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Most of those who have published an account of these places from ocular investigation, as Lipsius, Vulpius, and others, have been better acquainted with books than with nature, or with mankind; and though they are venerable for their deep erudition, still they have left sufficient room for farther eluci dation from the advances made by later times in natural history and philosophy, and particularly in the history of man.

Natural history,' this author justly observes, presents at every step some fact or other which throws light upon the history of man; and, if so few attempts have yet been made to explain the one by the other, it is because naturalists have troubled them selves very little about antiquities, and antiquarians still less about natural history. When once the sciences are developed, there will spring from their alliance results which cannot be foreseen.'

Nor is it at all a subject of wonder that so few have under taken to explore this coast; because the country itself, in its present state, holds out very little inducement to travellers, excepting the circumstance of its having formed the scene of that interesting series of events recorded in the six last books of the Eneid. Hospitis Entæ gloria sola manet.' The only charms which it now offers to the spectator, arise from the reflections which he carries in his own breast.

All this country of Latinus and the Rutuli,' says M. de B. is at present so poor and so desert that even the bread one finds there is brought from Rome. In the hot season, when the air is so infected, three women are set to guard, as if it were a dead body, the frightful town of Ostia, the capital of the desert, and of every three men one meets on this coast the chances are that two at least are fugitive assassins. The pestilence is the sole in-. habitant of these deserts during the heats of summer; in winterthe rain sometimes inundates them, and there is only a moment in the spring when a stranger can travel there at all, and then he must take provisions for his journey, with recommendations to some priest, to avoid being taken for a robber.'

Thus do swamps and sickness, beggars and bravoes, constitute the modern graces of that country which was once the garden of Europe; and those shores which formerly were lined with contiguous villas, the overflowings of Rome in all her pride of power, are now conspicuous for nothing but the abomination of desolation!'

In his introduction, and elsewhere, this author appears to us far too sanguine in his expectation of finding in Virgil a real history of the events of the fabulous times.

His remark is just, that the more a country advances in civilization and refinement, the more separate become the pro

vinces of the poet and the historian. But the remark makes against himself; for Virgil certainly lived in a time and state of the highest refinement. Homer and Ossian wrote in the simplicity of half-civilized life, and may reasonably be supe posed to have taken truth for the ground-work of their poems, because truth was then rendered more acceptable to mankind than fiction, by the very scarcity of those who could record it. Besides, from their living so much nearer to the times of which they speak, their capacity to relate transactions as they really happened, was increased equally with their motive to do so. With Virgil it was far otherwise: Ad nos,' he expressly says, vix tenuis rerum perlabitur aura.' The tradi tions which he had to work upon were a medley of wild fables, many of them contradictory to one another, as may be seent in the ancient accounts which are still extant of the early po pulation of Italy. The confusion arising from the mixture of Grecian mythology brought by the Pelasgic colonists, with that of the earlier inhabitants of Italy, the pride which each city and district had in deriving its descent from some famous hero, the length of time which ensued before letters were at all cultivated at Rome, the tricks of pontifical priestcraft, and, above all, the stories built upon the resemblance of names and fanciful etymologies, to which even Cato seems to have applied the Greek he learned in his old age, were all causes which tended more or less to disturb the sources of information, with respect to the antiquities of Italy. Nor is it likely that Virgil himself, out of these vague and discordant, legends, would uniformly and rigidly chuse the most probable, especially where probability came in competition with convenience. Homer was to be copied, the public at large to be amused, and Augustus, with all his court, to be flattered, by deriving their names and families from some great head.

While, however, we differ somewhat from M. de B. in our notion of poetical truth in general, and particularly as it is to be expected in Virgil; while we venture to question whether he has precisely ascertained the spot where Turnus lay in ambush for Eneas, or identified the cavern into which Cacus conveyed the oxen of Hercules, and even feel some misgivings of faith respecting the existence of this Caliban of ancient times; we yet heartily approve the following ob

servations:

The explanation of antiquity has been too exclusively sought in written memorials. There are other monuments more certain and better preserved than stones and brass. I mean nature herself, the features of those regions which have formed the scene of great events. I have often said to myself, during my residence at Rome, These walls, these ruias, are no longer the objects wech

Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Cæsar, or Tacitus, had before their eyes: but this nature, this majestic Mount Alban, this chain of Sabine mountains, this Soracte of Horace, standing alone in the plain, this Tiber, this Janiculum; in a word, this sky, this earth, and these seas, are still the same, and while every thing belonging to man has crumbled into ruin, this grand theatre of action remains all entire. The contemplation of this immutable scene may shed Bome light upon the history and poetry of the ancients.'

On the 27th of March, M. de B. set out from Rome on the road which leads to Ostia. After noticing the tomb of Cestius, and a testaceous mount consisting of broken pots and pans, which we suppose to have been the ancient Asquilix, he adds:

It was in these obscure quarters of ancient Rome, that the common people lived in the time of Nero. There are still to be seen on the high road many poor inns, and many beggars who have their post on the high-way. In these places the primitive christians lived in obscurity, occupied in selling baskets and hay, of which, to this day, there are some stores in the neighbourhood.'

Where in the world did M. de B. find this new trade of the early christians? Juvenal says only that certain groves in the suburbs of Rome were let out to poor begging Jews, whose whole furniture consisted of a basket and some hay. But the Jews, with this author, must all be converts to christianity, and are made moreover dealers in baskets and hay. We do not see how either the basket-trade or the hay-trade is to be reconciled with Juvenal's description of the wood, as going a-begging. The truth is probably this: the basket (cophinus,' the same word as St. Luke uses when he speaks of the twelve baskets full of fragments) held their provisions, which their law forbade them to eat with heathens, and the fœnum' was a truss of hay by way of a portable bed.

We shall here remark, that this writer is extremely careless in his mode of quoting lines and fragments of lines from the Roman pocts. Thus we meet with such verses as the following:

Gabiosque, Veiosque, Coramque.'

Laurus multos metu servata per annos.'
Hinc Itala gentes et omnis Enotria téllus.'
Sacra recognoscas eruta annalibus priscis.'

Such quotations grievously offend the eye as well as the ear of every reader who has been the least attentive to quantity. We hope they are errors of the press. If they have fallen from the pen, we should think it adviseable for M. de B. to make his next travels into Greece, and in the course of his tour not to omit a Gradus ad Parnassum.

This traveller differs not materially from former commentators on Virgil, in the situation which he assigns to the camp of the Trojans, afterwards called Nova Troja.

Near the mouth of the river' (Tiber), a lake surrounded by a marsh, extends itself in the sandy plain. Its humid baiks reach as far as the great river. Here it was that Eneas fixed his camp about 500 paces from the sea. He had, on his right hand, and a little before him, the river; the lake behind him, and a narrow tract of swampy ground between the lake and the river; before him, at the distance of 500 paces, was the sea.' P. 53.

In another passage he is more circumstantial.

The Tiber itself has its ruins. They pointed out to me an 'ancient bed of the river called Fiume Morto. This ancient bed, as may be seen in the map, advances somewhat nearer to the lake than the river does in its present state. Formerly, when the Tiber flowed in this, early channel, it approached very near the marshy lake, which, without doubt, owes its waters partly to the river and partly to the springs which descend from the hills. The distance between the Fiume Morto and the lake is about roɔ toises. These hundred toises of flat ground between a river and à marsh, must have been impassable in the time of Eneas: as, indeed, they still are; for the passage to the town is over a bridge. It is in the angle which the river forms with the lake, very near to modern Ostia, that I place the camp of Eneas. In this position the Trojans had the river on their right, the lake behind them, and the sea in their front a little to the right, and (according to Diony sius of Halicarnassus) at the distance of 500 paces from the sea.

But why is the point of attack on the left of the camp, and not on the side of the sea? It is because the river, by its wind ng, covered a part of the front of the Trojan army:

Turnus paulatim excedere pugna,,
Et fluvium petere, ac partem quæ cingitur anni.

This passage exactly describes the bend which the river made about the camp of Eneas, where Turnus had been shut in. This bend of the river was perhaps the Fiume Morto.

The Latins never thought of attacking the camp of Eneas.on the eastern side, toward the modern road feading to Rome; because on that side the camp was defended by the marsh. See B. 9, v. 56. Turnus seeks every where a passage to arrive at the camp of the Trojans':

Huc turbidus atque huc

Lustrat equo muros, aditumque per avia quærit.

These "muri" are the intrenchments. "Aditus per avia" are perhaps only the marshes which were behind the camp. Even to this day we cannot arrive at Ostia by the road from Rome without passing over a very long bridge, which the ancient Romans have

built over the lake, and which reaches nearly to the gate of the town. The camp of Eneas must have been situated almost in the same spot with modern Ostia.'

That the camp of Eneas was placed within one of the con cave windings (the longi flexus' mentioned in the 8th book of the Encid, v. 95) of the Tiber, perhaps in that part of its ancient channel now called Fiume Morto, at least that Virgil had so placed it in his own conception, scems very probable. But, that it was immediately backed by an extensive Jake and marsh, we recollect no positive indication in Virgil. We read of the Laurentian marshes; but where is the passage in Virgil which places them close behind the Trojan camp? Indeed we think M. de B. peculiarly unhappy in his attempts to support his hypothesis. Why should Turnus ride round the intrenchments of the camp to seek a passage to it, when one side at least was open to him, and that the most obvious, as it fronted his own? His object clearly was, to seek the most advantageous passage, not to the intrenchments, but through them. He reconnoitred them in order to judge where there promised to be the least opposition from the enemy; where it was most practicable to leap the fosse or scale the mound; or lastly, to set fire to the wooden towers, which were placed all round the camp at certain intervals, with a sort of scaffolding, called bridges, between them. This interpretation, which would even otherwise be the most natural, is corroborated by the account which Virgil gives of the second attack upon the camp:

Et fossas implere parant et vellere vallum;
Quærunt pars aditum et scalis adscendere muros
Qua rara est acies, &c.' B. ix. v. 506.

and again:

Turris erat vasto suspectu et pontibus altis,
Opportuna loco, &c.' ▼.
• 530.

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After passing over the two arms of the Tiber which in clude the Sacred Island of Apollo, he visits the site of Trajani Portus, now called Porto, which with Ostia taken together, does not contain thirty inhabitants. A little town called Fiumicino, built about half a league below Port Trajan, now supplies the place of both.

The Numicius, called by this author Numicus, which some commentators have supposed to be the modern Rivo di Nimi, and which others have placed at the foot of the hill upon which Lavinium, now called Pratica, is built, M. de B. confidently places between Laurentum and the marsh of Ostia.

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