Prætereunt, tacito passu quem si quis adiret,
Lentus erat: si voce gradum majore citâsset,
Commotis fervebat aquis: cùmque omnibus una
Sit natura vadis, similes ut corporis umbras
Ostendant: hæc sola novam jactantia sortem
Humanos properant imitari flumina mores.
Celsa dehinc patulum prospectans Narnia campum
Regali calcatur equo, rarique coloris

Non procul amnis abest, urbi qui nominis auctor,
Ilice sub densa sylvis arctatus opacis
Inter utrumque jugum tortis anfractibus albet.
Inde, salutato libatis Tibride lymphis,
Excipiunt arcus, operosaque semita vastis
Molibus, et quicquid tantæ præmittitur urbi.

De Sext. Cons. Hon.

They leave Ravenna and the mouths of Po,
That all the borders of the town o'erflow;
And spreading round in one continued lake,
A spacious hospitable harbour make.
Hither the seas at stated times resort,
And shove the laden vessels into port:
Then with a gentle ebb retire again,
And render back their cargo to the main.
So the pale moon the restless ocean guides,
Driv'n to and fro by such submissive tides.
Fair Fortune next, with looks serene and kind,
Receives them, in her ancient fane enshrin'd;
Then the high hills they cross, and from below
In distant murmurs hear Metaurus flow;
Till to Clitumno's sacred streams they come,
That send white victims to almighty Rome;
When her triumphant sons in war succeed,
And slaughter'd hecatombs around them bleed.
At Narni's lofty seats, arriv'd from far,
They view the windings of the hoary Nar;
Through rocks and woods impetuously he glides,
While froth, and foam, the fretting surface hides.
And now the royal guest, all dangers past,
Old Tiber and his nymphs salutes at last;
The long laborious pavement here he treads,
That to proud Rome th' admiring nations leads:

While stately vaults and tow'ring piles appear,
And show the world's metropolis is near.

Silius Italicus, who has taken more pains on the geography of Italy than any other of the Latin poets, has given a catalogue of most of the rivers that I saw in Umbria, or in the borders of it. He has avoided a fault (if it be really such) which Macrobius has objected to Virgil, of passing from one place to another without regarding their regular and natural situation, in which Homer's catalogues are observed to be much more methodical and exact than Virgil's.

Cavis venientes montibus, Umbri,
Hos Esis Sapisque lavant, rapidasque sonanti
Vortice contorquens undas per saxa Metaurus,
Et lavat ingentem perfundens flumine sacro
Clitumnus taurum, Narque albescentibus undis
In Tibrim properans, Tiniæque inglorius humor,
Et Clanis, et Rubico, et Senonum de nomine Sena.
Sed pater ingenti medios illabitur amne
Albula, et admotâ perstringit mania ripâ,
His urbes Arna, et lætis Mevania pratis,
Hispellum, et duro monti per saxa recumbens
Narnia, etc.

SIL. ITAL. lib. 8.

Since I am got among the poets, I shall end this chapter with two or three passages out of them, that I have omitted inserting in their proper places.

Sit cisterna mihi, quam vinea, malo, Ravenna:
Cum possim multo vendere pluris aquam.

MARTIAL, lib. 3.

Lodg'd at Ravenna (water sells so dear),
A cistern to a vineyard I prefer.

Callidus imposuit nuper mihi copo Ravenna;

Cum peterem mixtum, vendidit ille merum.

Idem.

By a Ravenna vintner once betray'd,
So much for wine and water mix'd I paid;
But when I thought the purchas'd liquor mine,
The rascal fobb'd me off with only wine.

Stat fucare colus nec Sidone vilior Ancon,
Murice nec Tyrio.-

SIL. ITAL. lib. 8.

The wool when shaded with Ancona's dye,
May with the proudest Tyrian purple vie.

Fountain water is still very scarce at Ravenna, and was probably much more so when the sea was within its neighbourhood.

FROM ROME TO NAPLES.

UPON my arrival at Rome, I took a view of St. Peter's, and the Rotunda, leaving the rest till my return from Naples, when I should have time and leisure enough to consider what I saw. St. Peter's seldom answers expectation at first entering it, but enlarges itself on all sides insensibly, and mends upon the eye every moment. The proportions are so very well observed, that nothing appears to an advantage, or distinguishes itself above the rest. It seems neither extremely high, nor long, nor broad, because it is all of them in a just equality. As on the contrary, in our Gothic cathedrals, the narrowness of the arch makes it rise in height, or run out in length; the lowness often opens it in breadth; or the defectiveness of some other particular makes any single part appear in great perfection. Though everything in this church is admirable, the most astonishing part of it is the cupola. Upon my going to the top of it, I was surprised to find that the

dome, which we see in the church, is not the same that one looks upon without doors, the last of them being a kind of case to the other, and the stairs lying betwixt them both, by which one ascends into the ball. Had there been only the outward dome, it would not have shown itself to an advantage to those that are in the church; or had there only been the inward one, it would scarce have been seen by those that are without; had they both been one solid dome of so great a thickness, the pillars would have been too weak to have supported it. After having surveyed this dome, I went to see the Rotunda, which is generally said to have been the model of it. This church is at present so much changed from the ancient Pantheon, as Pliny has described it, that some have been inclined to think it is not the same temple; but the Cavalier Fontana has abundantly satisfied the world in this particular, and shown how the ancient figure and ornaments of the Pantheon have been changed into what they are at present. This author, who is now esteemed the best of the Roman architects, has lately written a treatise on Vespasian's Amphitheatre, which is not yet printed.

After having seen these two masterpieces of modern and ancient architecture, I have often considered with myself whether the ordinary figure of the heathen or that of the Christian temples be the most beautiful, and the most capable of magnificence, and cannot forbear thinking the cross figure more proper for such spacious buildings than the rotund. I must confess the eye is better filled at first entering the rotund, and takes in the whole beauty and magnificence of the temple at one view. But such as are built in the form of a cross, give us

a greater variety of noble prospects. Nor is it easy to conceive a more glorious show in architecture, than what a man meets with in St. Peter's when he stands under the dome. If he looks upward he is astonished at the spacious hollow of the cupola, and has a vault on every side of him, that makes one of the beautifullest vistas that the eye can possibly pass through. I know that such as are professed admirers of the ancients, will find abundance of chimerical beauties the architects themselves never thought of; as one of the most famous of the moderns in that art tells us, the hole in the roof of the rotunda is so admirably contrived, that it makes those who are in the temple look like angels, by diffusing the light equally on all sides of them.

In all the old highways that lead from Rome, one sees several little ruins on each side of them, that were formerly so many sepulchres; for the ancient Romans generally buried their dead near the great roads:

Quorum Flaminiû tegitur cinis atque Latiná. Juv. Sat. 1. none, but some few of a very extraordinary quality, having been interred within the walls of the city.

Our Christian epitaphs, that are to be seen only in churches, or churchyards, begin often with a Siste Viator-Viator precare salutem, etc. probably in imitation of the old Roman inscriptions that generally addressed themselves to the travellers; as it was impossible for them to enter the city, or to go out of it, without passing through one of these melancholy roads, which for a great length was nothing else but a street of funeral monuments.

In my way from Rome to Naples I found nothing so remarkable as the beauty of the country and the