Trevi, on its steep and craggy hill, detached from the chain of mountains, looked beautiful as we gazed up at it, with its buildings mingled with rocks and olives—­

I had written thus far, when we were all obliged to decamp in haste to our respective bed-rooms; as it is found necessary to convert our salon into a dormitory.  I know I shall be tired, and very tired to-morrow,—­therefore add a few words in pencil, before the impressions now fresh on my mind are obscured.

After Trevi came the Clitumnus with its little fairy temple; and we left the carriage to view it from below, and drink of the classic stream.  The temple (now a chapel) is not much in itself, and was voted in bad taste by some of our party.  To me the tiny fane, the glassy river, more pure and limpid than any fabled or famous fountain of old, the beautiful hills, the sunshine, and the associations connected with the whole scene, were enchanting; and I could not at the moment descend to architectural criticism.

The road to Spoleto was a succession of olive grounds, vineyards, and rich woods.  The vines with their skeleton boughs looked wintry and miserable; but the olives, now in full fruit and foliage, intermixed with the cypress, the ilex, the cork tree, and the pine, clothed the landscape with a many-tinted robe of verdure.

While sitting in the open carriage at Spoleto, waiting for horses, I saw one of that magnificent breed of “milk white steers,” for which the banks of the Clitumnus have been famed from all antiquity, led past me gaily decorated, to be baited on a plain without the city.  As the noble creature, serene and unresisting, paced along, followed by a wild, ferocious-looking, and far more brutal rabble, I would have given all I possessed to redeem him from his tormentors:  but it was in vain.  As we left the city, we heard his tremendous roar of agony and rage echo from the rocks.  I stopped my ears, and was glad when we were whirled out of hearing.  The impression left upon my nerves by this rencontre, makes me dislike to remember Spoleto:  yet I believe it is a beautiful and interesting place.  Hannibal, as I recollect, besieged this city, but was bravely repulsed.  I could say much more of the scenes and the feelings of to-day; but my pencil refuses to mark another letter.

* * * * *

Dec. 11th, at Civita Castellana.—­I could not write a word to-night in the salon, because I wished to listen to the conversation of two intelligent travellers, who, arriving after us, were obliged to occupy the same apartment.  Our accommodations here are indeed deplorable altogether.  After studying the geography of my bed, and finding no spot thereon, to which Sancho’s couch of pack-saddles and pummels would not be a bed of down in comparison, I ordered a fresh faggot on my hearth:  they brought me some ink in a gally-pot—­invisible ink—­for I cannot see what I am writing; and I sit down to scribble, pour me desennuyer.