every privation, every frown of Fortune. They could think, at least, "all the way over" the great Atlantic; and their fancy (little cherished here) had leisure to be busy among the friends and scenes which they had left behind. A gentleman, who had not seen them for some time, went one day to the artist's painting-room, and observing him pale and worn, inquired about his health, and afterwards regarding his wife. He answered, only, "She has left me ;" and proceeded in a hurried way with his work. She was dead!—and he was left alone to toil, and get money, and mourn. The heart in which he

had hoarded all his secrets, all his hopes, was cold; and Fame itself was but a shadow!-And so it is, that all we love must wither,—that we ourselves must wither and die away. 'Tis a trite saying: yet a wholesome moral belongs to it. The thread of our life is spun: it is twisted firmly, and looks as it would last for ever. All colours are there,the gaudy yellow and the sanguine red, and black-dark as death; yet is it cut in twain by the shears of Fate almost before we discern the peril.

All that has been, and is, and is to come, must die, and the grave will possess all. Already the temple of Death is stored with enormous treasures: but it shall be filled, till its sides shall crack and moulder, and its gaunt king "Death, the skeleton," shall wither, like his prey. Oh! if the dead may speak, by what rich noises is that solemn temple haunted! What a countless throng of shapes is there,-kings and poets, philosophers and soldiers! What a catalogue might not be reckoned, from the founder of the towers of Belus, to the Persian who encamped in the Babylonian squares,-to Alexander, aud Socrates, and Plato,-to Cæsar,-to Alfred! Fair names, too, might be strung upon the list, like pearls or glancing diamonds,-creatures who were once the grace and beauty of the earth, queens and gentle women,— Antigone and Sappho,-Corinna and the mother of the Gracchi,-Portia and Agrippine. And the story might be ended with him, who died an exile on his sea-surrounded rock, the first emperor of France, the king and conqueror of Italy, the Corsican soldier, Napoleon.

I will here take leave of this melancholy subject. I have touched upon it in a desultory way: but it is difficult to reduce our sorrows to system, or to array such recollections as these in the best order. For my own part, I have been content to relate them just as they occurred to me let the reader submit, for once, to be as easily satisfied as I S.

was.

PETER PIN DARICS.

South Down Mutton.

Ir men, when in a rage, porrected
Before a glass their angry features,
Most likely they would stand corrected.
At sight of such distorted creatures;
So we may hold a moral mirror

Before these myrmidons of passion,
And make ill-temper see its error,
By gravely mimicking its fashion.

A sober Cit of Sweeting's Alley,

Deem'd a warm man on 'Change, was what
In temper might be reckon'd hot,
Indulging many an angry sally
Against his wife and servants :-this
Is no unprecedented state,

For man and wife, when tête à tête
They revel in domestic bliss ;
But to show off his freaks before his
Guests, was contra bonos mores.
Our Cit was somewhat of a glutton,
Or Epicure at least in mutton,
Esteeming it a more delicious
Feast, than those of old Apicius,
Crassus's savoury symposia,
Or even Jupiter's ambrosia.

One day a leg arrived from Brighton,
A true South Down legitimate,
When he enlarged with much delight on

The fat and grain, and shape and weight,-
Pronounced on each a learned stricture,
Declared the joint a perfect picture,
And as his eye its outline follow'd,
Call'd it a prize-a lucky hit,
A gem—a pearl more exquisite
Than ever Cleopatra swallow'd,
Promulging finally this fiat-

"I'll dine at five and ask Jack Wyatt."

The cover raised, the meat he eyed

With new enjoyment-next the cloth he

Tuck'd in his button-hole, and cried,
"Done to a tittle-brown and frothy!"
Then seized the carving-knife elate,
But lo! it would not penetrate
The skin-(the Anatomic term is
The what-dye-call?-ay-Epidermis.)
He felt the edge-'twas like a dump,
Whereat with passion-crimson'd frown,
He reach'd the stair-head at a jump,
And threw the blade in fury down,
Venting unnumber'd curses on
His thoughtless lazy rascal-John.
His guest, observing this disclosure
Of temper, threw with great composure
The dish, with mutton, spoons and all,
Down helter-skelter to the hall,

Where it arrived with fearful clatter.

"Zounds!" cried the Cit-"why, what's the matter?"

Nothing whatever," with a quiet

Look and accent, answer'd Wyatt:

་་

I hope I haven't unawares

Made a mistake; but, when you threw
The knife below in such a stew,

I thought you meant to dine down stairs!"

H.

MODERN PILGRIMAGES.-NO. IX.

The Tomb of Virgil, Misenum, Avernus, &c.

THE tomb of Virgil! Incredulity is aroused at the name, and even our reverence for the bard is offended, that an earthly trace should remain of a spirit so divine. Besides, with us Virgil's times are those of his poem, not of his contemporaries; we never dream of him as a personage of the Augustan age. Our school recollections identify him with Æneas, with the Sibyl, with old Evander, and the Aborigines, that preceded by many centuries the birth of Romulus and of Rome. It is astonishing how long we sometimes hold truth at defiance, and refuse to feel the thing we have always known. I was startled to find Virgil contemporary with secure records and a civilized age, and to see the place of his death and burial fixed without the aid of mystery or tradition. He died at Brundusium, and was buried by the order of Augustus at Naples, his favourite place of residence, on the road to Puteoli, within the second milestone from the city. As one extreme naturally leads to another, I pass from utter scepticism to complete belief, finding a sepulchre on the road to Puteoli, now Puzzuoli, about the requisite distance from Naples. Mr. Forsyth may tell me, that this rests solely on the testimony of "Donatus, an obscure grammarian,"—be it so: but Donatus lived a few centuries after Virgil, and had a far better right to be believed on the subject than we.

Of old at a distance from Naples, but now joined to it by the beautiful suburb of Chiaja, is Mount Pausilippo, which stretches out into the sea, and divides the Bay of Naples into two inferior gulfs, that of Puzzuoli, and that which immediately washes the city itself. The road from Naples to Puzzuoli, instead of crossing the summit of Mount Pausilippo, is cut directly through it: an undertaking rendered practicable by the tufus and soft volcanic matter of which the mountain is composed. The subterranean passage, considered ancient even in the time of the Romans, and described as such by Seneca and Strabo, is of nearly half a mile in length, and its extent made me smile at recollecting the petty though vaunted galleries of the Simplon. At the entrance of this passage or grotto, but elevated much above it, owing to the gradual sinking of the road in its subsequent repairs, stands the contested tomb of Virgil, a square, low-arched, and, but for its name, nowise remarkable ruin. A visitor may enter stooping, and stand upright within. "The structure itself," says Forsyth, "resembles a ruined pigeon-house, where the numerous columbaria would indicate a family sepulchre: but who should repose in the tomb of Virgil but Virgil alone?" It should be remembered, that the freedmen and slaves of Augustus were buried, according to his own plan, in the same mausoleum with himself: and Virgil was not without his household. "There is a tradition among the Neapolitans," says De Sades in one of his notes, "confirmed by many historians, that, during the reign of king Robert, strangers opened the tomb of Virgil, and took from thence a marvellous book of secrets. This robbery having raised a fear that even the bones of the poet were not safe, the urn which contained them was transported to the Chateau Neuf; but where they were placed, no one knows." This indeed, has all the air of tradition. Opposite the

door of the tomb is the following inscription, said to be from the pen of the poet himself, "but now rejected on the cliff as a forgery :"Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope: cecini pascua, rura, duces.

The beauty of the spot, as well as the poet's name, has attracted many of our countrymen to choose Pausilippo for their last abode, and tombstones of English are gathering fast around the ashes of Virgil. We heretics seem to have good taste in burial-places: while the orthodox catholics of Rome and Naples are cast, "unknelled and uncoffined," into their beastly cemeteries, the protestant dead repose here in the lovely vineyards of Pausilippo, or around the pyramid of Cestius at Rome*.

Issuing from the grotto on the other side, the pilgrim finds himself in the Phlegrean fields; and a short drive brings him to Puzzuoli, where many ruins of antiquity will attract and deserve his attention, especially the remains of the port, and of the Temple of Serapis. "The stones of Rome," says Petrarch, 66 are more eloquent than the men,"and here are names more eloquent than either stones or men. From Puzzuoli the shore extends towards the north in a semicircle as far as the lofty cape of Misenum-need I quote Virgil to prove the celebrity of the name? the trumpeter of Æneas seems to have been appropriately buried in the stormy eminence. Here, too, was the Lucullan villa, where the last western emperor was confined and died. Proceeding inland from the promontory is the harbour, "once the Portsmouth of the Roman empire;"-it is now aptly termed the Mure Morto: on its banks they impudently show the Styx and the Elysian fields-as bleak an Elysium as Italy could well afford. Further on is Baiæ, the hills, the shore, and far into the sea, all ruins; of a calm day you can see beneath your boat the ruins of a thousand villas. This Roman "watering-place" must have been as bleak, as bare, and as unfertile as Brighton; and it is hard to conceive, what fascination drew the fashionables of old to these realms of sulphur and barrenness. The vapour-baths must have been the original attraction; "who would believe," says Petrarch, "that so near the abodes of death, nature should have placed these preservatives of life?"

66

Dictaque cessantem nervis elidere morbum
Sulfura."

Half-way between Misenum and Puzzuoli are the lakes Lucrine and Avernus, one more inland than the other. Augustus joined them together by a canal, cut away all the woods that surrounded Avernus, and, opening them to the sea, converted them into secure harbours for his galleys. But in the earthquake of November 1538, a mountain suddenly sprang in the place of the Lucrine lake, and shrank it into a mere pool, shutting up at the same time Avernus once more from the sea. Petrarch has left us a full account of this region previous to the earthquake. He visited it in 1343, and wrote on the subject, in Latin verse and prose, to Cardinal Colonna and his friend Barbatus. He speaks of the Grotto of the Sibyl in a stupendous rock over Avernus, and of

Among the English dead at Testaccio lies Keats, and the remains of Shelley have but just arrived at Rome to be placed near those of his infant son.

its hundred mouths: this appears to have been overwhelmed by the Monte Nuoco, for the subterranean passage, which the guides at present call the Sibyl's Grotto, Petrarch evidently considered and described as the road to Hell. In sober reality it seems no more than a subterranean passage to Baiæ, similar to the one under Pausilippo. Common fame makes the lake Avernus, of course, unfathomable; but the master of his Majesty's ship the Rochfort sounded it the other day, and ascertained its depth to be no more than seventeen fathoms. It is well stored with tench; while the little that remains of the Lucrine lake so abounds in fish, that the King has made it a preserve, and has laid hold on it for himself. I could not altogether ascertain whether Horace's precepts still hold true,

"Murice Baiano melior Lucrina peloris;

Ostrea Circæis, Miseno oriuntur echini :

The Lucrine still holds its pre-eminence; while for oysters the Lake Fusaro, or ancient Acheron, has succeeded to the fame of the Circæan promontory. But such culinary minutia ill beseem the poetical pilgrim.

"Indi fra monte Barbaro, ed Averno
L'antichissimo albergo di Sibylla
Passando, se n'andar dritto a Linterno."
Trionfo della Castità.

This passage of Petrarch proves, that what he considered to have been the Grotto of the Sibyl, was on that side of the Avernus since covered by the Monte Nuovo. The poet and many others have mistaken Monte Barbaro for Monte Falerno, and the Cicerones of Puz-zuoli follow him at present in pointing out the place where the ancients gathered their favourite wine. If the Falernian grape was cultivated here to meet the poet's demand,

"Ad mare cum veni, generosum et lene requiro,"

the soil must have sadly altered, being incapable at present of produ cing even a blade of grass. From hence we may take the road, described by Petrarch, to Linternum, where Scipio lies buried by "th' upbraiding shore." Guide-books tell you that the following fragment has been found at Linternum..... TA PATRIA NEC, which may have been part of the inscription on the tomb of Africanus mentioned by Livy :

66

Ingrata patria, nec ossa quidem mea habes."

Not far is Cumæ, upon a bleak flat shore. I had anticipated this region the very opposite of what I found it, and had figured to myself sunken lakes, hidden caves, and dark inaccessible groves, fit for the retreat of mystery and superstition. There is nothing of all this;the country is flat and unbroken, save by a few dwarfish hills; and from the Camaldulæ, or any neighbouring eminence, the eye takes in one view the small, insignificant, unromantic space, that once included all the attractions of the Roman world.

It is almost inconceivable, that the sixth book of the Eneid was written, as it must have been, at the very time when the fashionable resort of the Roman great, with all their gaiety and all their scepticism, was situated on the very banks of Avernus, when even the little hor