themselves. I asked a boy, whom we took about
with us to carry our sketching materials, when he had last washed his
face. He confessed he had _never_ washed it, and that nobody did.

CURATE.--We know Horace delighted in Tibur,--his "Tibur argeo, positum
colono." In the passage criticised in the Pentameron, I shall always see
Tivoli, with its wood, its rocks, and cascatelle. He had the scene
before him when he wrote,--

"ego laudo ruris amaeni
_Rivos_; et museo circumlita saxa, nemusque."

Tibur still; its rocks, woods, and rivus again; and perhaps the "nemus"
was "Tiburni lucus."

AQUILIUS.--Perhaps a line in this epistle from the lover of country to
the lover of town, may throw some light on "obliquo" and "trepidare," if
indeed he has _the_ scene in his eye.

"Purior in vicis aqua tendit rumpere plumbum,
Quam que _per pronum_ trepidat cum murmure _rivum_."

Great indeed is the difference, whether the water passes through a
leaden pipe, or by the rivers, a mere direction by a channel open to the
sky, and whose bed is the rock.

But there is a passage which still more clearly, I think, marks the
distinction between the rivus and the river. The poet invites Maecenas to
the country, and tells him,--

"Jam pastor umbras cum grege languido
_Rivumque_ fessus querit, et horridi
Dumeta Silvani, caretque
_Ripa_ vagis taciturna ventis."

Now, if the shepherd had driven his flock to the river, all bleating and
languid with heat, the bank of the river would scarcely have been
_taciturn_; doubtless the shepherd sought the "fontem," into which the
water was _conveyed_, and under shade, a place not exposed to the sun,
or the wind, as was the ripa, the river's bank. And besides, in this
passage, the rivos and the ripa are certainly spoken of as two separate
places.

Here our friend and host began to mutter a little. He was evidently
going over his model-farm, while we were at the Sabine. He now talked
quicker--"John," (so he always called his hind, his factotum,) "plant
'em a little farther apart, d'ye see, and trench up well." "That's the
way." "Now, John, d'ye know how--to clap an old head on young
shoulders--why dig a trench the width of the spade, from the stem of an
apple-tree, and fill up with good vegetable mould. First pollard your
tree, John." "That's it, John." This and more was said, with a few
sleepy interruptions; he soon awoke, and said with an amusing
indifference,--"Well, any mo