es. The sea, which is tame and messy in
the artificial bay formed by the pier of Anzio, was fresh and rushing;
the wind swept the brown dark sand like smoke along the ground.

Monte Circeo was quite distinct, blue and white its summit an
overhanging rock, no castle. Inland stretched the fields of asphodels
and the deep woods.

We found in the morning a lane or road gone to ruin, running high up
from Anzio to Nettuno, and entirely under splendid overarching ilexes;
a sunk lane, with here and there a glimpse of blue sea among the
evergreen branches.

ANZIO, _April_ 19.

SPRING 1899.

I.

THE WALLS.

Drove from Porta Angelica to Porta Portese; an immense round,
possible, conceivable, only in Rome. I see for the first time the
_outside_ of the Vatican, galleries and gardens, realising the sort of
fortified town it is, a Rome within Rome. And a fortified one: that
long passage (Hall of the Ariadne) between the Belvedere and the
Rotunda has battlements (oddly enough, Ghibelline); there are towers
and counterforts I cannot identify; and then the immense buttressed
walls, with their green vegetation, and slabs and coats of arms of
Medicis, Roveres; with the clipped ilexes of the gardens, the pines
and bays overtopping, on and on. And in a gap, suddenly, and close
enough to take one's breath away, the immensity of St. Peter's and the
Cupola.

And that this town, which is the Vatican and St. Peter's, these
centres of so much life, should, as a fact, look on one side straight
onto forsaken roads, and the most desolate of countries! Such a thing
is impossible except in Rome; and even in Rome I never suspected it.

Continuing outside the walls, we come to the little church of San
Pancrazio, on an empty road hedged with reed-tied dry thorns: the
little porched doorway leading into an atrium which is an olive
garden, big old trees set orderly, and a pillar with the cross;
outside at least, a solemn little basilica, making one think of
Ravenna.

We drove, apparently for miles, up and down, round and round, between
two immediately successive gates, San Pancrazio and Portese. Green
slopes, dry vineyards with almond blossom among the criss-cross canes,
brakes of reeds; here and there rows of little triumphal bay-trees in
flower over the walls; great overhanging ornamental gateways, leading
to nothing; and, at long intervals, mouldering little villas and
_trattorie_, with mulberry-trees clipped into umbrellas. Rome t