Roma.' To one 'lasso maris et viarum,' like Horace, these words brought the first promise of approaching rest. A few more miles of weary hills, every one of which, from its summit, gave a more swelling and majestic outline to what so far constituted 'Roma,' that is, the great cupola, not of the church, but of the city, its only discernible part, cutting, like a huge peak, into the dear winter sky, and the long journey was ended, and ended by the full realization of well-cherished hopes."

Most travellers, perhaps, in the old days came by sea from Marseilles and arrived from Civita Vecchia, by the dreary road which leads through Palo, and near the base of the hills upon which stands Cervetri, the ancient Cære, from the junction of whose name and customs the word "ceremony" has arisen,—so especially useful in the great neighbouring city. "This road from Civita Vecchia," writes Miss Edwards, the talented authoress of 'Barbara's History,' "lies among shapeless hillocks, shaggy with bush and briar. Far away on one side gleams a line of soft blue sea—on the other lie mountains as blue, but not more distant. Not a sound stirs the stagnant air. Not a tree, not a housetop, breaks the wide monotony. The dust lies beneath the wheels like a carpet, and follows like a cloud. The grass is yellow, the weeds are parched; and where there have been wayside pools, the ground is cracked and dry. Now we pass a crumbling fragment of something that may have been a tomb or temple, centuries ago. Now we come upon a little wide-eyed peasant boy, keeping goats among the ruins, like Giotto of old. Presently a buffalo lifts his black mane above the neighbouring hillock, and rushes away before we can do more than point to the spot on which we saw it. Thus the day attains its noon, and the sun hangs overhead like a brazen shield, brilliant, but cold. Thus, too, we reach the brow of a long and steep ascent, where our driver pulls up to rest his weary beasts. The sea has now faded almost out of sight; the mountains look larger and nearer, with streaks of snow upon their summits, the Campagna reaches on and on and shows no sign of limit or of verdure,—while, in the midst of the clear air, half way, so it would seem, between you and the purple Sabine range, rises one solemn solitary dome. Can it be the dome of St. Peter's?"

The great feature of the Civita Vecchia route was that after all the utter desolation and dreariness of many miles of the least interesting part of the Campagna, the traveller was almost stunned by the transition, when on suddenly passing the Porta Cavalleggieri, he found himself in the Piazza, of St. Peter's, with its wide-spreading colonnades, and high-springing fountains; indeed the first building he saw was St. Peter's, the first house that of the Pope, the palace of the Vatican. But the more gradual approach by land from Viterbo and Tuscany possessed equal if not superior interest.

"When we turned the summit above Viterbo," wrote Dr. Arnold, "and opened on the view on the other side, it might be called the first approach to Rome. At the distance of more than forty miles, it was of course impossible to see the town, and besides the distance was hazy; but we were looking on the scene of the Roman history; we were standing on the outward edge of the frame of the great picture, and though the features of it were not to be traced distinctly, yet we had the consciousness that they were before us. Here, too, we first saw the Mediterranean, the Alban hills, I think, in the remote distance, and just beneath us, on the left, Soracte, an outlier of the Apennines, which has got to the right bank of the Tiber, and stands out by itself most magnificently. Close under us in front, was the Ciminian lake, the crater of an extinct volcano, surrounded as they all are, with their basin of wooded hills, and lying like a beautiful mirror stretched out before us. Then there was the grand beauty of Italian scenery, the depth of the valleys, the endless variety of the mountain outline, and the towns perched upon the mountain summits, and this now seen under a mottled sky, which threw an ever-varying light and shadow over the valley beneath, and all the freshness of the young spring. We descended along one of the rims of this lake to Ronciglione, and from thence, still descending on the whole, to Monterosi. Here the famous Campagna begins, and it certainly is one of the most striking tracts of country I ever beheld. It is by no means a perfect flat, except between Rome and the sea; but rather like the Bagshot Heath country, ridges of hills with intermediate valleys, and the road often running between high steep banks, and sometimes crossing sluggish streams sunk in a deep bed. All these banks are overgrown with broom, now in full flower; and the same plant was luxuriant everywhere. There seemed no apparent reason why the country should be so desolate; the grass was growing richly everywhere. There was no marsh anywhere visible, but all looked as fresh and healthy as any of our chalk downs in England. But it is a wide wilderness; no villages, scarcely any houses, and here and there a lonely ruin of a single square tower, which I suppose used to serve as strongholds for men and cattle in the plundering warfare in the middle ages. It was after crowning the top of one of these lines of hills, a little on the Roman side of Baccano, at five minutes after six, according to my watch, that we had the first view of Rome itself. I expected to see St. Peter's rising above the line of the horizon, as York Minster does, but instead of that, it was within the horizon, and so was much less conspicuous, and from the nature of the ground, it looked mean and stumpy. Nothing else marked the site of the city, but the trees of the gardens and a number of white villas specking the opposite bank of the Tiber for some little distance above the town, and then suddenly ceasing. But the whole scene that burst upon our view, when taken in all its parts, was most interesting. Full in front rose the Alban hills, the white villas on their sides distinctly visible, even at that distance, which was more than thirty miles. On the left were the Apennines, and Tivoli was distinctly to be seen on the summit of its mountain, on one of the lowest and nearest parts of the chain. On the right and all before us lay the Campagna, whose perfectly level outline was succeeded by that of the sea, which was scarcely more so. It began now to get dark, and as there is hardly any twilight, it was dark soon after we left La Storta, the last post before you enter Rome. The air blew fresh and cool, and we had a pleasant drive over the remaining part of the Campagna, till we descended into the valley of the Tiber, and crossed it by the Milvian bridge. About two miles further on we reached the walls of Rome, and entered it by the Porta del Popolo."

Niebuhr coming the same way says:—"It was with solemn feelings that this morning from the barren heights of the moory Campagna, I first caught sight of the cupola of St. Peter's, and then of the city from the bridge, where all the majesty of her buildings and her history seems to lie spread out before the eye of the stranger; and afterwards entered by the Porta del Popolo."

Madame de Staël gives us the impression which the same subject would produce on a different type of character:—

"Le comte d'Erfeuil faisait de comiques lamentations sur les environs de Rome. Quoi, disait-il, point de maison de campagne, point de voiture, rien qui annonce le voisinage d'une grande ville! Ah! bon Dieu, quelle tristesse! En approchant de Rome, les postillons s'écrièrent avec transport: Voyez, voyez, c'est la coupole de Saint-Pierre! Les Napolitains montrent aussi le Vésuve; et la mer fait de même l'orgueil des habitans des côtes. On croirait voir le dôme des Invalides, s'écria le comte d'Erfeuil."

It was by this approach that most of its distinguished pilgrims have entered the capital of the Catholic world: