of an affidavit, to ground a motion that "another writ do issue;" or, as it might be more correctly worded, "That another processserver do expose himself to as sound a thrashing as the last." This is not an exaggerated picture; and in order to complete it, it should not be omitted that the instigator of the outrage, as soon as he can with safety appear abroad, will to a certainty be found among the most clamorous for proclamations and insurrection-acts, to keep down the lawless propensities of his district.

I have offered a specimen of Irish society, as I could collect it from affidavits daily produced in court; yet, shocking and disgusting as the details are, I confess it is not easy to repress a smile at the style in which those adventurous scenes are described. The affidavits are generally the composition of country attorneys. The maltreated processserver puts the story of his injured feelings and beaten carcase into the hands of one of these learned penmen; and I must do them the justice to say, that they conscientiously make the most of the task confided to them. They have all a dash of national eloquence about them; the leading qualities of which, metaphor, pathos, sonorous phrase, impassioned delineation, &c. they liberally embody with the technical detail of facts, forming a class of oratory quite unknown to the schools," The oratory of the Affidavit."-What British adviser, for instance, of matters to be given in on oath, would venture upon such a poetical statement as the following, which I took down one day in the Irish Court of Common Pleas :" And this deponent farther saith, that on arriving at the house of the said defendant, situate in the county of Galway aforesaid, for the purpose of personally serving him with the said writ, he the said deponent knocked three several times at the outer, commonly called the hall-door, but could not obtain admittance; whereupon this deponent was proceeding to knock a fourth time, when a man, to this deponent unknown, holding in his hands a musquet or blunderbuss, loaded with balls or slugs, as this deponent has since heard and verily believes, appeared at one of the upper windows of said house, and, presenting said musquet or blunderbuss at this deponent, threatened, that if said deponent did not instantly retire, he would send his, this deponent's, soul to hell;' which this deponent verily believes he would have done-had not this deponent precipitately escaped." Truly a judicious selection of these interesting documents would present a very lively and edifying picture of society in many parts of the sister-Island. In the present taste for the semibarbarous, I do not even see why a spirited national tale might not be founded upon the romantic adventures of an Irish process-server. As far as broken heads and hair-breadth escapes are concerned, the writer would assuredly find no want of materials.-Mr. Colburn should look to this.

6

MODERN PILGRIMAGES.-NO. VII.

Tivoli and the Sabine Valley.

"Me nec tam patiens Lacedæmon,
Nec tam Larissæ percussit campus opimæ,
Quàm domus Albuneæ resonantis,

Et præceps Anio, et, Tiburni lucus, et uda
Mobilibus pomaria rivis."'*

Ir is now some years, thank Heaven! since I left the Universitynot that I bear any grudge to the learned body; quite the contrary, more love than is either worth reading or writing of-but that the interval spent in what they would call idleness has restored to my mind the freshness that enables it to enjoy the beauties of the classics. He, 66 That abhorr'd

Too much to conquer for the poet's sake,

The drill'd dull lesson forced down word by word
In his repugnant youth, with pleasure to record

Aught that recall'd the daily drug which turn'd
His sickening memory,"

and who by-the-by has quoted so intimately, that he seems to have read the poet since, concludes,

"So farewell, Horace, on Soracte's ridge we part."

The learned annotator to "Childe Harold" begs to be excused from joining in this farewell; and so do 1, who might have said,

"Good morrow, Horace, on Soracte's ridge we meet."

It is, to be sure, a monstrous antidote to taste, to have the noblest works of genius associated with school drudgery, and to have every beautiful ode or poetic effusion of the classics linked in our minds with disgrace and flagellation. The mere thought of having ever suffered corporal punishment, is an idea so full of disgust, and horror, and degradation, that the strongest feelings of pleasure must vanish when so accompanied. Yet, if we can set aside such recollections, and recur to the spirit of boyhood, we shall most likely discover in its early classic food the germs of those few noble principles that maturity has left us. Imagine for a moment a boy, under whose observation nothing has come but the petty acts and pettier motives of those around him, and who in the way of compelled study can have learned nothing but mere terms from his grammar, and not so much from the flowery English prose, of which he is made to read cursorily a daily portion-Imagine a Virgil, with Goldsmith's Histories of Greece and Rome, put into his hands-Can this be looked upon as less than a second birth? The boy cannot skim over his Virgil, without conceiving a single idea, after the manner that he reads his English; he must pore for hours over a few lines, must construe every word, and is shut up with poetical images and personages, as we are with the shadows in a dream, from which there is no escaping, and which seem so huge and so near, that they stun us into a belief of them. There are few boys of imagination that are not, in a degree, Pagans in their youth. The Gods of Olympus, sung in the verses of Homer and Virgil, cannot be read of without being sensibly imagined; and cannot be once so

Our country readers must excuse us this once from the duty of translation: it would be here impossible.

perceived, without being often present. The mind of youth becomes unnaturally extended in endeavouring to grasp these mighty objects, and the mental vision acquires a magnifying quality, which it takes many years of vulgar life to reduce to a less noble, though a fitter

standard.

Virgil is the school boy's favourite. Horace costs more trouble, and is never understood by him; yet, for this very reason, is read and reread so often, scanned and learned by rote, that the memory in general preserves more scraps of his verse, than of those of any other writer. His short pieces, various subjects, and strange metres too, are more calculated to lay hold on the recollection. The beautiful scenes of Virgil fade from our minds as we grow up, and we soon begin to look even with contempt on the heroism, the love, and the mythology of the classics. In the passage from boyhood to manhood we grow inclined to moralize not a little, being the age when passions and remorse are alike strong in producing both temptation and penitence. The mind then employed in forming its own character, and satiated with poetry, recalls in preference the pithy morality of the satirist: his common-place diatribes against avarice and prodigality have not yet become common-place to us at that age. And when the spirit of man is young, the simple precepts of philosophy-such poetical laws as the "Justum et tenacem," the "Be just, and fear not," command that reverence and awe which is scarcely produced on the mind of more years, even by the fearful mysteries and denunciations of religion.

nor

A little distance from Civita Castellana, the ancient Veii, I came in sight of Soracte. Although neither the "altá stet nive candidum" of Horace, "the long-drawn wave" of Byron, it was endeared by the memory of both; an August sun forbade any snow upon its summit, and it is only from Rome that Mount St. Oreste, as Soracte is now called, answers the description of Byron. The Parnassus of Horace is not lofty seen from the south, from Tibur and the farm of Horace, merely the round summit of the mountain is descried: to the Perugia road it presents a ridge, and undulating outline, not without beauty. But like the country in which it is situated, its chief attraction must be its poet

ical associations.

"The pilgrim," says Mr. Hobhouse, "may take leave of Horace upon Soracte; not so the antiquary, who pursues to the city and country, to Rome and Tivoli, and hunts him through the windings of the Sabine valley, till he detects him pouring fourth his flowers over the glassy margin of his Blandusian fount."

The poetical pilgrim justly scorned a place so bevisited and bepictured as Tivoli. But we, whose pen travels on foot, Musd pedestri, and who cannot afford a pair of wings to our shoulders, are contented to trace the vestiges of genius with the plodding antiquary

"Ibam forte Viâ Sacrâ,"

and turning to the left of the Colosseum, proceeded up the Esquiline to the Baths of Titus; not that I cared for either Titus or his baths, but sought the House of Macenas, which that Emperor made use of as a foundation for his more modern edifice. I penetrated by torch-light into the chambers, now subterraneous, but once resounding with the voice of Virgil and the jokes of Horace. Of the very decorations, the painting and gilding, in those chambers that had not yet been exposed to the air and light,

the ground-colour seems universally to have been red, and beautiful little figures of eagles, swans, and loves, are to be seen still in good preservation. Lofty as these chambers are (thirty-three feet), the ornamental figures of the vaulted roofs, like all those of the ancients, whether in painting or stucco, are exceedingly minute. As may be supposed, more bats than cares are now to be found, in contradiction of the poet, flying about the "laqueata tecta." From the various and more recent petty compartments into which this edifice appears to have been divided, it is considered to have been let out to private individuals, subsequent to Titus. The corridore that served then as a common entrance, was for the first time excavated by the French; and a curious inscription found, generally thought to be of the time of Caracalla, notifying, that the twelve greater Gods, and especially Jupiter and Diana, would be very angry with whoever did any thing naughty against the walls.*

It was in vain looking for Horace's town-house among the vineyards and shapeless ruins of the Esquiline, where Canidia might once more find herbs and solitude enough for her magic calling; so that the next morning found me on the road to Tivoli, jolting over the same old stones of the Via Tiburtina on which trotted Horace and his mule. Not only is the broad pavement, but even the elevated foot-path of the Roman road preserved in many places. Passing the lake of Solfatara, and being obliged to hold my nose against the infernal stench, I could not recollect any mention in Horace of this nuisance, which sorely annoys Tivoli when the wind is westerly, and must have annoyed him. Here antiquaries place the Oracle of Faunus, and the groves of Albunæa; the former conjecture is probably right, a bad smell being ever with the ancients a sign of prophetic power.

Tivoli, the ancient Tibur," Argao positum colono," is one of the most beautiful spots in Christendom, overlooking one of the most barren deserts in it. It was evening at the time of my arrival, and, ere entering the gate, I turned to look back towards the eternal city. The sun was setting, and for a brief moment lighted with crimson Tivoli and the rocky summits above-to the right its dying rays were on Soracte, to the left upon Mount Algidus, while before us lay the olive-planted hill we had just mounted, sloping down to the Campagna; and afar over that dup, undulating plain, that stretched like a sullen and motionless sea, where the spires of Rome and the dome of St. Peter's, minute, but clearly relieved against the rich flush of the horizon. The scene seemed a struggle between the picturesque and the sentimental. Near where I

stood had been the villa of Sallust," inimice lamnæ, Crispe Sallusti ;” and as the eye could not reach the most classic ground, along the Anio, which lay to the northward of the town, I contented myself for that evening with contemplating the interminable ruins of Hadrian's villa.

The inscription is as follows:

DVODECIM DEOS ET DIANAM ET IOVEM
OPTIMVM MAXIMVM HABEA' IRATOS
QVISQVIS HIC MINXERIT AVT CACARIT.

Beneath it is painted a tripod supporting a basket, seemingly of flowers, with a rod
on top; and each side is a snake, representing the Genii loci.
"Pinge quos angnes: Pueri, sacer est locus, extra

Mejite," &c.

PERSIUS, Satyr. 1.

The morning brought a renewal of the pleasure. I visited the Temples of the Sibyl and of Vesta, and descended to the Grotto of Neptune, a scene of unrivalled splendour-it resembles the inside of a petrified volcano; indeed not only resembles, but is so. Thence the talkative Cicerone led the way round to the other side of the valley, in order to obtain an opposite view of the Cascatelle. The valley, which is open towards Rome, so as to afford from all its points a splendid view of the Campagna, is formed by mountains covered with olivetrees. On the height to the southward is Tivoli; half-way between which and the river at bottom is situated the celebrated villa of Mæcenas, with two or three of the Cascatelle rushing from beneath the arches on which it is built. Before the visitor arrives opposite this villa, he is shown the situation of that belonging to Catullus; and almost opposite are the remains of the supposed mansion of Horace, together with that of Quinctilius Varus, whom the poet addressed,

"Nullam, Vare, sacrâ vite prius severis arborem

Circa mite solum Tiburis, et monia Catili :
Siccis omnia nam dura Deus proposuit :"-

and Augustus more pathetically, demanding his lost legions. To use the distinction of the sublime and beautiful, the Cascatelle possess the latter quality above any fall of water I ever beheld. They do not fall in a straight line, or precipitately, but appear, from the opposite side, like immense skeins of silver thread elegantly disposed along the declivity; yet they suggest no idea of pettiness, and, seen from above on their own side, are not without grandeur. The Cascata itself, or great fall of Tivoli, is nothing—if I may be allowed to judge, who but saw the place dry, the water having been turned into another channel for the sake of mending the cataract.

The villa of Mæcenas, at least that part of it next the valley, called "The long Gallery," was converted by Lucien Bonaparte into an extensive forge, worked by machinery. Curious fates houses undergo :once noisy with the tongues of Virgil, Varius, Horace, and Catullus, it is now much more so with the sound of hammer, file, and saw. The cemented roof is in astonishing preservation: it is almost incredible, that mortar thus flatly laid, and open to the heavens, could have lasted upwards of eighteen centuries; yet we see nearly the same thing in the Colosseum, in those upper ranges that were open to the air, and of whose antiquity there can be no doubt. Part of the court-yard and its façade are entire. This was supported by a long arch, which crossed the old Tiburtine way; and, to give light to the travellers that passed below, there are large square apertures, which open from the courtyard down to the ancient road. Having seen the hundred fountains of the Villa d'Este play, and having spent the rest of the day in Hadrian's villa, we girded our loins next day for the Sabine Valley.

There was little to be seen there beyond the face of the valley itself, which the poet so often alludes to, and which in one instance he promises to describe "loquaciously:" he as usual breaks his promise, and runs off into morality: