this anomaly in Nature—where earth and ocean have been contending for mastery since the flood of Noah, we had ample opportunities of observing the dire effeets of man's impolitic interference in the conflicts of belligerent elements ! Had he allowed land and water to carry on their intestine warfare in this neutral ground-this PAYS BAS-till the effervescence of discord had spent itself, the surface of the Pontine Marshes would, long ere this, have been converted into a glassy lake or a verdant jungle, equally incapable of exhaling mephitic vapours over the neighbouring territory. But the officious, selfish, and avaricious aid of man, in favour of one of the contending parties, has contrived to keep this laboratory of pestilence and death in the best possible condition for effecting his own destruction! The Pontine fens are neither fluid nor solid, but a hideous and heterogeneous composition of both, more destructive of human life than the sword of war, or the tooth of famine. Why the Consuls and the Cæsars, the Goths and the Popes, should have been so anxious to preserve this accursed spot from the incursions of Neptune and annex it to their wide dominions, is to me a mystery! It is true that eels, oxen, buffaloes and wild boars, are not particularly liable to ague, and are very profitable stock for the patrician fen-holders. As for the plebeian cattle, they are easily replenished from among those "whose business is to die"-for no man can live-on these morbific quagmires,— men whose crimes have forfeited the boon of existence; or whose poverty has rendered existence no longer a boon ! It is in these destructive swamps, that the malarious physiognomy, which merely indicates bad health in other places, rises into that hideous deformity which accompanies lingering death under multiplied sufferings. The frame of man appears here like a nosological picture, in which all the great mortal maladies of human nature have their frightful but faithful representatives. The "foul fiend" of the fens, AGUE-FEVER, claims precedency. On his right sits liver-grown JAUNDICE-with bloated DROPSY on his left. Around these, Marasmus, Palsy, Mania, Melancholy, racking pains and hectic burnings take their respective stations, and play their tragic parts! In short the frail tenement of the immortal mind is here a living carrion, on which the vultures of malaria prey, for months and years, before the friendly grave interposes its arm of protection against their torturous depredations! The punishment of Prometheus is no fable. It is here verified to the letter! From the Pontine Marshes we suddenly and joyously emerge; and find ourselves, all at once, at the very verge of the placid, tideless, and translucent MEDITERRANEAN, on our right; while the white and romantic rocks of ANXUR tower over our heads on the left. The refreshing air of the boundless ocean and the exhilarating view of marble instead of mud, produce a most agreeable effect on the senses of the traveller. The countenances, however, of the inhabitants tell us that the sea-breeze is no security against the mephitism of the fens. The neighbouring promontory of Circe reminds us of her magic wand which had the power of transforming the "human face divine" into that of swine-a power still inherent in the territory which the goddess has forsaken! From Terracina we are whirled along a narrow pass under the impending cliffs of Anxur, with myrtles on one side, and morasses on the other-the former perfuming, and the latter poisoning the air we breathe-a Syren atmosphere, "Whose touch is death, and makes destruction please." Six miles farther on, we pass under a portal, and exchange a beggarly but holy land for a land of beggars and bandits. At FONDI We have remarkable specimens of ancient power and modern poverty-the VIA APPIA, as laid down two thousand years ago, and a town encircled with Cyclopean walls, and peopled with the most wretched inhabitants over which an Italiau sun ever radiated his glorious beams, or a pestiferous soil diffused its noxious exhalations! While the courier and the custom-house are carrying on their belligerent negociations as to the sum that legalises all contraband commodities, the English carriage stands, without horses, in the street of FONDI, surrounded by increasing swarms of professional mendicants, exhibiting all the seriocomic combinations which misery and mirth, importunate deformity and jocular starvation can produce! Every piece of money that is flung from the carriage, causes, first a scramble as to who shall catch it-then a scuffle as to who shall keep it-and lastly, a chorus of laughter, jibes, and jokes among those who have missed it. Such are the interludes in the drama of mendicity, as enacted by Neapolitan performers. From Fondi to Itri, the road winds through a mountainous and romantic country, whose only visible inhabitants, besides the occupants of gibbets, are painted wooden soldiers on the road-side, in mortal combat with murderers and robbers, reminding the unprotected traveller that he is treading on the classic soil of brigandage, the fearful territory of FRA DIAVOLO, whose head is at Terracina, but whose spirit may still be wandering among his former haunts in these lonely mountains! Instead of lingering in this unpeopled paradise, this smiling solitude, we are almost instinctively urged to hasten our steps,till we enter, with something like a feeling of security, the very DEN of the BANDITS-the cradle of misery, and the nursery of crime! Such is ITRI, half of which is buried in the depth of a ravine-half of it clinging along crags and precipices—a site equally well adapted for the commission and the concealment of murder. It would be difficult to imagine a spot more "Fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils ❞— than the town of ITRI-and it would be impossible to body forth the forms of human beings, male and female, better calculated to inspire the horrible ideas of lawless plunder and midnight assassination, than its gaunt, and grim, and hunger-stricken inhabitants present to the eye of the shuddering traveller !* There our purgatory, our persecution-perhaps our FEARS, are of shorter duration than at FONDI-because the change of horses occupies less time than the briberies of the DoganA. Again we meander through another terrestrial Paradise, perfumed by the orange, the lemon, and the myrtle, till we descend to the border of the placid ocean, and halt for a moment under the MAUSOLEUM OF CICERO, marking the spot where a political FRIEND assented to his assassination, and a grateful SLAVE erected him a tomb! Italy is the land of morals, though not of morality. That which may naturally be drawn from a contemplation of this mouldering ruin is not the least impressive. The wide, the almost unbounded circle of Tully's friends and relatives did not produce a single individual to strew flowers over the grave of “ a father of his country"-nor imprint his name on a plain marble slab! It is only by the spark of gratitude which glowed in the breast of a manumitted slave, that we are led to the spot where Cicero fell by the assassin stroke of the vengeful Antony and the artful Augustus! While ruminating on this tragic memorial of fatal ambition and faithless friendship, we arrive at MOLA DI GAETA, and take up our night's quarters on the very spot where stood the formian villa of him whose untimely grave we had just been contemplating! It is not wonderful that the wealthy Romans should have eagerly contended * "Let those who rejoice in the failure of the Neapolitan enterprise-in the vain efforts of the enlightened and the independent to shake off the tyranny which has poisoned the sources of humanity, and left the best gifts of God and nature worthless-visit Itri, and see there the effects of the government, in whose restoration they triumph. Let them see only once this nest of crime and malady, let them behold the well-known bandit, scowling at the door of that black dismantled shed, where he finds, in his casual visit from the mountain, the brawling brood of famished imps, whom his portion of spoil can scarcely nurture, for whom the last human feeling that lingers in his hardened heart exists! Let them see that brood, destined to beggary or to their father's trade, disfigured by dirt and rags, issuing forth at the noise of a carriage-wheel, throwing themselves under the horses' feet to excite compassion, and raising yells, that move more by terror than by pity. Let them view that listless vicious mother, with her look of sagacity sharpened by want, handsome in spite of filth, but the more terrible for her beauty, lying at her door in utter idleness, the knife perhaps still reeking, which her husband has plied too successfully within view of the gibbet, of the orangegroves of Fondi, perhaps near the image of the Madonna.-Here is the sum up of the results of the Neapolitan despotism of centuries' existence; want, vice, disease, bigotry, and assassination. Such is Itri, the stranger's terror, the native's shame, the bandit's home." |