University of Virginia Library

43. LETTER XLIII.

I have spent a day at Tivoli with Messrs. Auchmuty
and Bissell, of our navy, and one or two others,
forming quite an American party. We passed the ru
ins of the baths of Diocletian, with a heavy cloud over
our heads; but we were scarce through the gate,
when the sun broke through, the rain swept off over
Soracte, and the sky was clear till sunset.

I have seen many finer falls than Tivoli; that is,
more water, and falling farther; but I do not think
there is so pretty a place in the world. A very dirty
village, a dirtier hotel, and a cicerone all rags and ruffianism,
are somewhat dampers to anticipation. We
passed through a broken gate, and with a step, were in
a glen of fairy-land; the lightest and loveliest of antique
temples on a crag above, a snowy waterfall of
some hundred and fifty feet below, grottoes mossed to
the mouth at the river's outlet, and all up and down
the cleft valley vines twisted in the crevices of rock,
and shrubbery hanging on every ledge, with a felicity
of taste or nature, or both, that is uncommon even in
Italy. The fall itself comes rushing down through a
grotto to the face of the precipice, over which it leaps,
and looks like a subterranean river just coming to light.
Its bed is rough above, and it bursts forth from its cavern
in dazzling foam, and falls in one sparry sheet to
the gulf. The falls of Montmorenci are not unlike it.

We descended to the bottom, and from the little terrace,
wet by the spray, and dark with overhanging
rocks, looked up the “cavern of Neptune,” a deep passage,
through which half the divided river rushes to
meet the fall in the gulf. Then remounting to the
top, we took mules to make the three miles' circuit of
the glen, and see what are called the Cascatelli.

No fairy-work could exceed the beauty of the little antique
Sybil's temple perched on the top of the crag above
the fall. As we rode round the other edge of the glen, it
stood opposite us in all the beauty of its light and airy
architecture; a thing that might be borne, “like Loretto's
chapel, through the air,” and seem no miracle.

A mile farther on I began to recognise the features
of the scene, at a most lovely point of view. It was
the subject of one of Cole's landscapes, which I had
seen in Florence; and I need not say to any one who
knows the works of this admirable artist, that it was
done with truth and taste.[3] The little town of Tivoli
hangs on a jutting lap of the mountain, on the side of
the ravine opposite to your point of view. From beneath
its walls, as if its foundations were laid upon a
river's fountains, bursts foaming water in some thirty
different falls; and it seems to you as if the long declivities
were that moment for the first time overflowed,
for the currents go dashing under trees, and overleaping
vines and shrubs, appearing and disappearing continually,
till they all meet in the quiet bed of the river
below. “It was made by Bernini,” said the guide, as
we stood gazing at it; and, odd as this information
sounded, while wondering at a spectacle worthy of the
happiest accident of nature, it will explain the phenomena
of the place to you—the artist having turned
a mountain river from its course, and leading it under
the town of Tivoli, threw it over the sides of the precipitous
hill upon which it stands. One of the streams
appears from beneath the ruins of the “Villa of Mecænas,”
which topples over a precipice just below the
town, looking over the campagna toward Rome—a
situation worthy of the patron of the poets. We rode
through the immense subterranean arches, which formed
its court in ascending the mountain again to the
town.

Near Tivoli is the ruined villa of Adrian, where was
found the Venus de Medicis, and some other of the
wonders of antique art. The sun had set, however,
and the long campagna of twenty miles lay between us

and Rome. We were compelled to leave it unseen.
We entered the gates at nine o'clock, unrobbed—rather
an unusual good fortune, we were told, for travellers
after dark on that lonely waste. Perhaps our
number deprived us of the romance.

I left a crowded ball-room at midnight, wearied with
a day at Tivoli, and oppressed with an atmosphere
breathed by two hundred, dancing and card-playing,
Romans and foreigners; and with a step from the portico
of the noble palace of our host, came into a broad
beam of moonlight, that with the stillness and coolness
of the night refreshed me at once, and banished
all disposition for sleep. A friend was with me, and I
proposed a ramble among the ruins.

The sentinel challenged us as we entered the Forum.
The frequent robberies of romantic strangers
in this lonely place have made a guard necessary, and
they are now stationed from the Arch of Severus to
the Coliseum. We passed an hour rambling among
the ruins of the temples. Not a footstep was to be
heard, nor a sound even from the near city; and the
tall columns, with their broken friezes and capitals,
and the grand imperishable arches, stood up in the
bright light of the moon, looking indeed like monuments
of Rome. I am told they are less majestic by
daylight. The rubbish and fresh earth injure the effect.
But I have as yet seen them in the garb of
moonlight only, and I shall carry this impression away.
It is to me, now, all that my fancy hoped to find it—
its temples and columns just enough in ruin to be affecting
and beautiful.

We went thence to the Temple of Vesta. It is
shut up in the modern streets, ten or fifteen minutes
walk from the Forum. The picture of this perfect
temple, and the beautiful purpose of its consecration,
have been always prominent in my imaginary Rome.
It is worthy of its association—an exquisite round
temple, with its simple circle of columns from the
base to the roof, a faultless thing in proportion, and as
light and floating to the eye as if the wind might lift
it. It was no common place to stand beside, and recall
the poetical truth and fiction of which it has been
the scene—the vestal lamp cherished or neglected by
its high-horn votaries, their honors if pure, and their
dreadful death if faithless. It needed not the heavenly
moonlight that broke across its columns to make it
a very shrine of fancy.

My companion proposed a visit next to the Cloaca
Maxima. A common sewer, after the Temple of Vesta,
sounds like an abrupt transition; but the arches beneath
which we descended were touched by moonlight,
and the vines and ivy crossed our path, and instead of
a drain of filth, which the fame of its imperial builder
would scarce have sweetened, a rapid stream leaped to
the right, and disappeared again beneath the solid masonry,
more like a wild brook plunging into a grotto
than the thing one expects to find it. The clear little
river Juturna (on the banks of which Castor and Pollux
watered their foaming horses, when bringing the
news of victory to Rome), dashes now through the
Cloaca Maxima; and a fresher and purer spot, or waters
with a more musical murmur, it has not been my
fortune to see. We stopped over a broken column
for a drink, and went home, refreshed, to bed.