When the Tiber, into which it flows, is flooded, the water in the Cloaca is driven back so as to rise above the key-stone of the arch, and hide it from view. When the Tiber is low, not only this arch, if it had really been rebuilt-as a late learned antiquary chose to imagine by Augustus, would it have escaped the notice of Suetonius? or would Livy, that minute and accurate histo rian, who extols its grandeur and antiquity, and carefully chronicles the erection of every temple and basilica, have failed to record such a work as this, which must have been executed before his own eyes, and by the very prince in whose court he was living? But, on the contrary, he expressly says, "that Tarquin made the great Subterranean Cloaca to carry off the filth of the city, a work so vast, that even the magnificence of the present age has not been able to equal it." (Livy, lib. i. c. 56.) It may indeed seem incredible, that the Romans in that rude age should have been capable of executing such a noble piece of architecture; but Livy tells us," that Tarquin sent for artists from all parts of Etruria," for this and his other public works. Nothing can be clearer than this evidence of the Cloaca Maxima being the work of the Tar quins; and its denial only affords one of the many proofs, that antiquaries will pervert or overlook facts, when they interfere with their favourite theories. The Cloaca, therefore, is doubly interesting, not only from its extraordinary grandeur and antiquity, but from being perhaps the sole, and certainly the finest remains of Etruscan architecture that has come down to our times. With respect to the date of the introduction of the arch, since it was practised at this early period by the Etruscans, we cannot suppose it unknown to the Greeks. The earliest specimens extant of the arch, indeed, are formed in a very simple manner, by the inclination of two long blocks of stone erected on the lintels, and inclined till they meet each other in an angle, something like our small Go but also the arch through which it discharges its sordid flood into the river, may be seen from the Ponte Rotto; or, still more distinctly, from the river itself. Almost close to the Cloaca Maxima, we were shewn the far-famed Fountain of Juturna,-that nymph on whom Jupiter thus conferred immortality. If this really be that transformed fair one, she has met with that neglect which is too frequently the lot of aged ladies; for the waters, which in her more youthful years were held sacred, and used only for the holy sacrifices of Vesta, now flow forgotten; and while a thousand fountains in Rome throw up streams unknown to fame, none has been erected for the classic source of Juturna.* I tasted of the crystal wave,” and fancied it particularly fine. 66 thic pointed arch. This occurs in one of the chambers of the great pyramid in Egypt, and in gateways among the ruins of Mycena in Greece, and also in the massy Cyclopean walls of the fortress of Tyrinthus, (which is built in the form of a ship,) situated on the road between Nauplia and Mycenæ, in which a vaulted passage of considerable length is arched in this manner throughout its whole extent. But the wide circular arches of the Cloaca Maxima are regularly built with the vault, key-stone, &c. and as entire as if finished yesterday. So also is the arch of the Emissarium of the Alban lake, built four hundred years before the Christian era, and consequently three hundred before the period of the invention of the arch, according to these theorists. The arch of Fabius at Rome too, and several more, must have preceded it considerably. * We may still-as when the nymph is last recorded to have spoken-fancy we hear her thus complain of old Jupiter : Hæc pro virginitate reponit! Quo vitam dedit æternam ? cur mortis ademta est O quæ satis alta dehiscat Terra mihi, Manisque deam demittat ad imos!" Certainly this was a long way from the top of the Alban Mount, where Juno was sitting when she held her previous colloquy with Juturna, and persuaded her to get up and drive her brother's chariot; but the fountain and Lake of Juturna were undeniably somewhere in this neighhourhood. LETTER XXII. THE PANTHEON. ROME presents no greater attraction to the stranger than the Pantheon, now the Rotonda, one of the largest and most beautiful temples of antiquity; the boast of the Romans themselves in the proudest era of their arts, and perhaps the only pagan temple in the world, which, after eighteen centuries have passed away, still preserves its primeval form and its ancient grandeur. The beautiful solitude which surrounds the Colosseum, adds a secret charm to the pleasure we feel in surveying it. Not so the Pantheon. Its situation, on the contrary, tends as much as possible to dissolve the spell that hangs over it. It is sunk in the dirtiest part of Modern Rome; and the unfortunate spectator, who comes with a mind filled with enthusiasm to gaze upon this monument of the taste and magnificence of antiquity, finds himself surrounded by all that is most revolting to the senses, distracted by incessant uproar, pestered with a crowd of clamorous beggars, and stuck fast in the congregated filth of every description that covers the slippery pavement; so that the time he forces himself to spend in admiring its noble portico, generally proves a penance from which he is glad to be liberated, instead of an enjoyment he wishes to protract. We escaped none of these nuisances except the mud, by sitting in an open carriage to survey it; the smells and the beggars were equally annoying. You may perhaps form some idea of the situation of the Pantheon at Rome, by imagining what Westminster Abbey would be in Covent-Garden Market:-but I wrong Covent-Garden by such a parallel. Nothing resembling such a hole as this could exist in England; nor is it possible that an English imagination can conceive a combination of such disgusting dirt, such filthy odours and foul puddles, as that which fills the vegetable market in the Piazza Della Rotonda at Rome. Still, while I gazed upon the beauty of the Pantheon itself, I could not but remember that this noble monument of taste and magnificence was already built in those times when our savage ancestors still roamed through their native forests, scarcely raised above the level of the beasts they chaced; their very name unknown to all the world besides, excepting to the Romans, by whom they were considered in much the same light as the South-Sea islanders are by us. The beauty of the Pantheon is as honourable to the ancient Romans as its filth is disgraceful to the moderns. But its present state of dirt and degradation is nothing to that from which it has emerged There was a time when it was built round with beggarly hovels, when the very columns themselves, the |