TIVOLI.

Parvum parva decent.

Mihi jam non regia Roma

Sed vacuum Tibur placet.

HORACE.

TIVOLI, the Richmond of Rome, is situated about eighteen miles distant from that city. It is the Tibur of the ancients, and was considered, from the number of villas by which the road to it was lined, as a sort of suburb of Rome. Those edifices have now disappeared, and the road lies through pasture lands, occasionally exhibiting the ruins of the aqueducts which formerly conveyed the waters of the Anio to the city. It also displayed, some years since, the unsightly spectacle of the limbs of mangled malefactors who had been executed for the numerous robberies committed in the neighbourhood of Tivoli, which was long remarkable for such outrages. Before arriving at Tivoli the traveller twice crosses the Teverone or Anio over the two bridges, the Ponte Mamolo and the Ponte Lucano. Near the latter stands the circular monument of the Plautia family, a structure resembling in plan the Moles Hadriani. It is a picturesque object, and has been frequently represented by landscape painters.

The town of Tivoli is situated upon a mountain, forming part of the range of the Apennines. The rocks of which this mountain is partially composed owe their origin to the calcareous deposit of the waters of the

Teverone, which, in situations exposed to their influence, leave an annual incrustation of about half an inch. The impression of a cart-wheel is shown in the rock, formed by the incrustation of the deposit round the wheel. This substance is precisely similar to the Travertine or Tiburtine stone, quarries of which are worked in this neighbourhood, and of which the most magnificent edifices of ancient and modern Rome, the Colosseum, and St. Peter's are built. In a block of this stone an iron crow was discovered, left in all probability by some Roman quarry-slave, and in process of time encrusted by the waters of the Teverone.

The most remarkable objects near Tivoli are the Temple of the Sibyl, the Cascades, and the Grotto of Neptune. Many curious remains of antiquity are also found in its neighbourhood, amongst which are the celebrated villa of Hadrian and the Sabine farm of Horace.

Upon a rocky eminence, opposite to the cascades, is situated the Temple of the Sibyl. Such is the traditional name by which these beautiful ruins have been long distinguished. Some antiquarians, however, have been of opinion that Vesta was the goddess to whom the edifice was dedicated, and have given the name of the Temple of the Sibyl to some inconsiderable ruins in the neighbourhood. There appear, however, to be no very cogent reasons for rejecting the name which tradition (no uncertain guide in such difficulties) has assigned to the circular temple. The only inscription on the ruins are the letters L. GELLIO L. F., from which it has been conjectured that the temple was at some period restored by L. Gellius. The architecture has been referred to

the age of Augustus. Only ten of the eighteen Corinthian columns which formerly encircled the cella now remain. The late Lord Bristol having purchased this beautiful relic from the keeper of the adjoining inn, upon whose ground it stood, had formed the design of transporting it to England, and was actually proceeding to take it to pieces, when his sacrilegious attempt was frustrated by the Roman government, who prohibited its removal.

From the temple of the Sibyl, a path, constructed some years ago by the orders of General Miollis, and presenting in the course of it a variety of beautiful prospects, leads to the celebrated grotto of Neptune, a cave formed by the action of the waters dashing against the rocks. The falls, which add so much beauty to this scene, are formed by the waters of the Anio, which, being confined between two hills as it approaches Tivoli, is driven with augmented velocity over the rocks which it there encounters. Numberless beautiful cascades are formed by the division of the river into various streams, which refresh the orchards and gardens through which they are led. The contrast between the sparkling and brilliant volumes of water which rush to the cave, and the dark and solemn air of the cavern itself which receives them, render the view from the grotto of Neptune one of the most beautiful and singular that Italy affords. Lower down the falling waters are viewed from another cavern called the Syren's Cave, where they present another magnificent picture.

The falls of Tivoli have been described by Gray in a letter to his friend West :-"It is the most noble sight in

the world. The weight of that quantity of waters, and the force they fall with, have worn the rocks they throw themselves among into a thousand irregular crags and to a vast depth. In this channel it goes boiling along with a mighty noise till it comes to another steep, where you see it a second time come roaring down (but first you must walk two miles farther) a greater height than before, but not with that quantity of waters; for by this time it has divided itself, being crossed and opposed by the rocks, into four several streams, each of which, in emulation of the great one, will tumble down too; and it does tumble down, but not from an equally elevated place; so that you have at one view these cascades, intermixed with groves of olive and little woods, the mountains rising behind them, and on the top of one (that which forms the extremity of one of the half circle's horns) is seated the town itself. At the very extremity of that extremity, on the brink of the precipice, stands the Sibyl's temple, the remains of a little rotunda, surrounded with its portico, above half of whose Corinthian pillars are still standing and entire. All this on one hand; on the other, the open Campagna of Rome; here and there a little castle on a hillock, and the city itself, on the very brink of the horizon, indistinctly seen (being eighteen miles off), except the dome of St. Peter's, which, if you look out of your window, wherever I suppose you can see." "The Hill of Tivoli," you are, says Mr. Forsyth, "is all over picture. The town, the villas, the ruins, the rocks, the cascades in the foreground; the Sabine hills, the three Monticelli, Soracte, Frascati, the Campagna, and Rome in the distance: