THE VILLAGE OF LA RICCIA. "Egressum, magnâ me excepit Aricia Româ, Hospitio modico." HORACE. I PASSED the month of September at the village of La Riccia, which stands upon the western declivity of the Albanian hills, looking towards Rome. Its situation is one of the most beautiful which Italy can boast. Like a mural crown it, encircles the brow of a romantic hill,-woodlands of the most luxuriant foliage whisper around it; above it rise the rugged summits of the Abruzzi, and beneath lies the level floor of the Campagna, blotted with ruined tombs, and marked with broken but magnificent acqueducts that point the way to Rome. The whole region is classic ground. The Appian Way leads you from the gate of Rome to the gate of La Riccia. On one hand you have the Alban Lake, on the other the Lake of Nemi; and the sylvan retreats around were once the dwellings of Hippolytus and the nymph Egeria. The town itself, however, is mean and dirty. The only inhabitable part is near the northern gate, where the two streets of the village meet. There, face to face, upon a square terrace, paved with large, flat stones, stand the Chigi palace and the village church with a dome and portico. There, too, stands the village inn, with its beds of cool, elastic corn-husks, its little dormitories, six feet square, and its spacious saloon, upon whose walls the melancholy story of Hippolytus is told in gorgeous frescoes. And there, too, at the union of the streets, just peeping through the gateway, rises the wedge-shaped Casa Antonini, within whose dusty chambers I passed the month of my villeggiatura, in company with two much-esteemed friends from the Old Dominion,-a fair daughter of that generous clime, and her lord and master, an artist, an enthusiast, and a man of "infinite jest." My daily occupations in this delightful spot were such as an idle man usually whiles away his time withal in such a rural residence. I read Italian poetry-strolled in the Chigi park-rambled about the wooded environs of the village-took an airing on a jackass-threw stones into the Alban Lake and being seized at intervals with the artist-mania, that came upon me like an intermittent fever, sketched-or thought I did the trunk of a hollow tree, or the spire of a distant church, or a fountain in the shade. At such seasons the mind is "tickled with a straw,” and magnifies each trivial circumstance into an event of some importance. I recollect one morning, as I sat at breakfast in the village, coffeehouse, a large and beautiful spaniel came into the room, and placing his head upon my knee looked up into my face with a most piteous look, poor dog! as much as to say that he had not breakfasted. I gave him a morsel of bread, which he swallowed without so much as moving his long, silken ears; and keeping his soft, beautiful eyes still fixed upon mine, he thumped upon the floor with his bushy tail, as if knocking for the waiter. He was a very beautiful animal, and so gentle and affectionate in his manner, that I asked the waiter who his owner was. "He has none now," said the boy. "What!" said I, "so fine a dog without a master ?" 66 "Ah, sir, he used to belong to Gasparoni, the famous robber of the Abruzzi mountains, who murdered so many people, and was caught at last and |