low, until we had crossed the ridges on either side the Cremera, and
gained the valley at the head of which is Isola Farnese, the
rock-fortress supposed to occupy the site of the citadel of Etruscan
Veii. It is not really an island, in spite of its name; only a bold
peninsula, round whose base two rivulets flow and nearly meet. It is
called a village, and so it is, with quite a population, but the great
courtyard of the fifteenth-century castle contains them all, and the
huts, pig-pens, kennels and coops which they seem to inhabit
indiscriminately. Except where the bluff overlooks the valley,
everything is closed and shut in by rocks and gorges, through one of
which a lovely waterfall drips from a covert of boughs and shrubbery and
wreathing ferns and creepers into a little stream, which with musical
clamor rushes at a picturesque old mill: through another the road from
the castle passes through a narrow issue to the outer world. And this
stranded and shipwrecked fortress in the midst of so wild a scene is all
that exists to mark where Veii stood, the powerful city which kept Rome
at bay for ten years, and fell at length by stratagem! Its site was
forgotten for nearly two thousand years, but in this century the
discovery of some tombs revealed the secret.

[Illustration: VEII, FROM THE CAMPAGNA.]

[Illustration: TIVOLI.]

The scenery differs entirely on different sides of Rome. Here there is
not a ruin, not a vestige, except a few low heaps of stone-or brickwork
hidden by weeds: on the other, toward Tivoli, much of the beauty is due
to the work of man--the stately remnants of ancient aqueduct, temple and
tomb; the tall square towers of feudal barons, round which cluster low
farm-buildings scarcely less old and solid; the vast, gloomy grottoes of