is a _stack of chimneys_, the Pantheon _an old oven_, and the
Fountain of Egeria a _pig-sty_. Are such persons aware that in all
this there is an affectation, a thousand times more gross and
contemptible, than that affectation (too frequent perhaps) which they
design to ridicule?

"Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes,
He is a slave--the meanest we can meet."

2.--Our journey to-day has been long, but delightfully diversified,
and abounding in classical beauty and interest. I scarce know what to
say, now that I open my little book to record my own sensations: they
are so many, so various, so painful, so delicious--my senses and my
imagination have been so enchanted, my heart so very heavy--where
shall I begin?

In some of the scenes of to-day--at Terracina, particularly, there was
beauty beyond what I ever beheld or imagined: the scenery of
Switzerland is of a different character, and on a different scale: it
is beyond comparison grander, more gigantic, more overpowering, but it
is not so poetical. Switzerland is not Italy--is not the enchanting
_south_. This soft balmy air, these myrtles, orange-groves,
palm-trees; these cloudless skies, this bright blue sea, and sunny
hills, all breathe of an enchanted land; "a land of Faery."

Between Velletri and Terracina the road runs in one undeviating line
through the Pontine Marshes. The accounts we have of the baneful
effects of the malaria here, and the absolute solitude, (not a human
face or a human habitation intervening from one post-house to
another,) invest the wild landscape with a frightful and peculiar
character of desolation. As for the mere exterior of the country, I
have seen more wretched and sterile looking spots, (in France, for
instance,) but none that so affected the imagination and the spirits.
On leaving the Pontine Marshes, we came almost suddenly upon the sunny
and luxuriant region near Terracina: here was the ancient city of
Anxur; and the gothic ruins of the castle of Theodoric, which frown on
the steep above, are contrasted with the delicate and Grecian
proportions of the temple below. All the country round is famed in
classic and poetic lore. The Promontory (once poetically the _island_)
of Circe is still the Monte Circello: here was the region of the
Lestrygons, and the scene of part of the AEneid and Odyssey; and
Corinne has superadded romantic and charming associations quite as
delightful, and quite as _true_.

Antiquarians, who