Italy once stood on the spot. So long ago as the
reign of the emperor Hadrian its very locality was forgotten, and its
former existence regarded by many with incredulity as a myth of early
times. It was left to the enlightened antiquarian skill of our own
times, so fruitful in similar discoveries and resuscitations, to find
out among the fastnesses of the wilderness around Rome its true
position. And although all the difficult problems connected with its
citadel and the circuit of its walls have not yet been solved, there
can be no doubt that the city stood in the very place which modern
archaeologists have determined. This place is a little village called
Isola Farnese, about eleven miles north-west of Rome. The way that
leads to it branches off by a side path for about three miles from the
old diligence road between Florence and Rome at La Storta--the last
post station where horses were changed about eight miles from the
city. It is situated amid ground so broken into heights and hollows
that you see no indications of it until you come abruptly upon it, hid
in a fold of the undulating Campagna. And the loneliness of the
district and of all the paths leading to it is hardly relieved by the
appearance of the village itself.

I shall not soon forget my visit to this romantic spot, and the
delightful day I spent there with a congenial friend. We left Rome in
an open one-horse carriage early one morning about the end of April.
Passing out at the Porta del Popolo, we quickly traversed the squalid
suburb and crossed the Ponte Molle--the famous old Milvian Bridge. We
proceeded as far as the Via Cassia on the old Flaminian Way. At the
junction of these roads the villa and gardens of Ovid were situated;
but their site is now occupied by a humble osteria or wayside tavern.
The road passes over an undulating country entirely uncultivated,
diversified here and there with copses and thickets of wild figs
intermixed with hawthorn, rose-bushes, and broom. A few ilexes and
stone-pines arched their evergreen foliage over the road; and the
succulent milky stems of the wild fig-trees were covered with the
small green fruit, while the downy leaves were just beginning to peep
from their sheaths. It was one of those quiet gray days that give a
mystic tone to a landscape. The cloudy sky was in harmony with the dim
Campagna, that looked under the sunless smoky light unutterably sad
and forlorn. Wreaths of mist lingered in the hollows like the