family at
Civita Vecchia, on my return for the third time to Rome. Before we could
make all our arrangements, it was too late to think of journeying that
day towards the dear old city; but the following morning we set forth in
a rumbling, yellow post-coach, with three horses, and a shabby, gaudy
postilion,--the wheels clattering, the bells on the horses' necks
jingling, the cock's-plumes on their heads nodding, and a half-dozen
sturdy beggar-brats running at our side and singing a dismal chorus of
"_Dateci qualche cosa_." Two or three half-baiocchi, however, bought
them off, and we had the road to ourselves. The day was charming, the
sky cloudless, the air tender and with that delicious odor of the South
which so soothingly intoxicates the senses. The sea, accompanying us for
half our way, gleamed and shook out its breaking surf along the shore;
and the rolling slopes of the Campagna, flattered by sunlight, stretched
all around us,--here desert and sparkling with tall skeleton grasses
and the dry canes' tufted feathers, and here covered with low, shrubby
trees, that, crowding darkly together, climbed the higher hills. On
tongues of land, jutting out into the sea, stood at intervals lonely
watch-towers, gray with age, and at their feet shallow and impotent
waves gnashed into foam around the black, jagged teeth of half-sunken
rocks along the shore. Here and there the broken arches of a Roman
bridge, nearly buried in the lush growth of weeds, shrubs, and flowers,
or the ruins of some old villa, the home of the owl, snake, and lizard,
showed where Ancient Rome journeyed and lived. At intervals, heavy
carts, drawn by the superb gray oxen of the Campagna, creaked slowly
by, the _contadino_ sitting athwart the tongue; or some light wine
_carrettino_ came ringing along, the driver fast asleep under its tall,
triangular cover, with his fierce little dog beside him, and his horse
adorned with bright rosettes and feathers. Sometimes long lines of mules
or horses, tied one to another's tail, plodded on in dusty procession,
laden with sacks;--sometimes droves of oxen, or _poledri_, conducted
by a sturdy driver in heavy leathern leggings, and armed with a
long, pointed pole, stopped our way for a moment. In the fields, the
_pecoraro_, in shaggy sheep-skin breeches, the very type of the mythic
Pan, leaned against his staff, half-asleep, and tended his woolly
flock,--or the _contadino_ drove through dark furrows the old plough of
Virgil