of the finest in these kingdoms, and by the trials and calculations lately made for my information is found to fling out about twentyone tons of water in a minute. It never freezes, and scarcely varies in the quantity of water in droughts, or after the greatest rains. After a violent fall of wet, it becomes discoloured by a wheyey tinge. The stream formed by this fountain runs with a rapid course to the sea, which it reaches in little more than a mile's distance. The situation of the town is pleasant and healthy. The back is a lofty hill, at times extremely productive of lead ore. Towards the sea is a pretty valley bounded by woods; the end finishes on one side with the venerable abbey. To such as require the use of a cold bath few places are more proper, for, besides the excellence of the water, exceeding good medical assistance, and comfortable accommodations may be found here, and the mind entertained, and the body exercised in a variety of beautiful rides and walks. PLINY, Epist. viii. 8; ii. 17; iv. 30; v. 6; vi. 31; ix. 39. SCENERY OF COMO AND THE VILLA PLINIANA DESCRIBED. INCE I last wrote to you we have been to Como looking for a SINC anything I ever beheld in beauty, house. This lake exceeds anything I ever beheld in beauty, with the exception of the arbutus islands of Killarney. It is long and narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty river winding among the mountains and the forests. We sailed from the town of Como to a tract of country called the Tremezina, and saw the various aspects presented by that part of the lake. The mountains between Como and that village, or rather cluster of villages, are covered on high with chestnut forests (the eating chestnuts, on which the inhabitants of the country subsist in time of scarcity,) which sometimes descend to the very verge of the lake, overhanging it with their hoary branches. But usually the immediate border of this shore is composed of laurel trees, and bay, and myrtle, and wild fig trees, and olives, which grow in the crevices of the rocks, and overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep glens, which are filled with the flashing light of the water-falls. Other flowering shrubs, of which I know not the name, grow there also. On high the towers of village churches are seen white among the dark forests. Beyond, on the opposite shore, which faces the south, the mountains descend less precipitously to the lake, and although they are much higher, and some covered with perpetual snow, there intervenes between them and the lake a range of lower hills, which have glens and rifts opening to the other, such as I should fancy the "abysses" of Ida or Parnassus. Here are plantations of olive, orange, and lemon trees-which are now so loaded with fruit that there is more fruit than leaves-and vineyards. PLINY, Epist. v. 6; vi. 31 ; ii. 17, 7, 39; iv. 30. STATIUS, Silvarum, lib. I. iii. 1-110; lib. II. ii. 1-132. SCENERY OF COMO AND THE VILLA PLINIANA THIS HIS shore of the lake is one continued village, and the Milanese nobility have their villas here. The union of culture and the untameable profusion and loveliness of nature is here so close that the line where they are divided can hardly be discovered. But the finest scenery is that of the Villa Pliniana, so-called from a fountain which ebbs and flows every three hours, described by the young Pliny, which is in the court-yard. This house, which was once a magnificent palace, and is now half in ruins, we are endeavouring to procure. It is built upon terraces raised from the bottom of the lake, together with its garden at the foot of a semi-circular precipice, overshadowed by profound forests of chestnut. The scene from the colonnade is the most extraordinary, at once, and the most lovely that eye ever beheld. On one side is the mountain, and immediately over you are clusters of cypress-trees of an astonishing height, which seem to pierce the sky. Above you, from among the clouds, as it were, descends a water-fall of immense size, broken by the woody rocks into a thousand channels to the lake. On the other side is seen the blue extent of the lake and the mountains speckled with sails and spires. The apartments of the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill-furnished and antique. The terraces, which overlook the lake, and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as deserve the epithet of Pythian, are most delightful. We staid at Como two days, and have now returned to Milan, waiting the issue of our negotiation about a house. Como is only six leagues from Milan, and its mountains are seen from the cathedral.-Shelley. PLINY, Epist. v. 6; vi. 31; ii. 17, 7, 39; iv. 30. STATIUS, Silvarum, lib. I. iii. 1-110; lib. II. ii. 1-132. AT HAMLET AND THE GHOST. T the sight of his father's spirit, Hamlet was struck with a sudden surprise and fear. He at first called upon the angels and heavenly ministers to defend them, for he knew not whether it were a good spirit or bad; whether it came for good or for evil : but he gradually assumed more courage and his father (as it seemed to him) looked upon him so piteously, and as it were desiring to have conversation with him, and did in all respects appear so like himself as he was when he lived, that Hamlet could not help addressing him: he called him by his name Hamlet, King, Father! and conjured him that he would tell the reason why he had left his grave, where they had seen him quietly bestowed, to come again and visit the earth and the moonlight: and besought him that he would let them know if there was anything which they could do to give peace to his spirit. And the ghost beckoned to Hamlet that he should go with him to some more removed place, where they might be alone: and Horatio and Marcellus would have dissuaded the young prince from following it, for they feared lest it should be some evil spirit, who would tempt him to the neighbouring sea, or to the top of some dreadful cliff, and there put on some horrible shape which might deprive the prince of his reason.C. Lamb. PLINY, Epist. viii. 27. CICERO, De Divinatione, i. § 57-59. DESCRIPTION OF THE CAMPAGNA OF ROME UNDER EVENING LIGHT. ERHAPS there is no more impressive scene on earth than the PERH solitary extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light. Let the reader imagine himself for a moment withdrawn from the sounds and motion of the living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and wasted plain. The earth yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he never so lightly, for its substance is white, hollow, and carious, like the dusty wreck of the bones of men. The long knotted grass waves and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion shake feverishly along the banks of ruin that lift themselves to the sunlight. Hillocks of mouldering earth heave around him, as if the dead beneath were struggling in their sleep; scattered blocks of black stone, foursquare, remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon another, lie upon them to keep them down. A dull purple, poisonous haze stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of mossy ruins, on whose rents the red light rests like lying fire on defiled altars. The blue ridge of the Alban mount lifts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watchtowers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From the plain to the mountains, the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral mourners passing from a nation's grave.—Ruskin. LIVY, xxii. c. 31. DREAM OF THE OPIUM EATER. Y dream commenced with a music which now I often heard My dream common in dreams-a music of preparation and of awakening suspense; a music like the opening of the coronation anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day, a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere-I knew not where, somehow-I knew not how, by some beings-I knew not whom, a battle, a strife, an agony was conducting, was evolving like a great drama or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to its place, its course, its nature, and its probable issue. I, as is usual in dreams (where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every movement), had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then like a chorus the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded or trumpet had proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives--I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempests and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed; and clasped hands, and heartbreaking partings, and then-everlasting |