Cerbara, which look like the underground palace of a bygone race, but
which are the tufa-quarries of classic times; the ruined baths of
Zenobia, where the rushing milky waters of the Aquæ Albulæ fill the air
with sulphurous fumes; and, as a climax, the Villa of Hadrian, less a
country-place than a whole region, a town-in-country, with palace,
temples, circus, theatres, baths amidst a tract of garden and
pleasure-ground ten miles in circumference. Even when one is familiar
with the enormous height and bulk of the Coliseum or the Baths of
Caracalla, the extent of the ruins of Hadrian's Villa is overwhelming.
Numerous fragments are still standing, graceful and elegant, but a vast
many more are buried deep under turf and violets and fern: large
cypresses and ilexes have struck root among their stones, and they form
artificial hills and vales and great wide plateaus covered with herbage
and shrubbery, hardly to be distinguished from the natural accidents of
the land. The solitude is as immense as the space. After leaving our
carriage we wandered about for hours, sometimes lying in the sunshine at
the edge of a great grassy terrace which commands the Campagna and the
Agro Romano--beyond whose limits we had come--to where, like a little
bell, St. Peter's dome hung faint and blue upon the horizon; sometimes
exploring the innumerable porticoes and galleries, and replacing in
fancy the Venus de Medici, the Dancing Faun, and all the other shapes of
beauty which once occupied these ravished pedestals and niches;
sometimes rambling about the flowery fields, and up and down among the
hillocks and dells, meeting no one, until at length, when completely
bewildered and lost, we fell in with a rustic belonging to the estate,
who guided us back. We left the place with the sense of having been in a
separate realm, another country, belonging to another age. The whole of
that visit to Tivoli was like a dream. The sun was sinking when we left
the precincts of the villa, and twilight stole upon us, wrapping all the
landscape on which we looked back in softer folds of shade, and