Finding the water quite warm, we determined to have a bath.  So we ran down the plain, which was covered with a thick coat of sulphur, and sounded hollow to our tread, till we reached a convenient place, where we threw off our clothes, and plunged in.  The warm wave was delightful to the skin, but extremely offensive to the smell, and when we came out, our mouths and throats were filled with the stifling gas.

It was growing dark as we mounted through the narrow streets of Tivoli, but we endeavored to gain some sight of the renowned beauties of the spot, before going to rest.  From a platform on a brow of the hill, we looked down into the defile, at whose bottom the Anio was roaring, and caught a sideward glance of the Cascatelles, sending up their spray amid the evergreen bushes that fringe the rocks.  Above the deep glen that curves into the mountain, stands the beautiful temple of the Sybil—­a building of the most perfect and graceful proportion.  It crests the “rocky brow” like a fairy dwelling, and looks all the lovelier for the wild caverns below.  Gazing downward from the bridge, one sees the waters of the Anio tumbling into the picturesque grotto of the Sirens; around a rugged corner, a cloud of white spray whirls up continually, while the boom of a cataract rumbles down the glen.  All these we marked in the deepening dusk, and then hunted an albergo.

The shrill-voiced hostess gave us a good supper and clean beds; in return we diverted the people very much by the relation of our sulphur bath.  We were awakened in the night by the wind shaking the very soul out of our loose casement.  I fancied I heard torrents of rain dashing against the panes, and groaned in bitterness of spirit on thinking of a walk back to Rome in such weather.  When morning came, we found it was only a hurricane of wind which was strong enough to tear off pieces of the old roofs.  I saw some capuchins nearly overturned in crossing the square, by the wind seizing their white robes.

I had my fingers frozen and my eyes filled with sand, in trying to draw the Sybil’s temple, and therefore left it to join my companions, who had gone down into the glen to see the great cascade.  The Anio bursts out of a cavern in the mountain-side, and like a prisoner giddy with recovered liberty, reels over the edge of a precipice more than two hundred feet deep.  The bottom is hid in a cloud of boiling spray, that shifts from side to side, and driven by the wind, sweeps whistling down the narrow pass.  It stuns the ear with a perpetual boom, giving a dash of grandeur to the enrapturing beauty of the scene.  I tried a footpath that appeared to lead down to the Cascatelles, but after advancing some distance along the side of an almost perpendicular precipice, I came to a corner that looked so dangerous, especially as the wind was nearly strong enough to carry me off, that it seemed safest to return.  We made another vain attempt to get down, by creeping along the bed of a torrent, filled with briars.  The Cascatelles are formed by that part of the Anio, which is used in the iron works, made out of the ruins of Mecaenas’ villa.  They gush out from under the ancient arches, and tumble more than a hundred feet down the precipice, their white waters gleaming out from the dark and feathery foliage.  Not far distant are the remains of the villa of Horace.