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