es, the _Clatharus Cancellatus_, chooses this
situation to blush and stink. This group is a well-known land-mark for
miles around Rome; far off in the Campagna we recognise the clump; the
dome of St Peter's itself meets not sooner the inquiring eye of the
arriving tourist. They are also the artists' trees; not a bough of
them but has been studied and depicted time after time for centuries;
they have stood oftener for their portraits than they have cones to
count, and are as familiar to the young painter, as the line-school
that beset the Pincian hill. These are the principal trees which give
character to the garden; but there are hosts of others that help to
make up the beauty of the scene; _Catalpas_, _Meleas_, _Brousenitias_,
_&c. &c._, all now in light green foliage. Some are still hung with
pods and berries of their last year's growth, producing an _insieme_
of pictorial effect rarely to be met with out of Italy, and in Italy
only at this season of the year. Continuing our walk, we pass under
the rose-crowned aqueduct, and strike into the green avenue that
darkens beyond; listening to the distant water bubbling up from the
deepest recesses, and to the fitful whistle of blackbird and thrush,
as they flit athwart the moss-grown gravel, and perch momentarily on
the heads of mutilated termini and statues; whilst the clipt trees
vibrate under the wings of others extricating themselves on a
piratical cruise against a whole flotilla of butterflies, which is
rising and falling over the sunny parterres beyond. "The well-greaved
grillus" bounds twenty feet at a spring, and having thighs as thick as
a lark's to double under him, makes little use of his wings. Many a
callow bee is buzzing helplessly in the path. The gray _curculio_
walks with snout erect, snuffing the morning air; and here we fall
upon a party of apprentice pill-beetles, learning to make up
stercoraceous boluses, and forming nearly as long a line as the
shopmen who are similarly engaged behind Holloway's counter in the
Strand. Near us, hordes of "quick-eyed lizards,"--insect crocodiles,
which much infest this region, start from their holes in the wall,
and, rustling along the box hedge, suddenly pounce upon a butterfly,
detach his wings--the whole walk is strewed with them--and having
bolted his body, retire again to their resting--no--they never
_rest_--lurking-places. Notwithstanding, however, these constant
aggressions, from both birds and reptiles, the _lepi