city, which must therefore, according to Etruscan and Roman usage regarding the interment of the dead, have been outside the walls.  The tombs have all been rifled and destroyed, and many of the sepulchral caves have been turned to the basest uses for stalling goats and cattle.  An air of profound melancholy breathes around the whole spot.  It seems to be more connected with the dead than with the living world.  And the hamlet which now occupies the commanding site is of the most wretched description.  All its houses, which date from the fifteenth century, are ruinous, and are among the worst in Italy; and the baronial castle which crowns the highest point,—­built nearly a thousand years ago, the scene of many a conflict between the Colonnas and the Orsinis, and captured on one occasion after a twelve days’ siege by Caesar Borgia,—­has been converted into a barn.  The inhabitants of the village do not exceed a hundred in number, and present a haggard and sallow appearance—­the effect of the dreadful malaria which haunts the spot.  It is strange to contrast this blighted and fever-stricken aspect of the place with the description of Dionysius, who praised its air as in his time exceedingly pure and healthy, and its territory as smiling and fruitful.  In the little square of the village are several fragments of marble and other relics of Roman domination; and the church, about four or five hundred years old, dedicated to St. Pancrazio, is in a state of great decay.  The walls are damp and mouldy, and all the pictures and ornaments are of the rudest description, with the exception of a faded fresco of the coronation of the Virgin, which is a fair specimen of the art of the fifteenth century.  The service of the church is supplied by some distant priest or friar in orders.

We left our conveyance in the piazza, and took our lunch in one of the houses.  We brought our provisions with us from Rome, but we got a coarse but palatable wine from the people, and a rude but clean room in which to enjoy our repast.  This inn—­if it may be called, so—­had at one time a very evil reputation.  But nothing could be more simple-hearted than the landlord and his wife, with their group of timid children who clung to their mother’s skirts in dread of the strangers.  They told us that the poverty of the place was deplorable.  Nearly all the people were laid down during the heats of summer with fever; and they were so poor that they could not afford to keep a doctor.  Many deaths occurred, and the survivors, emaciated by the disease, were left to drag on a weary existence embittered by numerous privations.  At a distance the village on its lofty rock, surrounded by its richly-wooded ravines, looked like a picture of Arcadia; but near at hand the sad reality dispelled the idyllic dream.