As We Lay Down On The Grass Of The Campagna, Next Day, On Our Way
To Florence, Hearing The Larks Sing, We Saw That A Little Wooden
Cross Had Been Erected On The Spot Where The Poor Pilgrim Countess
Was Murdered.
So, we piled some loose stones about it, as the
beginning of a mound to her memory, and wondered if we should ever
rest there again, and look back at Rome.
CHAPTER XI--A RAPID DIORAMA
We are bound for Naples! And we cross the threshold of the Eternal
City at yonder gate, the Gate of San Giovanni Laterano, where the
two last objects that attract the notice of a departing visitor,
and the two first objects that attract the notice of an arriving
one, are a proud church and a decaying ruin--good emblems of Rome.
Our way lies over the Campagna, which looks more solemn on a bright
blue day like this, than beneath a darker sky; the great extent of
ruin being plainer to the eye: and the sunshine through the arches
of the broken aqueducts, showing other broken arches shining
through them in the melancholy distance. When we have traversed
it, and look back from Albano, its dark, undulating surface lies
below us like a stagnant lake, or like a broad, dull Lethe flowing
round the walls of Rome, and separating it from all the world! How
often have the Legions, in triumphant march, gone glittering across
that purple waste, so silent and unpeopled now!
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