FOLLOWING THE TIBER.

CONCLUDING PAPER.

[Illustration: TEMPLE OF THE CLITUMNUS.]


One branch of the little river which encompasses Assisi is the
Clitumnus, the delight of philosophers and poets in the Augustan age.
Near its source stands a beautiful little temple to the divinity of the
stream. Although the ancients resorted hither for the loveliness of the
spot, they did not bathe in the springs, a gentle superstition holding
it sacrilege for the human body to lave itself in a stream near its
source.

[Illustration: THE FALLS OF TERNI.]

They came by the Via Flaminia, the old high-road from Rome to Florence,
which crosses the modern railroad hard by. Following its course, which
takes a more direct line than the devious Tiber, past Spoleto on its
woody castellated height, the traveler reaches Terni on the tumultuous
Nar, the wildest and most rebellious of all the tributaries. It was to
save the surrounding country from its outbreaks that the channel was
made by the Romans B.C. 271, the first of several experiments which
resulted in these cascades, which have been more sung and oftener
painted than any other in the world. The beauty of Terni is so hackneyed
that enthusiasm over it becomes cockney, yet the beauty of hackneyed
things is as eternal as the verity of truisms, and no more loses its
charm than the other its point. But one must not talk about it. The
foaming torrent rages along between its rocky walls until spanned by the