me, as I conceived, with ignominy, because I had been pulling his violets; but I found I had only been thrust through it, in order to be surprised with a view of St Peter's through the key-hole, so contrived as just to take in the whole elevation of that superb edifice, terminating a vista formed by two tall evergreen hedges, or vegetable walls.

The adjacent church of S. Alessio, with its deserted convent, has been purchased by the abdicated King of Spain, and part of it is now fitting up for the villa of his ex-Majesty, who has also repaired the church at his own expence, and supports four friars there to perform its duties.

Having walked through the old monarch's villa, which is handsomely fitted up, and examined the paintings, some of which are good, we were going away without entering the church, when one of the friars assured us, it possessed one of the most valuable pictures in the world. With eager eyes we hurried to see it; and when at last, after much preparation, the silken curtain that covered it was withdrawn, we beheld an old blackened piece of wood, on which something like a singed human face was visible, surmounted with a gilt crown, and all spotted over with golden stars. It was, we were informed, a likeness of the Virgin Mary, by no less a person than St Luke himself, and it must be acknowledged that he has not flattered her. Any thing so ugly I never before beheld. I told the friar, that I hoped it was no offence to observe, that whatever might have been the virtues of the Evangelist, his talents in portrait painting were by no means great.

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The good father did not extol very highly its merits as a painting, but he enlarged much upon the miracles it had wrought, and seemed to think that goodness was better than beauty." Like all the other pictures of the Madonna by the same handand they abound all over Italy-this is a miraculous image.

I think Lanzi, in his Storia Pittorica, mentions, that they are all supposed to have been executed early in the secoli bassi by one Messer Luca, a Greek painter, or a pupil of the Greeks, and they are evidently works of that barbarous school; and, barbarously enough, are ascribed to the poor Evangelist.

We walked to the neighbouring Church of Santa Sabina, in order to see the ancient columns, the spoils of some temple of the Aventine, with which it is adorned. Two, of a singular sort of granite, stand at the entrance; and, in the interior, twentyfour fluted Corinthian columns of Grecian marble support the naves. This church is supposed to occupy the site of the Temple of Diana; and the discovery of a mosaic pavement, representing a chace of wild beasts, in the garden of the Dominican monks, to whom it belongs, would seem to confirm that opinion. This piece of mosaic is preserved above one of the doors in the Vatican. Two other mosaic pavements, representing similar chaces, and a small Ephesian ́Diana in oriental alabaster, were found in an adjoining vineyard.

Some of the gentlemen of our party who were not yet contented with their thorny researches after Ca

cus's den, and thought, that although they could not climb up to it from below, they might yet perchance lower themselves down to it from above, made me (as they did not speak Italian themselves) put manifold questions to the monks touching its supposed situation;-but vain were our queries. When we asked them about Cacus, they talked to us about St Dominic, who, as they gratuitously informed us, once lived here, and received letters from heaven, written by the Holy Trinity; and when we inquired about the Temple of Diana, they told us of Santa Sabina, who, poor woman, it seems, was sewed up in a sack, with her waiting-maid, and thrown into the Tiber, because she would be a Christian.

I confess, I should not have been sorry to have heard that St Dominic had been served so himself; for he, who was the cause of thousands perishing at the stake, himself deserved to suffer a death as cruel, You will remember, he was the founder of the Inquisition.

This church contains a very fine painting, the master-piece of Sasso Ferrato; at least incomparably the best of his works that I have ever seen. It represents the Virgin giving alms to St Dominic, and St Catherine kneeling before the infant Redeemer.

Whilst some of the party were running after the Cave of Cacus, I lingered in the Church. The belief that it occupied the place of the famous Temple of Diana, had, from various circumstances, become strongly impressed upon my mind; nor could I

think without emotion, that I stood amidst the columns, and on the site of that Temple, where, in the latest moments of his life, the younger Gracchus, in the bitterness of disappointed patriotism, offered up the prophetic prayer, "that the Roman people, for their base ingratitude, and their treacherous desertion of him, should be slaves for ever."*

Amply was that prayer fulfilled. As if from that moment, the Romans gradually passed beneath the yoke of despotism, never to be liberated. They have, indeed, known change of tyrants. In a long succession of ages, they have been the successive sport of Roman, Barbarian, Goth, Vandal, Pope, and Gaul: but Freedom, which fled for ever with the latest sigh of Cicero, has revisited the Seven Hills no more; and glory and honour, and virtue and prosperity, one by one, have followed in her train. Long annals of tyranny-of unexampled vice, of misery and of crime,-polluted with still increasing luxury and moral turpitude-record the rapid progress of Rome's debasement. It seems to be the decree of Heaven, that liberty, once lost, shall never be regained, and that nations which have once fallen, shall rise no more.

* Plutarch-Life of Caius Gracchus.

LETTER XVII.

THE CŒLIAN AND ESQUILINE HILLS.

Its

THE long extent of the Coelian, the most southern of the Seven Hills, is crossed by the lofty arches of Nero's Aqueduct, in majestic masses of ruin. abandoned site seems now to be divided between the monks of St Gregory, and of St John and St Paul, its sole inhabitants; and the chime of their convent bells, as it summons them to their often repeated prayers by day, or rouses them to their midnight vigils, is the only sound that breaks upon its deep silence and solitude. No human form appears, except that, below the spreading palm-tree, or the dark cypress-grove that crowns the brow of the hill in the garden of St John and St Paul, the sable garments of a monk may at times be seen flitting by.

The precipitous banks that support the grounds or garden of this convent are encircled by nameless ruins of wide extent, consisting of arches, recesses, niches, and obscure passages, which vainly rouse curiosity, for their date, and author, and purpose, are alike unknown. Busy conjecture, indeed, has