hood of hearts and hands,
Choir of a world in perfect tune."

Cumae is only five miles distant from Puteoli, and about thirteen west
of Naples. But it lies so much out of the way that it is difficult to
combine it with the other famous localities in this classic
neighbourhood in one day's excursion, and hence it is very often
omitted. It amply, however, repays a special visit, not so much by
what it reveals as by what it suggests. There are two ways by which it
can be approached, either by the _Via Cumana_, which gradually ascends
from Puteoli along the ridge of the low volcanic hills on the western
side of Lake Avernus, and passes under the Arco Felice, a huge brick
arch, evidently a fragment of an ancient Roman aqueduct, spanning a
ravine at a great height; or directly from the western shore of Lake
Avernus, by an ancient road paved with blocks of lava, and leading
through an enormous tunnel, called the _Grotta de Pietro Pace_, about
three-quarters of a mile long, lighted at intervals by shafts from
above, said to have been excavated by Agrippa. Both ways are deeply
interesting; but the latter is perhaps preferable because of the
saving of time and trouble which it effects.

The first glimpse of Cumae, though very impressive to the imagination,
is not equally so to the eye. Crossing some cultivated fields, a bold
eminence of trachytic tufa, covered with scanty grass and tufts of
brushwood, rises between you and the sea, forming part of a range of
low hills, which evidently mark the ancient coast-line. On this
elevated plateau, commanding a most splendid view of the blue, sunlit
Mediterranean as far as Gaeta and the Ponza Islands, stood the almost
mythical city; and crowning its highest point, where a rocky
escarpment, broken down on every side except on the south, by which it
can be ascended, the massive foundations of the walls of the Acropolis
may still be traced throughout their whole extent. Very few relics of
the original Greek colony survive; and these have to be sought chiefly
underneath the remains of Roman-Gothic and medieval dynasties, which
successively occupied the place, and partially obliterated each other,
like the different layers of writing in a palimpsest. Time and the
passions of man have dealt more ruthlessly with this than with almost
any other of the renowned spots of Italy. Some fragments of the
ancient fortifications, a confused and scattered heap of ruins within
the line of the city wall