on it that exquisitely-flavoured berry starred with white seeds, which our pristine English garden boasted, but which modern gardeners will have none of," since the parent plant is too niggard, and consequently too unprofitable a bearer as regards their interests.

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Having now sat and regaled ourselves sufficiently, one of our party, a young elève, by the bye, of the renowned Palmella, and an elegant classical scholar no less than a promising diplomát, asked us if we were for a ramble?

"By all means," was the reply.

Accordingly he and ourselves left the rest of the party to remain, and find continued interest in witnessing the festive scenes already described those happy revellers-those fanciful costumes-and those charming swarthy Houris of this Olive Eden, while we moved up the slope through the trees.

Duly did our companion and ourselves call to mind that there were other objects of attraction on this classic spot to which it were sin not to do due honour, and in paying which, our remembrances of these scenes of the olive raccolta would be enhanced.

Our upward path now brought us to the little rude old bridge that looks down on the chasm where the brawling waters murmur a chorus in honour of Neptune. In other words, we enjoyed the view of what is called by a very wrong and ignorant nomenclature," Neptune's grotto." Any cavern overlooking the waters of either river or stream, ought to have been consecrated to some Naiad of the rustic flood-some Cyrènè or Lycorias*—and named accordingly, rather than caricatured in the inflation of this "oceanic" pomp of style. Our classical fastidiousness was, therefore, justly offended; and we were glad to console ourselves in paying due homage to the temple on the opposite cliff of the Anio, sacred to the "chaste" Sibyl. Our thoughts wandered here to Domenichino, and the inspiration caught by him in contemplating this object. He dreamed not in vain over the fair priestess of that fane! His dream was a "beautiful one," as Byron says of Egeria, and he has embodied it in his canvas, all lovely, all sublime; and which, whether it be called St. Cecilia or the Tiburtine sybil, is a form to love! Who, we may worthily ask, that has a soul for the triumphs of "sacred art,' can think of Rome without associating it with this gem of the Bolognese painter? though in creating it he forgot Bologna and all its severities, and showed himself indeed a Roman disciple of art— such softness, such grace, such sublimity is there combined!

Thus, then, doing honour to the lovely ruined shrine before us, no less than uttering due remembrances of the sybil's effigies in its modern shrine at Rome, the Borghese palace, we proceeded onward to the classic height of Lucretilè.

And here our companion smiled, as he cited Horace, "Auditis? an me ludit amabilis insania?" for ever and anon, on our fancy's ear, a wild laugh rose through the vistas overshadowed with pine and ilex and beech and olive; and we started and looked round, expecting to see some of the rural revellers already mentioned-but no, the laugh proceeded not from them! It was followed by the sweet echoes of Pan-pipe and Doric oaten reed, that floated along, mellowed through

A whole family of Naiads is introduced to us in Virgil's fourth Georgic, v. 335.

those shadowy deep recesses. Strains were warbled, such as made the groves vocal of Arcadia of old; and were wafted in liquid murmurs over the streams of Achelous, or thy crystal fountains, Arethusa!

And now the figures from whom that laugh must have arisen darted past us, for so the memories of the scene visioned to us! The wanton wood-nymph fled past, escaping the embraces of some rude faun or goat-footed satyr; while a group of laughing bacchantes followed. Those groups! they were the same that danced before the dreaming eye of a Titian and a Nicholas Poussin, as it dwelt fondly absorbed on the visions of the Golden Saturnian Age; when Care was not-when earth teemed with her fruits spontaneously-and the heart of man was like the blissful scene it revelled over-a paradise!

Such radiant dreams, too, worthily beguiled our classic companion and ourselves: more callous than the rock on which we stood should we have been, had we been insensible to them! But more happy, as sacred remembrances yet demanded our heart's worship ere we joined our friends again in the olive-grove below. We were now in good earnest going to have a glimpse of the "Lions of Tivoli!" for we were drawing nearer to the site of Horace's villa, to which every visitor is in such a praiseworthy fidget to penetrate. But, proh pudor! we must not yet break through our classic dream. It were a a profanation to do so. To proceed then, awhile, where it beckons.

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A new strain, then, now swelled over us; it was a song of glee and fire! and One met us, bearing a lyre in his hand, garlanded with myrtle and rose; and he led us to a retreat where we could have lingered for ever, and introduced us to a party of his friends-a festive symposium, -the fairer members of which were a galaxy of beauty no less than gaiety! There was a rude table spread out, covered with fruits and goblets of wine, underneath a canopy of planes and myrtles, and the toastmaster" was a merry-looking old man,-not so obese as Silenus, that Falstaff of Arcadia,but quite as jovial. Though his beard was silvery, his eye was keen, and the colour had not fled from his cheek. He was "cunning" too, in handling the lyre: nor yet was he without a rival in a certain lovely damsel, with eyes, as the Asiatic poets say, "full of sleep"-the languor of love; who breathed her soul into the lyre, and with a tenderness that for the time made us forget the jocund bacchanal of the old minstrel.

"Ha!" cried our companion at this moment, we are communing with the spirits of Sappho and old Anacreon! And Horace, the bard of Tivoli, whose lyre so well reflected their strains, is the host, I see, of this tuneful symposium!" And then, we thought, how happy was the Roman lyrist in the many and varied sources of inspiration afforded him at one moment, answering back those visioned "notes of Arcady" we heard just now, as they floated down to his abode here, from yonder heights of Lucretilè; and at another moment prolonging the sweet Teian and Lesbian measures!

But these were not his only sources of inspiration. There were bright eyes and "wreathed smiles," and glances of love that warmed not less his spirit into song. And at one time his lay was tuned to the harmony of Lalagè's voice; and at another bore a part in the melody which Chia, the cunning as lovely minstrel-maid, could wake to steal hearts away withal-nor least his own! Their charms, however, al

though dazzling, "snatched him not more from himself," to use his own words, than those of Glycera: and Lydia has surely much to answer for, in putting his soul to the jealous torture, in the thought that any one else but himself was permitted to bask in her smiles. The kind poet! he cannot witness Asteriè so disconsolate at the absence of her lover without longing to console her. And the fair season of April does not shine on his "Sabine farm," without his reminding the rustic beauty Phydilè, the flower of it, that this is the month sacred to Venus herself, and that she must be duly propitiated with sacrifice and song.

Nor were the poet's eyes shut to the wide charms of nature throughout that lovely haunt which was the shrine of his song. Nor was the chord mute, after having paid its tribute to those forms of beauty just memorialized, in praising also the scenes where he loved to dwellthose haunts where he sought "sweet commune with himself," and courted the willing muse. "There has he hung," says the modern visitor of this classic spot with pleasing awe, over the olive-clad steep, beneath which the Anio glides, now more smoothly, now falling headlong from rock to rock! There has he witnessed the spray of its cascatelle glittering all rainbow-tinted in the sunbeam, as the wild waters hurry along in their descent into the gulf from yonder eminence, crowned by the proud villa of the bard's patron Mecænas."

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It is indeed no less a duty than pleasure upon this soil of Tivoli, to picture and trace the movements of the lyrist dear to all posterity. We may add, as we stand on the slope where the site of his residence is pointed out on the eastern bank of the Anio, that it was here, when he had laid his lyric aside, that he taught, in company with his trusty steward, the vine to stretch along the declivity; and on the higher and more level ground the orchard to rise in due quincunx, after Tully's, and Atticus's, and Cato's heart!

Here, then, we modern travellers paced the ground consecrated by his footsteps of old: anon we paused in admiration to recognise the features of the whole scene, precisely as he has described them; videlicet, where he says,

"et præceps Anio

Et uda mobilibus pomaria rivis.”

Not to mention the various other passages that might be cited, and which "A Day at Tivoli" would vividly recal to the reader's mind, unless it were warped with the morbid dislike expressed by Byron, as regards the Roman lyrist-a fastidiousness capitally quizzed by that satirical little gentleman, Alexander Pope. In fact, it is a matter of great curiosity to make Horace his own cicerone over these haunts of his abode, and trace the self-same shape and colour in their features that his pictures of them still reflect, after the lapse of so many ages!

Well, then, may the echoes of his lyre mingle with the murmur of those falls of Anio! And with pleasing awe, wandered we along the

See Epistles, lib. I. epis. 14. "Villice silvaram," &c. &c.

banks of its flood, regarding from the same spots where Gaspar Poussin and our own Wilson stood when they "took their views," the opposite eminence of Mecanas's stately villa. It was here that the generous patron was met by the converse, and had additional lustre reflected on his name by the companionship of Virgil and Horace, the bards of Parthenopè and Tibur, Naples and Tivoli.

We were now on our way back to our party, though by a different route to that in which we had set out: we were, in fact, completing the giro of the lovely gulf of the Anio. The banks are covered, the whole way from the site of Horace's villa to the spot opposite the ruins of that of Mecanas, with the most luxurious vegetation, and gardens of the peasantry and small padroni, down to the very surface of the stream. Vines rambled over the slope, and orange and lemon trees, their boughs laden with the paler or deeper golden store, stooped to glass themselves in the transparent tide.

We had now come close beneath the portico of Mecænas's villa, whose ruined archway and corridor mark the spot where the minister of Augustus and his immortal guests erewhile have paced in elevated as friendly spirit-commune; as they here sought a grateful refuge from the heat, and met the cool gale redolent of the myrtle, acacia, and orange-blossom; and watched, anon, the sun go down over the wide plain of Rome afar. Duteous pilgrims as our comrade and ourselves were, we paused awhile to regard that wreck with eyes of veneration, and endeavoured to picture it in the pride of its Augustan grandeur; nor did we fail to people it with the sacred shadows of those forms whose spirits yet haunt it!

But the sun was now going down over the far Roman "campagna," and we proceeded by the circuit of the ruins to regain the spot whence we had set out. We were yet more challenged to quit our spirittribute to the past, in order to greet the happy living notes and living forms that once again, and with increased glee, saluted us. The olive-gatherers were now winding up their grateful labours and revels at once with a "grand procession," which would have delighted Bacchus himself, and made him think of the honours done to him at Athens of old (that spot sacred to the olive no less than Tivoli) in his solemn feast, Dionysia. The "harvest-chaunt," as we will call it, was being sung now by the whole group, and the wild merry echoes sounding along the slope and through the olive vistas, had a singular charm at this tranquil hour of evening, and we could willingly have lingered over it through a whole summer-night. But here our vetturino accosted us, and telling us that our party awaited us at the hostelry where we had "put up," we obeyed the summons, and in a little while away we all returned to the Eternal City, where we were sojourners. Never in all our rambles throughout "bella Italia"-amidst those characteristic spots of beauty which, succeeding suddenly to wide volcanic tracts, we may call her gladsome "surprises"—such as Tivoli here, Bolséno's garden-crowned steep over the lake, and other spotsnever did we lay up a store of more grateful reminiscences than on the present occasion. Be this day of our pilgrimage to the Roman lyrist's shrine worthily marked " albo lapide!" Be this day of revel and the olive raccolta, ever gladly pictured in the mind's eye at its recurring season! This hallowed as the happy “ Day at Tivoli.”

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RUSSIA IN 1841.

FROM THE NOTE-BOOK OF A RECENT TRAVELLER.

DURING my stay in Moscow, I enjoyed the high honour of being a guest at the Kremlin. The emperor was not residing there en famille at that time, and was accompanied only by Generals Benkendorf, and Aderberg.

At first I used to dine at the table of General Benkendorf, where the aides-de-camp on duty likewise dined. But General Aderberg, who was at the head of the military chancery, had the misfortune to fall and break his collar-bone. I offered to bear him company after the accident, and I dined with him daily in his own apartments.

The Emperor's table was more distinguished for elegance than profusion. His Majesty not only confines himself to the simplest dishes, but he eats exceedingly little. When travelling, he sometimes takes nothing more than the wing of a chicken and a bit of bread throughout a whole day. Independently of the two tables I have above mentioned, a great number of déjeuners were served in the Kremlin. Regularly every morning a servant used to come into my room to inquire whether I expected any one to breakfast with me, and the table was laid accordingly.

The stoves employed for heating the rooms, keep up a comfortable temperature throughout the day. The sensation of cold is so unfelt. and so impossible, that the beds require no blankets. But though I must confess I never felt cold, yet I experienced a certain sort of uncomfortable sensation in going to bed in the month of November, with no other covering than a light sheet. To obviate this unpleasant feeling, I used to throw my cloak over my bed. This being observed by Philarete, the servant who waited on me, he asked me one morning whether I felt cold.

"No," replied I; "but I am so much in the habit of being covered up, that I had thrown my cloak over the bed by way of substitute for a blanket."

"But sir," observed Philarete, "I will procure a blanket if you wish to have one"

He applied to the steward of the palace, who, after having instituted a search in the garde meuble of the imperial residence, came to inform me with an air of deep concern, that the case had not been foreseen, and that no person having ever felt cold in the palace, there was not such a thing as a blanket to be found within its walls. He offered to send and purchase one for me; but I insisted that he should not give himself that trouble.

The apartments occupied by the Emperor Nicolas in the Kremlin, are not those in which Alexander resided. The apartments of the deceased emperor are religiously respected by his brother; and the furniture remains just as it was at the time of Alexander's death. The present Czar occupied that part of the Kremlin called the Archbishop's Palace; and which having been consecrated at the time when the pontiff