The road after this descends into a valley, through which the stream of the Ponticello flows, passing a most massive circular tomb, reminding one of the mounds of the Horatii and Curiatii; and as it ascends gradually on the opposite side, two huge sepulchres of the Imperial period—­one on the right hand and the other on the left—­attract notice, and are the last on this part of the route.  The railway to Naples passes across the road at the eleventh milestone, and disturbs the solemn silence three or four times a day by its incongruous noise.  Beyond this is the osteria and village of Frattocchie, where the old Appian Way merges into the new, and ascends continuously to Albano.  This neighbourhood is full of historical associations.  It was at Frattocchie that the body of Clodius was left lying on the road after his fatal encounter with Milo.  This fray furnished the occasion for one of Cicero’s most eloquent speeches,—­that in defence of Milo,—­which was written, but owing to the disturbances in the Forum at the time was not delivered.  On the left of the village, near a railway bridge and several quarries of very old hard lava, is the site of Appiolae, one of the cities of the Latin League, destroyed by Tarquinius Priscus.  All the male population were killed, and the women and children transferred to Rome; and with the spoils the Capitolium was completed.  The remains of the old city are very slight, consisting of a wall, a few vestiges of a temple, and some foundations on a cliff surrounded by a stream, which could be dammed up and flooded so as to form a fosse.  On the right of Frattocchie are the ruins of Bovillae, taken and plundered by Coriolanus, and deserted in the time of Cicero.  Some arches of the corridor of an amphitheatre, a reservoir for water, tolerably perfect, and a circus, are still visible.  There are also the ruins of a forum.  The view, looking back from this elevated position upon the long course of the Appian Way, is exceedingly striking.  One feels, when gazing on the long perspective of rugged and mouldering sepulchres, the full force of the name Strada del Diavolo which the peasants give to this street of tombs; and can sympathise with the sentiment that made Charles Dickens say, when standing here at sunset, after having walked all the way from Rome, “I almost felt as if the sun would never rise again, but look its last that night upon a ruined world.”

We can picture St. Paul’s memorable journey from Puteoli to Rome by this route.  The thought that the eye of the great apostle must have rested upon the same features of the landscape, and many of the same objects, though now in ruins, that we still behold, invests them with an indescribable charm.  From beyond the gates of Albano, near which stood the lofty tomb of Pompey, whose ashes had only recently been brought from the scene of his murder in Egypt, by his devoted wife Cornelia, he would obtain his first glimpse of Rome.  And if now it is the most