terized as more learned in its story, and less obvious in its composition. In Guercino's work we see the goddess in her car, and the shades of night seem as if vanishing at her approach. Tithon, whose couch she has just quitted" Tithoni croceum linquens Aurora cubile"❞— is represented as only half awake; while the Morning Star*, under the semblance of a winged Genius, bearing a torch, is observed following her course. In another compartment is a personification of Night, in the character of an aged female, poring over a book. gloomy abode is just illumined by the first rays of light, and her companions, the owl and bat, are seen shrinking from its unwelcome intrusion. The Hours, which, in Guido's performance, surround the car of Phœbus, decked out in gay and flowing drapery-" pictis incinctæ vestibus Hora"-are here represented as infants, fluttering Her * Stella Veneris, quæ Phosphorus græcè, Lucifer latinè dicitur, cum antegreditur solem; cum subsequitur autem, Hesperus.—(Cic. de Nat. Deor.) "When considered as a planet," says Spence, "it is directed by Venus, in her chariot drawn by doves. But when it is considered as the morning or evening-star, it is directed by a boy or a young man; who is sometimes called Lucifer, under both those characters; but more generally Lucifer for the former, and Hesperus for the latter. Where I have seen him, he is always represented as a youth; either before the chariot of the sun, with a torch, as Lucifer; or before the chariot of the moon, without a torch, as Hesperus." In the latter character the poets give him a black horse, in the former, a white one: Hesperus et fusco roscidus ibat equo.—Ovid. Fast. ii. 312. Clarus equo. Ovid. Met. xv. 190. before the goddess, and extinguishing the stars-a whimsical idea, borrowed perhaps from Statius, who, in like manner, represents Aurora as chasing the stars before her with her whip-" moto leviter fugat astra flagello." In thus allegorizing nature, it has been justly observed, that Guercino imitates the deep shades of night, the twilight grey, and the irradiations of morning, with all the magic of chiaroscuro; but it is objected that his figures are too mortal for the region where they move. The work, however, is an admirable one, and, but for Guido's exquisite performance, we could hardly have conceived any thing superior to the Aurora of Guercino. TIVOLI. Itur ad Herculei gelidas quà Tiburis arces Canaque sulphureis Albula fumat aquis.-MART. On their way from Rome to Tivoli, travellers usually stop to visit two natural curiosities at a little distance from the road-the one called the Lago de' Tartari from its petrifying properties—the other, Albunea or Aquæ Albulæ―a deep pool of bluish sulphureous water, emitting a very offensive smell. This latter pool-whose redundant waters are conveyed into the Anio by a narrow canal, called Solfatara—is famed for its floating islands, which, after all, are nothing more than small masses of reeds and other substances matted together in a bituminous turf, and carried to and fro by the wind, like those of the Vadimon lake, of which Pliny has given such a minute account.-(Ep. viii. 20.) The same bituminous masses that form these little islands gradually add to the solid concretions on the margin of the lake; so that but a small portion of it is now visible, and probably, in the course of time, the whole remaining surface will be hidden. The ground, for a considerable distance, sounds hollow under foot; which seems to shew that we are treading only on the crust that covers the lake; and this, it is conjectured, may be all that is meant by the "domus Albuneæ resonantis," the phrase applied to it by Horace. The sulphureous exhalations of the lake, the celebrity of the temple of Faunus, and the singular mode of consulting the oracle, are all noticed by Virgil.-(Æn. vii. 87). But the sacred groves and the temple of Faunus exist only in poetry. Agrippa's baths, too, have disappeared, and Virgil's lofty Albunea, if the same as Horace's, is now a flat. The dreary and monotonous plains of the Campagna form an excellent preparative for the varied scenery of For twenty miles you traverse this desolate Tivoli. region Groves, temples, palaces, Swept from the sight; and nothing visible, you ascend the olive-clad hill of Tivoli-you enter its narrow street, and meet nothing but filth, beggary, and wretchedness-you proceed but a few steps further, and the loveliest scenes imaginable open on your view;— romantic precipices-a headlong torrent, thundering among rocks shaded by pensile foliage-cliffs crowned with picturesque ruins-in a word, the combined charms of hill and dale, wood and water. "Dame Nature," says Gray, in his lively description of this charming spot, "desired me to put in a list of her little goods and chattels, and, as they were small, to be very minute about them. She has built here three or four little mountains, and laid them out in an irregular semicircle; from certain others behind, at a greater distance, she has drawn a canal, into which she has put a little river of hers, called Anio; she has cut a huge cleft between the two innermost of her four hills, and there she has left it to its own disposal; which she has no sooner done, but like a heedless chit, it tumbles headlong down a declivity fifty feet perpendicular, breaks itself all to shatters, and is converted into a shower of rain, where the sun forms many a bow, red, green, blue and yellow. To get out of our metaphors without any further trouble, 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 further — 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 all the 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 rotonda, surrounded with its portico, above half of whose beautiful Corinthian pillars are standing and en |