s rainbow sunlight, and you may have some
impression of the Villa Borghese.

"Such silence and solemnity, that you would never dream you were
near the busy haunt of men, were it not, that a long linked
diapason of bells, modulated by every possible inflection of their
lofty language, convinced you that you were basking amidst all this
voluptuous quiet, beneath the walls of a concealed city, and that
city--ROME!"

THE RUINS.--THE CAMPAGNA.

"This afternoon we drove along the Via Appia Nova. The sun, rolling
his chariot amidst a cavalcade of wild clouds, along the ruddy
array of shattered arches, variegating the grassy plain with its
uncouth palatial and sepulchral ruins, in ebony and gold,
illuminated the purple and green recesses of the Sabine hills, and
caressing with capricious fleetness their woody towers and towns,
bequeathed to the north a calm blue vault, wherein, as in some
regal hall of state, the dome of St Peter's, the rotunda of the
Colosseum, the vast basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore, and San
Giovanni Laterana, that embattled sepulchre of Cecilia, and those
lofty masses of the Pamfilipine, which hovered in the horizon like
a feathery vapour, proclaim the illustrious domicile of Rome.

"The Temple of the Divus Rediculus (or whatever other title it may
rejoice in) is one of those lovely little phantasies of
architecture that one might imagine a London citizen would have
coveted for a summer-house. The brilliant contrast between its
vermilion pilasters and its pale yellow wall, the delicate moulding
of its slender bricks and the elaborate elegance of its decoration,
not to omit its pleasing, though diminutive proportions, arising
from the wild green turf of this melancholy region, can scarcely
fail of affecting with at least a spark of fancy, the flattest
spirit of this work-day world. For my own part, I should be much
less disposed to pronounce it a temple than a tomb; and, in fact,
the whole appearance of this wide dull tract seems eminently
adapted to sepulchral piles. It is most melancholy, most funereal;
and even that glorious sun, and those majestic aqueducts, soaring,
as they do, to salute his lustre, and to emulate his glory, cannot
efface the feeling, that such a scene, and such memorials, should
be visited only in the