epithet I had given him!  The identity of this spot (like all other places here) has been vehemently disputed.  At every step to-day we encountered doubt, and contradiction, and cavilling:  authorities are marshalled against each other in puzzling array, and the modern unwillingness to be cheated by fine sounds and great names has become a general scepticism.  I have no objection to the “shadows, doubts, and darkness” which rest upon all around us; it rather pleases my fancy thus to “dream over the map of things,” abandoned to my own cogitations and my own conclusions; but then there are certain points upon which it is very disagreeable to have one’s faith disturbed; and the Fountain of Egeria is one of these.  So leaving the more learned antiquarians to fight it out, secundum artem, and fire each other’s wigs if they will, I am determined, and do steadfastly believe, that the Fountain of Egeria I saw to-day is the very identical and original Fountain of Egeria—­of Numa’s Egeria—­and therefore it is so.

The tomb of the Scipios is a dirty dark wine cellar:  all the urns, the fine sarcophagus, and the original tablets and inscriptions have been removed to the Vatican.  I thought to-day while I stood in the sepulchre, and on the very spot whence the sarcophagus of Publius was removed, if Scipio, or Augustus, or Adrian, could return to this world, how would their Roman pride endure to see their last resting-places, the towers and the pyramids in which they fortified themselves, thus violated and put to ignoble uses, and the urns which contained their ashes stuck up as ornaments in a painted room, where barbarian visitors lounge away their hours, and stare upon their relics with scornful indifference or idle curiosity!

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The people here, even the lowest and meanest among them seem to have imbibed a profound respect for antiquity and antiquities, which sometimes produces a comic effect.  I am often amused by the exultation with which they point out a bit of old stone, or piece of brick wall, or shapeless fragment of some nameless statue, and tell you it is antico, molto, antico, and the half contemptuous tone in which they praise the most beautiful modern production, e moderna—­ma pure non e cativa!

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18.—­We had an opportunity of witnessing to-day one of the most splendid ceremonies of the Catholic church.  It is one of the four festivals at which the Pope performs mass in state at the Vatican, the anniversary of St. Peter’s entrance into Rome, and of his taking possession of the Papal chair; for here St. Peter is reckoned the first Pope.  To see the high priest of an ancient and wide-spread superstition publicly officiate in his sacred character, in the grandest temple in the universe, and surrounded by all the trappings of his spiritual and temporal authority, was an exhibition to make sad a reflecting