ep, you may find perhaps the
carved name of a goddess, the empty pedestal of a statue.

Lying there on a summer day in the everlasting quietness, unbroken even
by a wandering wind or the ripple of a stream, some inkling of that old
Roman life, always at its best in such country places as this, comes to
you, yes, from the time when Juno was yet a little maid among the mossy
fountains and the noise of the brooks. Tacitus in his _Agricola_, that
consoling book, tells us of those homes of a refined and severe
simplicity in Frejus and Como, but it is to Rutilius, with his strange
gift of impressionism, you must go for a glimpse of Luna. In his
perfect verses[13] we may see the place as he found it when, gliding
swiftly on the waves, perhaps on a day like this, he came to those walls
of glistening marble, which got their name from the planet that borrows
her light from the sun, her brother. The country itself furnished those
stones which shamed with their whiteness the laughing lilies, while
their polished surface with its veins threw forth shining rays. For this
is a land rich in marbles which defy, sure of their victory, the virgin
whiteness of the snow itself.

Well, there is but little left of that shining city, and yet, as I lay
dreaming in the grass-grown theatre, it seemed to be a festal day, and
there among the excited and noisy throng of holiday-makers, just for a
moment I caught sight of the aediles in their white tunics, and then,
far away, the terrified face of a little child, frightened at the
hideous masks of the actors. Then, the performance over, I followed home
some simple old centurion was it?--who, returned from the wars on the
far frontier, had given the city a shady walk and that shrine of
Neptune. We came at last to a country house of "pale red and yellow
marble," half farm, half villa, lying away from the white road at the
point where it begins to decline somewhat sharply to the marshland
below. It is close to the sea. Large enough for all requirements, and
not expensive to keep in repair, my host explains. At its entrance is a
modest but beautiful hall; then come the cloisters, which are rounded
into the likeness of the letter D, and these enclose a small and pretty
courtyard. These cloisters, I am told, are a fine refuge in a storm, for
they are protected by windows and deep over-hanging eaves. Facing the
cloisters is a cheerful inner court, then the dining-room towards the
seashore, fine enough for