earned to bear
the perverse humor of the child with as much patience as its father, and
even drawn looks of grim kindness from the crusty old vetturino.

Our mid-day resting place was Spoleto. As there were two hours given us,
we took a ramble through the city, visited the ruins of its Roman
theatre and saw the gate erected to commemorate the victory gained here
over Hannibal, which stopped his triumphal march towards Rome. A great
part of the afternoon was spent in ascending among the defiles of Monte
Somma, the highest pass on the road between Ancona and Rome. Assisted by
two yoke of oxen we slowly toiled up through the snow, the mountains on
both sides covered with thickets of box and evergreen oaks, among whose
leafy screens the banditti hide themselves. It is not considered
dangerous at present, but as the dragoons who used to patrol this pass
have been sent off to Bologna, to keep down the rebellion, the robbers
will probably return to their old haunts again. We saw many suspicious
looking coverts, where they might have hidden.

We slept at Terni and did not see the falls--not exactly on Wordsworth's
principle of leaving Yarrow "unvisited," but because under the
circumstances, it was impossible. The vetturino did not arrive there
till after dark; he was to leave before dawn; the distance was five
miles, and the roads very bad. Besides, we had seen falls quite as
grand, which needed only a Byron to make them as renowned--we had been
told that those of Tivoli, which we shall see, were equally fine. The
Velino, which we crossed near Terni, was not a large stream--in short,
we hunted as many reasons as we could find, why the falls need not be
seen.

Leaving Terni before day, we drove up the long vale towards Narni. The
roads were frozen hard; the ascent becoming more difficult, the
vetturino was obliged to stop at a farm-house and get another pair of
horses, with which, and a handsome young contadino as postillion, we
reached Narni in a short time. In climbing the hill, we had a view of
the whole valley of Terni, shut in on all sides by snow-crested
Appenines, and threaded by the Nar, whose waters flow "with many
windings, through the vale!"

At Otricoli, while dinner was preparing, I walked around the crumbling
battlements to look down into the valley and trace the far windings of
the Tiber. In rambling through the crooked streets, we saw everywhere
the remains of the splendor which this place boasted in the days