Sometimes our road led us through groves of olives, or by gardens of oranges, or into several hollow apartments among the rocks and mountains, that look like so many natural greenhouses; as being always shaded with a great variety of trees and shrubs that never lose their verdure. I shall say nothing of the Via Flaminia, which has been spoken of by most of the voyage-writers that have passed it, but shall set down Claudian's account of the journey that Honorius made from Ravenna to Rome, which lies most of it in the same road that I have been describing.. -Antiquæ muros egressa Ravennæ Signa movet, jamque ora Padi portusque relinquit Non procul amnis adest, urbi qui nominis auctor Inter utrumque jugum tortis anfractibus albet. A highway made by Vespasian, like the Grotto Oscuro near Naples. This fountain is not known. Inde salutato libatis Tibride nymphis, DE 6 CONS. HON. They leave Ravenna and the mouths of Po, Silius Italicus, who has taken more pains on the geography of Italy than any other of the Latin poets, has given a catalogue of most of the rivers that I saw in Umbria, or in the borders of it. He has avoided a fault (if it be really such) which Macrobius has objected to Virgil, of passing from one place to another, without regarding their regular and natural situation, in which Homer's catalogues are observed to be much more methodical and exact than Virgil's. -Cavis venientes montibus Umbri, Hos Esis Sapisque lavant, rapidasque sonanti SIL. IT. lib. 8. Since I am got among the poets, I shall end this chapter with two or three passages out of them, that I have omitted inserting in their proper places.' Sit cisterna mihi quam vinea malo Ravennæ, Lodg'd at Ravenna, (water sells so dear) Callidus imposuit nuper mihi caupo Ravennæ; By a Ravenna vintner once betray'd, So much for wine and water mix'd I paid; But when I thought the purchas'd liquor mine, The rascal fobb'd me off with only wine. MAR. lib. 5. Id. 1 It seems strange that while he quotes so freely from Claudian, and Silius Italicus, and the writers of that class, Addison should have made so little use of Horace's odes. He passes the Metaurus without recalling Hannibal's damentation: Carthagini jam non ego nuntios and looks up at Soracte without repeating, Vides, ut alta stet nive candidum Lib. iv. Carm. 4. which, as the modern reader will remember, awakened such bitter recollections in Byron. Indeed, he would seem intentionally to have omitted the more familiar passages of the classics, as well as the objects most commonly recorded by other travellers.-G. Stat fucare colus nec Sidone vilior Ancon, The wool when shaded with Ancona's dye, May with the proudest Tyrian purple vie. SIL. IT. lib. 8. Fountain water is still very scarce at Ravenna, and was probably much more so, when the sea was within its neighbourhood. FROM ROME TO NAPLES. Upon my arrival at Rome, I took a view of St. Peter's, and the Rotunda, leaving the rest till my return from Naples, when I should have time and leisure enough to consider what I saw. St. Peter's seldom answers expectation at first entering it, but enlarges itself on all sides insensibly, and mends upon the eye every moment. The proportions are so very well observed, that nothing appears to an advantage, or distinguishes itself above the rest. It seems neither extremely high, nor long, nor broad, because it is all of them in a just equality. As on the contrary, in our Gothic cathedrals, the narrowness of the arch makes it rise in height, or run out in length; the lowness often opens it in breadth, or the defectiveness of some other particular, makes any single part appear in great perfection. Though every thing in this church is admirable, the most astonishing part of it is the cupola. Upon my going to the top of it, I was surprised to find that the dome, which we see in the church, is not the same that one looks upon without doors, the last of them being a kind of case to the other, and the stairs lying betwixt them both, by 1 St. Peter's-Vide, for a beautiful application of this fact so generally confirmed by the experience of travellers, the first paragraph of Arnold's Inaugural lecture-(Lec. on Mod. history). Cooper in his letters on Italy, says, that he did not receive this impression, and attributes the circumstances to his nautical experience, in judging by the eye of heights and distances.-G. which one ascends into the ball Had there been only the outward dome, it would not have shewn itself to an advantage to those that are in the church; or had there only been the inward one, it would scarce have been seen by those that are without; had they both been one solid dome of so great a thickness, the pillars would have been too weak to have supported it. After having surveyed this dome, I went to see the Rotunda, which is generally said to have been the model of it. This church is at present so much changed from the ancient Pantheon, as Pliny has described it, that some have been inclined to think it is not the same temple; but the Cavalier Fontana has abundantly satisfied the world in this particular, and shewn how the ancient figure, and ornaments of the Pantheon, have been changed into what they are at present. This author, who is now esteemed the best of the Roman architects, has lately written a treatise on Vespasian's Amphitheatre, which is not yet printed. After having seen these two master-pieces of modern and ancient architecture, I have often considered with myself whether the ordinary figure of the heathen, or that of the christian temples be the most beautiful, and the most capable of magnificence, and cannot forbear thinking the cross figure more proper for such spacious buildings than the rotund. I must confess the eye is better filled at first entering the rotund, and takes in the whole beauty and magnificence of the temple at one view. But such as are built in the form of a cross, give us a greater variety of noble prospects.1 Nor is it easy to conceive a more glorious show in architecture, than what a man meets with in St. Peter's, when he stands under the dome. If he looks upward he is astonished at the spacious hollow of the cupola, and has a vault on every side of him, that makes one of the beautifullest vistas that the eye can 1 The church of Santa Maria Degli Angeli, built by Michael Angelo, in the form of a Greek cross, is a still more striking illustration of this.-G. |