The prospect from the Priorato surpasses anything in Rome—­even the wonderful view from the Janiculum, even the enchanting outlook from the Pincian Hill.  But the last was at our very doors:  we could go thither in the morning to watch the white mist curl up from the valleys and hang about the mountain-brows, and at noon, when even in January the cool avenues and splashing fountains were grateful, and at sunset, when the city lay before us steeped in splendor.  That was the view of our daily walks—­the beloved view of which one thinks most often and fondly in remembering Rome.

[Illustration:  Soracte.]

But it is in riding that one grows to feel most familiar with the Tiber and all his Roman children, whether it be strolling somewhat sulkily in a line with his banks by the Via Flaminia or the Via Cassia, impatient to get away from their stones and dust to the soft, springing turf; or hailing him from afar as a guide after losing one’s self in the endless undulations of the open country; or cantering over daffodil-sheeted meadows beside the Anio at the foot of the grassy heights on which Antemnae stood; or threading one’s way doubtfully among the ravines which intersect the course of the little Cremera as one goes to Veii.  The last is a most beautiful and interesting expedition, for, what with the distance—­more than twelve miles—­and the difficulty of finding the way, it is quite an enterprise.  As one turns his horse’s head away from the river, off the high-road, to the high grassy flats, the whole Campagna seems to lie before one like a vast table-land, with nothing between one’s self and Soracte as he lifts his heavy shoulder from the plain—­not half hidden by intervening mountains, as from some points of view, but majestic and isolated, thirty miles away to the north.  But here, as in every other part of the Campagna, one cannot go far without finding hillocks and hollows, long steep slopes and sudden little dells, and, stranger still, unsuspected tracts of woodland, for the general effect of the Roman landscape is quite treeless.  So there is a few miles’ gallop across the trackless turf, sometimes asking the way of a solitary shepherd, who looms up against the sky like a tower, sometimes following it by faint landmarks, few and far between, of which we have been told, and hard to find in that waste, until we pass a curious little patriarchal abode shaped like a wigwam, where, in the midst of these wide pastures dwells a herdsman surrounded by his family, his cattle, his dogs, his goats and his fowls—­the beautiful animals of the Campagna, long-haired, soft-eyed, rich-colored, like the human children of the soil.  Then we strike the Cremera, and exploring begins among its rocky gullies, up and down which the spirited, sure-footed horses scramble like chamois.  Thick woods of cork-oak clothe their sides, and copses of a deciduous tree which I never saw in its summer dress of green, but which keeps its dead leaves all through the winter,