ding of Cumae is a fact:--here then
we obtain a key to Italian history. Rome, whose origin is lost in mists of
obscurity, is a flourishing modern capital; Cumae is but a shapeless mass
of crumbling ruins, overgrown with ivy and cytizus, and inhabited by
lizards and serpents. But both cities, dead Cumae and living Rome, present
but passing events in the long slow progress of the centuries, which have
witnessed successive phases of civilisation and destruction in this

"Woman-country, wooed, not won,
Loved all the more by Earth's male lands,
Laid to their hearts instead."

Is the Genius of Italy, the Sibyl of Cumae, still living, we wonder, in
some dim recess, some secret cavern of Cimmerian gloom, beneath those
decaying heaps of the ancient Greek city? She was old, very old, we know,
when pious Aeneas found her shrieking her strange prophecies, and that was
long ages before Hellenic wanderers raised a fortress upon the wooded
heights above the dread lake of Avernus.--Venerable Mother of Italy! dost
thou still survive muttering thy strange warnings in some sunless
labyrinth, that the rapacious guides of Baiae have yet failed to
penetrate? Art thou, like King Arthur of romantic Wales, still keeping
watch over the destiny of thy country, ever ready to assist in the hour of
need?

"Thy cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,
The work of some Saturnian Archimage,
Which taught the expiations at whose price
Men from the gods might win that happy age
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;
And which might quench the earth-consuming rage
Of gold and blood--till men should live and move
Harmonious as the sacred stars above."

For Italy has not wholly forgotten her ancient guardian and soothsayer,
who welcomed the founder of the victorious Roman race; nor did the artists
of the revived glories of the Renaissance neglect to honour the mysterious
priestess of the Cimmerian shore. With prophetic mien the Sibyl of Cumae,
that Michelangelo depicted, watches ever the come-and-go of humanity from
her lofty post within Pope Sixtus' Chapel, bidding all remember her
ancient prophecy of the Judgment Day, which the Roman Church has included
in one of its most solemn canticles:

"Dies Irae! Dies illa!
Solvet saeclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla."

INDEX

Abbondanza, Via dell', 51
Abruzzi Mountains, 36, 122, 222
Ac