in all its decaying magnificence, ever inspired me with such profound emotions as did those nameless, shapeless vestiges of the dwellings of man, starting up like memorial tombs in the midst of this savage but luxuriant wilderness.  Of the beautiful cities which rose along this lovely coast, the colonies of elegant and polished Greece—­one after another swallowed up by the “insatiate maw” of ancient Rome, nothing remains—­their sites, their very names have passed away and perished.  We might as well hunt after a forgotten dream.

    Vain was the chief’s, the sage’s pride,
    They had no POET, and they died! 
    In vain they toil’d, in vain they bled,
    They had no POET—­and are dead.

I write this a Gaeta—­a name famous in the poetical, the classical, the military story of Italy, from the day of AEneas, from whom it received its appellation, down to the annals of the late war.  On the site of our inn, (the Albergo di Cicerone,) stood Cicero’s Formian Villa; and in an adjoining grove he was murdered in his litter by the satellites of the Triumviri, as he attempted to escape.  I stood to-night on a little terrace, which hung over an orange grove, and enjoyed a scene which I would paint, if words were forms, and hues, and sounds—­not else.  A beautiful bay, enclosed by the Mola di Gaeta, on one side, and the Promontory of Misenum on the other:  the sky studded with stars and reflected in a sea as blue as itself—­and so glassy and unruffled, it seemed to slumber in the moonlight:  now and then the murmur of a wave, not hoarsely breaking on rock and shingles, but kissing the turfy shore, where oranges and myrtles grew down to the water edge.  These, and the remembrances connected with all, and a mind to think, and a heart to feel, and thoughts both of pain and pleasure mingling to render the effect more deep and touching.—­Why should I write this?  O surely I need not fear that I shall forget!

LINES WRITTEN AT MOLA DI GAETA, NEAR THE RUINS OF CICERO’S FORMIAN VILLA.

    We wandered through bright climes, and drank the beams
    Of southern suns:  Elysian scenes we view’d,
    Such as we picture oft in those day dreams
    That haunt the fancy in her wildest mood. 
    Upon the sea-heat vestiges we stood,
    Where Cicero dwelt, and watch’d the latest gleams
    Of rosy light steal o’er the azure flood: 
    And memory conjur’d up most glowing themes,
    Filling the expanded heart, till it forgot
    Its own peculiar grief!—­O! if the dead
    Yet haunt our earth, around this hallow’d spot,
    Hovers sweet Tully’s spirit, since it fled
    The Roman Forum—­Forum now no more! 
    Though cold and silent be the sands we tread,
    Still burns the “eloquent air,” and to the shore
    There rolls no wave, and through the orange shade
    There sighs no breath, which doth not speak of him,
    THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY: