unfrequent to find a wine-shop, with a noisy company of
wayfarers regaling themselves, in a sepulchre that happens to be
conveniently situated by the wayside. So far as can be ascertained,
the original appearance of the _Casale Rotondo_ seems to have been
that of an enormous circular tower, cased with large blocks of
travertine, covered with a pyramidal roof of the same material carved
into the semblance of tiles, and surmounted with appropriate
sculpture. It was surrounded with a wall of peperino, supporting at
intervals vases and statues; and on the outside were semicircular
stone seats for the benefit of weary wayfarers. This wall is now grown
over with turf, but it can be distinctly traced all round; and the
hollow space between it and the tomb is covered with thick grass, and
is sometimes filled with water like a fosse. Numerous altars,
pedestals, and fine specimens of sculpture in marble and peperino,
have been disinterred in this spot, and they are now arranged to
advantage at the foot of the huge pile fronting the road. Some of
these bear inscriptions which would indicate that the tomb was erected
to Messalla Corvinus, the friend of Horace and Augustus, and himself a
distinguished historian and poet as well as one of the most
influential senators of Rome, by his son Marcus Aurelius Corvinus
Cotta, who was consul some years after his father's death. Corvinus
died in the eleventh year of our era, so that the tomb has stood for
upwards of eighteen centuries and a half; and it is as likely to stand
as many more, for what remains of it is as firm and enduring as a
rock. In the farmhouse built on its massive platform several
generations have lived and died. They have eaten and drunk, they have
married and been given in marriage, they have cultivated their vines
and olives and consumed their products. And all the time their home
and their field of labour have been on a tomb! I did not see the
tenants of this curious dwelling during my visit; but if the skeleton
at the Egyptian feast was a useful reminder of human mortality to the
revellers, one would suppose that the thought of the peculiar
character of their home would be sufficient to impart a soberer hue
to their lives. What is our earth itself but, on a vaster scale, a
_Casale Rotondo_--a garden in a sepulchre--where the dust we tread on
was once alive; and we reap our daily bread from human mould--

"Earth builds on the earth castles and towers,
Earth say