y Campagna.

_Fragments of Italy and the Rhineland._ London: 1841._

_A Pilgrim's Reliquary._ By the REV. T. H. WHYTE, M.A. London:
1845.

THE WALLS OF ROME.

"I wonder whether it be the fault of mine own inattention, or the
absence of good taste in others, that I have heard and read so
little of the Walls of Rome! To me they rank among the few, out of
all the Wonders of the Eternal City that have exceeded my
expectations. Solitude, their peculiar characteristic, has great
charms for a companionless enthusiast like myself: it is, moreover,
a description of solitude, the very reverse of melancholy. Mile
after mile have I repeatedly roamed along the outer Pomoerium of
those solitary rampires, and encountered perhaps a goatherd and his
pretty flock, the tinkle of whose bells formed the only
accompaniment to the honey notes of the blackbird:--or, perhaps, in
sonorous solemnity, some great Bell would suddenly boom upon the
silence, and be taken up in various tones from a hundred quarters,
no vestige, mean time, of Minster or Monastery being visible;
nothing but that enormous Adamantine Circlet rearing itself into
the sky on one side, and the gateways and walls of villas and
vineyards occupying the other. You might fancy those tolling chimes
belonging to some City hidden by Enchantment.

"Still, as I have proceeded in my mood, half enjoying, half
moralizing the scene, those hundred towers, like Titan warders
placed around the Seven Hills, would each after each look down upon
me from their high and silent stations; till, as I came to know
them, they seemed to meet my gaze with the sedate and pleasant
welcome of a venerable friend. They were the incessant associates
of my solitude, and I was never wearied of them. Of a surety their
vast Circuit (fifteen miles) gives ample time and space enough for
rumination!

"Their colossal cubits are the most perfect exemplar of
Architectural sublimity. Their dismantled Battlements have no
Watchman but Antiquity, no Herald but Tradition, and hear no
clamour louder than the Church or Convent bells, or the dirge which
the wind wails over them through the melancholy Cypress and the
moaning Pine. The broad old belt of short flowery turf at the base,
the Violet, the Gilliflower, and the vermilion spotte