. I. TOUR IN THE NORTH OF ITALY, 1825.

Chiavasso, July 3, 1825. said of the nakedness of

1. I can now understand what Signor Athe country between Hounslow and Laleham, as all the plains here are covered with fruit trees, and the villages, however filthy within, are generally picturesque either from situation, or from the character of their buildings, and their lively white. The architecture of the churches, however, is quite bad, and certainly their villages bear no more comparison with those of Northamptonshire, than St. Giles's does with Waterloo Place. There are more ruins here than I expected, ruined towers, I mean, of modern date, which are frequent in the towns and villages. The countenances of the people are fine, but we see no gentlemen any where, or else the distinction of ranks is lost altogether, except with the court and the high nobility. In the valley of Aosta, through which we were travelling all yesterday, the whole land, I hear, is possessed by the peasants, and there are no great proprietors at all. I am quite satisfied that there is a good in this, as well as an evil, and that our state of society is not so immensely superior as we flatter ourselves. I know that our higher classes are immensely superior to any one here; but I doubt whether our system produces a greater amount of happiness, or saves more misery than theirs; and I cannot help thinking, that if their dreadful superstition were exchanged for the Gospel, their division of society would more tend to the general good, than ours. Their superstition is indeed most shocking, and yet with some points in which we should do well to imitate them. I like the simple crosses and oratories by the road side, and the texts of Scripture which one often sees quoted upon them; but they are profaned by such a predominance of idolatry to the Virgin, and of falsehood and folly about the Saints, that no man can tell what portion of the water of life is still retained for those who drink it so corrupted. I want more than ever to see and talk with some of their priests, who are both honest and sensible, if, indeed, any man can be so, and yet belong to a system so abominable.

July 25, 1825

2. On the cliff above the Lake of Como.-We are on a mule track that goes from Como along the eastern shore of the lake, and as the mountains go sheer down into the water, the mule track is obliged to be cut out of their sides, like a terrace, half way between their summits and their feet. They are covered with wood, all chestnut, from top to bottom, except where patches have been found level enough for houses to stand on, and vines to grow; but just where we are it is quite lonely; I look up to the blue sky, and down to the blue lake, the one just above me, and the other just below me, and see both through the thick branches of the chestnuts. Seventeen or eighteen vessels, with their white sails, are enlivening the lake, and about half a mile on my right, the rock is too steep for any thing to grow on it, and goes down a bare cliff. A little beyond, I see some terraces and vines, and bright white houses, and further still, there is a little low point, running out into the lake, which just affords room for a village, close on the water's edge, and a white church tower rising in the midst of it. The opposite shore is just the same, villages and mountains, and trees and vines, all one perfect loveliness. I have found plenty of the red cyclamen, whose perfume is exquisite.

On the edge of the Lake of Como.-We have made our way down to the water's edge to bathe, and are now sitting on a stone to cool. No words can describe the beauty of all the scenery; we stopped at a walk at a spot, where the stream descended in a deep green dell from the mountains, with a succession of falls; the dell so deep, that the sun could not reach the water, which lay every now and then resting in deep rocky pools, so beau

tifully clear, that nothing but strong prudence prevented us from bathing in them; the banks of the dell, all turf, and magnificent chestnuts, varied with rocks, and the broad lake bright in the sunshine stretched out before us.

II. TOUR TO ROME THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY.

Paris, March, 1827.

1. In church to-day, there was a prayer read for the king and royal family of France, but they were prayed for simply in their personal capacity, and not as the rulers of a great nation, nor was there any prayer for the French people. St. Paul's exhortation is to pray, not for kings, and their families, but for kings and all who are in authority, "that we may lead a peaceable life in all godliness and honesty." So for ever is this most pure command corrupted by servility and courtliness.

Joigny, April 6, 1827.

2. Sens has a fine cathedral with two very beautiful painted rose windows in the transepts, and a monument of the Dauphin, father to the present king, which is much spoken of. Here the cheating of the blacksmiths went on in full perfection, and is really a very great drawback to the pleasure of travelling in France. The moment we stop any where, out comes a fellow with his leathern apron, and goes poking and prying about the carriage in hopes of finding some job to do; and they do all their work so ill, that they generally never fail to find something left for them by their predecessor's clumsiness. Again I have been struck with the total absence of all gentlemen, and of all persons of the education and feelings of gentlemen. I am afraid that the bulk of the people are sadly ignorant and unprincipled, and then liberty and equality are but evils. A little less aristocracy in our country, and a little more here, would seem a desirable improvement; there seem great elements of good amongst the people here,-great courtesy and kindness, with all their cheating and unreasonableness. May He, who only can, turn the hearts of this people, and of all other people, to the knowledge and love of Himself in His Son, in whom there is neither Englishman or Frenchman, any more than Jew or Greek, but Christ is all and in all! And may He keep alive in me the spirit of charity, to judge favourably and feel kindly towards those amongst whom I am travelling; inasmuch as Christ died for them as well as for us, and they too call themselves after His name.

Approach to Rome, April 1827.

3. When we turned the summit and opened on the view of the other side, it might be called the first approach to Rome. At the distance of more than forty miles, it was of course impossible to see the town, and besides the distance was hazy; but we were looking on the scene of the Roman History; we were standing on the outward edge of the frame of the great picture, and, though the features of it were not to be traced distinctly, yet we had the consciousness that there they were before us. Here, too, we first saw the Mediterranean; the Alban hills, I think, in the remote distance, and just beneath us on the left, Soracte, an outlier of the Apennines, which has got to the right bank of the Tiber, and stands out by itself most magnificently. Close under us in front, was the Ciminian Lake, the crater of an extinct volcano, surrounded, as they all are, with their basin of wooded hills, and lying like a beautiful mirror stretched out before us. Then there was the grand beauty of Italian scenery, the depth of the valleys, and the endless variety of the mountain outline, and the towns perched up on the mountain summits, and this now seen under a mottled sky which threw an ever varying shadow and light over the valley beneath, and all the freshness of the young spring. We descended along one of the rims of this lake to Ron

ciglione, and from thence, still descending on the whole, to Monterossi. Here the famous Campagna begins, and it certainly is one of the most striking tracts of country I ever beheld. It is by no means a perfect flat, except between Rome and the sea; but rather like the Bagshot Heath country-ridges of hills with intermediate valleys, and the road often running between high steep banks, and sometimes crossing sluggish streams sunk in a deep bed. All these banks were overgrown with the broom, now in full flower; and the same plant was luxuriant every where. There seemed no apparent reason why the country should be so desolate; the grass was growing richly every where, there was no marsh any where visible, but all looked as fresh and healthy as any of our chalk downs in England. But it is a wide wilderness; no villages, scarcely any houses, and here and there a lonely ruin of a single square tower, which I suppose used to serve as strongholds for men and cattle in the plundering warfare of the middle ages. It was after crowning the top of one of these lines of hills, a little on the Roman side of Baccano, at five minutes after six, according to my watch, that we had the first view of Rome itself. I expected to see St. Peter's rising above the line of the horizon as York Minster does, but instead of that, it was within the horizon, and so was much less conspicuous, and, only a part of the dome being visible from the nature of the ground, it looked mean and stumpy. Nothing else marked the site of the city, but the trees of the gardens about it, sunk by the distance into one dark mass, and the number of white villas, specking the opposite bank of the Tiber for some little distance above the town, and then suddenly ceasing. But the whole scene that burst upon our view, when taken in all its parts, was most interesting. Full in front rose the Alban hills, the white villas on their sides distinctly visible even at that distance, which was more than thirty miles. On the left were the Apennines, and Tivoli was distinctly to be seen on the summit of its mountain, on one of the lowest and nearest points of the chain. On the right and all before us lay the Campagna, whose perfectly level outline was succeeded by that of the sea, which was scarcely more so. It began now to get dark, and, as there is hardly any twilight, it was dark soon after we left La Storta, the last post before you enter Rome. The air blew fresh and cool, and we had a pleasant drive over the remaining part of the Campagna till we descended into the valley of the Tiber, and crossed it by the Milvian bridge. About two miles further on we reached the walls of Rome, and entered by the Porta del Popolo.

Rome, April, 1827.

4. . After dinner Bunsen called for us in his carriage and took us to his house first on the Capitol, the different windows of which command the different views of ancient and modern Rome. Never shall I forget the view of the former; we looked down on the Forum, and just opposite were the Palatine and the Aventine, with the ruins of the palace of the Cæsars on the one, and houses intermixed with gardens on the other. The mass of the Colosseum rose beyond the Forum, and, beyond all, the wide plain of the Campagna to the sea. On the left rose the Alban hills, bright in the setting sun, which played full upon Frascati and Albano, and the trees which edge the lake; and further away in the distance, it lit up the old town of Lavicum. Then we descended into the Forum, the light fast fading away and throwing a kindred soberness over the scene of ruin. The soil has risen from rubbish at least fifteen feet, so that no wonder that the hills look lower than they used to do, having been never very considerable at the first. There it was, one scene of desolation, from the massy foundation-stones of the Capitoline Temple, which were laid by Tarquinius the Proud, to a single pillar erected in honour of Phocas, the Eastern Emperor, in the fifth century. What the fragments of pillars belonged to, perhaps we never can know; but that I think matters little. I care not whether it was a temple of Jupiter

Stator, or the Basilica Julia, but one knows that one is on the ground of the Forum, under the Capitol, the place where the tribes assembled, and the orators spoke; the scene, in short, of all the internal struggles of the Roman people. We passed on to the Arch of Titus. Amongst the reliefs, there is the figure of a man bearing the golden candlestick from the temple of Jerusalem as one of the spoils of the triumph. Yet He who abandoned His visible and local Temple to the hands of the heathen for the sins of his nominal worshippers, has taken to Him His great power and has gotten Him glory by destroying the idols of Rome as He had done the idols of Babylon; and the golden candlestick burns and shall burn with an everlasting light, while the enemies of His holy name, Babylon, Rome, or the carcase of sin in every land, which the eagles of His wrath will surely find out, perish for ever from before Him. We returned to our inn to dress, and then went again to Bunsen's evening party. We came home about eleven; I wrote some Journal, and went to bed soon after twelve. Such was my first day in Rome; and if I were to leave it to-morrow, I should think that one day was well worth the journey. But you cannot tell how poor all the objects of the North of Italy seem in comparison with what I find here; I do not mean as to scenery or actual beauty, but in interest. When I leave Rome I could willingly sleep all the way to Laleham ; that so I might bring home my recollection of this place "unmixed with baser matter."

May 2, 1827. 5. After dinner we started again in our carriage to the Ponte Molle, about two miles out of Rome. All the way the road runs under a steep and cliffy bank, which is the continuation of the Collis Hortulorum in Rome itself, and which turns off at the Ponte Molle, and forms the boundary of the Tiber for some way to the northward, the cliffs, however, being succeeded by grass slopes. On the right bank, after crossing the Ponte Molle, the road which we followed ran south-west towards St. Peter's and the Vatican, between the Tiber and the Monte Mario. The Monte Mario is the highest point of the same line of hills, of which the Vatican and Janiculum form parts; it is a line intersected with many valleys of denudation, making several curves, and as it were little bays and creeks in it, like the hills on the right bank of the Thames behind Chertsey, which coming forward at St. Anne's, fall back in a very regular line behind Stroud and Thorpe Green, and then come forward again with a higher and steeper side close to the Thames at Cooper's Hill. The Monte Mario is like Cooper's Hill, the highest, boldest, and most prominent part of the line; it is about the height and steepness too of Cooper's Hill, and has the Tiber just at the foot of it like the Thames at Anchorwick. To keep up the resemblance there is a sort of a terrace at the top of the Monte Mario planted with cypresses, and a villa, though dilapidated, crowns the summit, as also at our old friend above Egham. Here we stood, on a most delicious evening, the ilex and the gumcistus in great profusion about us, the slope below full of olives and vines, the cypress over our heads, and before our eyes all that one has ever read of in Roman History-the course of the Tiber between the low hills that bound it, coming down from Fidenæ, and receiving the Allia and the Anio; beyond, the Apennines, the distant and higher summits still quite white with snow; in front the Alban Hills; on the right, the Campagna to the sea, and just beneath us the whole length of Rome, ancient and modern-St. Peter's and the Colosseum rising as the representatives of each-the Pantheon, the Aventine, the Quirinal, all the well known objects distinctly laid before us. One may safely say that the world cannot contain many views of such mingled beauty and interest as this.

6. .

.. From the Aventine we again visited the Colosseum, which I admired most exceedingly, but I cannot describe its effect. Then to the Church of St. John at the Lateran gate, before which stands the highest of the Egyptian obelisks, brought by Constantine to Rome. Near to this

church also is the Scala Santa, or pretended staircase of Pilate's house at Jerusalem. It is cased with wood, and people may only ascend to it on their knees, as I saw several persons doing. Then we went to St. Maria Maggiore, to St. Maria degli Angeli at the baths of Diocletian, and from thence I was deposited again at I care very little for the sight of their churches, and nothing at all for the recollection of them. St. John at the Lateran is, I think, the finest; and the form of the Greek cross at St. Maria degli Angeli is much better for these buildings than that of the Latin. But precious marbles, and precious stones, and gilding, and rich colouring, are to me like the kaleidoscope, and no more; and these churches are almost as inferior to ours, in my judgment, as their worship is to ours. I saw these two lines painted on the wall in the street to-day, near an image of the Virgin:

"Chi vuole in morte aver Gesu per Padre,

Onori in vita la sua Santa Madre."

I declare I do not know what name of abhorrence can be too strong for a religion which, holding the very bread of life in its hands, thus feeds the people with poison. I say "the bread of life," for in some things the indestructible virtue of Christ's Gospel breaks through all their pollutions of it; and I have seen frequent placards also-but printed papers, not printed on the walls, and therefore, perhaps, the work of some good individual. "Iddio ci vede. Eternita." This is a sort of seed scattered by the way side, which certainly would not have been found in heathen Rome.

7...

I fear that our countrymen, and especially our unmarried countrymen, who live long abroad, are not in the best possible moral state, however much they may do in science and literature; which comes back to my old opinion that such pursuits will not do for a man's main business, and that they must be used in subordination to a clearly perceived Christian end, and looked upon as of most subordinate value, or else they become as fatal as absolute idleness. In fact, the house is spiritually empty, so long as the pearl of great price is not there, although it may be hung with all the decorations of earthly knowledge. But, in saying this I do not allude to

but to a class; I heard him say nothing amiss, except negatively; and I have great reason to thank him for his civility. But it is so delightful to meet with a man like Bunsen, with whom I know that all is right, that perhaps the contrast of those with whom I cannot feel the same certainty, is the more striking.

8. We found the Savignys at home, and I had some considerable talk with Savigny about the Roman Law, which was satisfactory to me on this account, that, I found that I knew enough of the subject to understand what its difficulties were, and that in conversing with the most profound master of the Roman Law in Europe, I found that I had been examining the right sources of information. He thought that the Tribes voted upon laws down to a late period of the Emperors' government.

Rome, May, 1827.

9. Lastly, we ascended to the top of the Colosseum, Bunsen leaving us at the door, to go home; and I seated myself with —, just above the main entrance, towards the Forum, and there took my farewell look over Rome. It was a delicious evening, and every thing was looking to advantage:-the huge Colosseum just under me, the tufts of ilex and aliternus, and other shrubs that fringe the ruins every where in the lower parts,-while the outside wall, with its top of gigantic stones, lifts itself high above, and seems like a mountain barrier of bare rock, inclosing a green and varied valley.I sat and gazed upon the scene with an intense and mingled feeling. The world could show nothing grander; it was one which for years I had longed to see, and I was now looking at it for the last time. I do not think you will be jealous, dearest, if I confess that I could not take leave of it without something of regret. Even with you and our darlings, I would not live out