pass. It stuns the ear with a perpetual boom, giving a dash of grandeur
to the enrapturing beauty of the scene. I tried a footpath that appeared
to lead down to the Cascatelles, but after advancing some distance along
the side of an almost perpendicular precipice, I came to a corner that
looked so dangerous, especially as the wind was nearly strong enough to
carry me off, that it seemed safest to return. We made another vain
attempt to get down, by creeping along the bed of a torrent, filled with
briars. The Cascatelles are formed by that part of the Anio, which is
used in the iron works, made out of the ruins of Mecaenas' villa. They
gush out from under the ancient arches, and tumble more than a hundred
feet down the precipice, their white waters gleaming out from the dark
and feathery foliage. Not far distant are the remains of the villa of
Horace.

We took the road to Frascati, and walked for miles among cane-swamps and
over plains covered with sheep. The people we saw, were most degraded
and ferocious-looking, and there were many I would not willingly meet
alone after nightfall. Indeed it is still considered quite unsafe to
venture without the walls of Rome, after dark. The women, with their
yellow complexions, and the bright red blankets they wear folded around
the head and shoulders, resemble Indian Squaws.

I lately spent three hours in the Museum of the Capitol, on the summit
of the sacred hill. In the hall of the Gladiator I noticed an exquisite
statue of Diana. There is a pure, virgin grace in the classic outlines
of the figure that keeps the eye long upon it. The face is full of cold,
majestic dignity, but it is the ideal of a being to be worshipped,
rather than loved. The Faun of Praxiteles, in the same room, is a
glorious work; it is the perfect embodiment of that wild, merry race the
Grecian poets dreamed of. One looks on the Gladiator with a hushed
breath and an awed spirit. He is dying; the blood flows more slowly from
the deep wound in his side; his head is sinking downwards, and the arm
that supports his body becomes more and more nerveless. You feel that a
dull mist is coming over his vision, and almost wait to see his relaxing
limbs sink suddenly on his shield. That the rude, barbarian form has a
soul, may be read in his touchingly expressive countenance. It warms the
sympathies like reality to look upon it. Yet how many Romans may have
gazed on this work, moved nearly to tears, who have seen hundre