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 Italian 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 govern ment, 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."

MOLA DI GAETA.

199 for every inch of ground on this delightful shore. There is something in the sight of a boundless, waveless, and tideless ocean, which, independently of the pure and refreshing air, conduces to tranquillity of mind, and calms the effervescence of the passions. The depressive atmosphere of the Campagna and Pontine Marshes is here exchanged for the refreshing sea-breeze that skims the Mediterranean by day, and the bracing land-wind that descends from the Apennines at night. The scenery is highly romantic. A bold coast, with shelving shores and projecting promontories, forms a striking contrast with the glassy ocean, that falls, in gentle murmurs, on the golden sands, or chafes in white foam against the rugged rocks. Homer, Horace, Virgil have exhausted their poetic powers in peopling these regions with the creatures of fancy with heroes, gods, demi-gods-and CANNIBALS! The taste of the inhabitants for human blood seems to have descended to their posterity. More of Napoleon's soldiers fell by the modern, than of Ulysses' sailors by the ancient Læstrygons.*

It is fortunate for the traveller on classic soil, that the labours of the day prove an effectual bar to the meditations of the night; else who could expect to fall fast asleep at ten o'clock in the evening, and that for the first time, in the "VILLA of CICERO," and within sight of his tomb? Such are the effects of travelling exercise in the open air. The majestic scenes of the Alps and Apennines fade from the mental eye, as well as from the corporeal optics, at the close of day; and we sink into a state which is the closest approximation to death itself. It is not with toil on the mountain's airy brow, as it is with care in the crowded haunts of man on the plains. In the latter— Should kind repose

Steal us but one short moment from our woes,

Then dreams invade!

We were on our third and last day's journey between Rome and Naples, before the sun had burst over the Apennines, and burnished with his rays an exhilarating scene of rocks and hills and towers-of glittering streams and a glorious ocean. As we approached the classic LIRIS, we passed under the broken arches of an ancient aqueduct that once supplied the proud city of MINTURNÆ, whose ruins, close on our right, are now the habitation of wolves, foxes, and wild animals. We were on the spot where MARIUS concealed him

* "In 1806, Frà Diavolo had rendered himself formidable even to those whom pontifical guards and Neapolital troops dared not oppose. The murders on the highway between Rome and Naples were almost as numerous as the travellers that passed it. The bravest men in the French army were cut off by assassination, and the gallant Colonel Brugniere and several of his officers are supposed to have fallen by Frà Diavolo's own hand."

self in the Marshes, and we could not help fancying, every now and then, the fiendish face of that inhuman monster, staring at us from the mud!

Crossing the LIRIS, we ascend a series of hills amidst romantic scenery, and from one of the eminences of Mount MASSICUS, behold the CAMPANIA FELIX Stretching away to the foot of VESUVIUS, in front, from whose crater the wreathing smoke rises in a zig-zag line, and mingles with an atmosphere of heavenly ætherial blue. On the left, the serrated ridge of Apennines towers to the skies, as an impassable barrier and protection to this Garden of EDEN-on the right, the Mediterranean laves the base of the bold and perpendicular promontory of ISCHIA.

Descending from the hills where Horace quaffed, and quaffing praised the Falernian juice, we post rapidly to CAPUA, a place fraught with exciting recollections. If ever this renowned city subdues the energies of another Hannibal, and dissolves an army of veterans in slothful effeminacy, it will be by the relaxing qualities of the climate rather than by the captivating graces of the women! CAPUA is still a fortified town; but the only military exercises which we observed, were a kind of Lancastro-Lusitanian system*—not of mutual instruction, but of mutual protection against marauders, who levy contributions on the personal property (not propreté) of all ranks and both

sexes.

From the hills of St. Agatha to Capua, and from Capua to Naples (but especially between the latter places) the ground is nearly as level as the bordering ocean; while the natural fertility of the soil and the extreme refinement of cultivation combine to form a scene too luscious for the eye not to pall upon the sense, even in a short journey of less than thirty miles. On every side, and in every direction, mother Earth is bringing forth triplets at a birth, and these births are quadrupled in the course of the year. Grain below, orchards above, vines between, produce such a constant reiteration of corn, fruit, and wine, that we become as sated and drunk with the exuberant gifts of Nature, as flies that are wading over a plate of honey. What a treat would the savage mountain of Radicofani, or the steril rock of Gibraltar, prove to the eye of the traveller in the CAMPANIA FELIX! We are naturally led to ask, what are the causes of all this fertility? They are obvious enough. The soil is a rich alluvion, on which the rays of an almost tropical sun are beaming from above; while Vulcan's forge is for ever roaring beneath. He who cannot dissociate, in his mind, the ideal connexion between fertility and felicity-sterility and starvation, should traverse the CAMPANIA FELIX, and the mountains of Switzerland.

* The compositor, who considered himself a great traveller, having once made a voyage to Lisbon, changed LUSITANIAN, into LoUSITANIAN, by way of shewing that he had not travelled without noting the manners and customs of other countries.