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ing some three thousand feet above sea level. They are covered with villages and castles and villas, and have in all a population of some fifty thousand. The region is volcanic, and the beautiful Lago di Nemi and Lago di Albano were the craters of extinct volcanoes. All this region was the haunt of Cicero, Virgil, and Livy. At Tusculum, near Frascati, are the remains of Cicero's villa, and also of an ancient theatre hewn out of solid rock. The view to the west toward Rome is most beautiful. The dome of St. Peter's crowns the Eternal City; and the Campagna--a sea of green--is as infinite in sight as is the Mediterranean. There are splendid villas and estates in these Alban hills that belong to the Roman nobility, and here the Pope has his summer palace. "The Alban Mount is also full of historical and legendary interest," says a writer on the country around Rome. "The Latin tribe, one of the constituent elements of the Roman people, had here its seat. Upon the highest peak of the range was the temple of Jupiter Latiaris, where all the tribes of Latin blood, the Romans included, met every year to worship; and where the victorious generals of the Republic repaired to offer praises and acknowledgments. In these mountain glens undoubtedly most of that ballad literature of Rome, the loss of which Macaulay so eloquently laments and so successfully restores, had its origin. Nor need the scholar be reminded that this is the scene of the most original and vigorous portions of the AEneid of Virgil; nor how the genius of the poet, which rather languidly recounts the traditions borrowed from Greece, wakes to new life, when he feels his feet upon his own soil and deals with Latin names and Latin legends." The Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati is celebrated for its fantastic waterworks in elaborate fountains and cascades. In the gardens a statue of Pan with a pipe of reeds and one of a satyr with a trumpet are made to play (both the pipe and the trumpet) by water. The hydraulic engineer must have found in Frascati his earthly paradise, for he commanded the water to leap into foam and spray in the air, to rush down marble terraces, and to form itself into obelisks of liquid silver. At Grotto Ferrata is a vast monastery of monks of the Order of Basilio (Greek), a monastery so colossal as to be mistaken for a fortress. The chapel has frescoes by Domenichino. At Castel Gandolfo is the summer Papal palace, that has not been occupied by a Po
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