privations and miseries. The Horticultural Gardens, where the shrubs
and plants are grown that ornament the public squares and terraces of
the city, now occupy the site of the celebrated grove. The shrill
scream of the railway whistle outside the gate, and the smell of the
gas-works near at hand--these veritable things of the present
century--are fatal to all enchantments, and effectually dissipate the
spell of the muses and the mystic fragrance of the Egerian solitude.
But wonderful is the persistence of a spring in a spot. Continually
changing, it is the most changeless of all things. For ever passing
away, it is yet the most steadfast and enduring. Derived from the
fleeting vapour--the emblem of inconstancy--it outlasts the most solid
structure of man, and continues to well up its waters even when the
rock beside it has weathered into dust. The Fountain of Egeria flows
to-day in the hollow of the Coelian Hill as it flowed nigh three
thousand years ago, although the muses have fled, and the deities
Picus and Faunus, which Numa entrapped in the wood of the Aventine,
have gone back to their native skies with Jupiter; and Mammon and
Philosophy have exorcised that unseen world which once presented so
many beauties and wonders to the imagination of man.

A little farther on to the right, a side path, called the Via
Antonina, leads up to the stupendous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla,
a mile in circumference, and covering a space of 2,625,000 square
yards. The walls, arches, and domes of massive brickwork hanging up in
the sky,--the fragments of sculpture and splendid mosaic pavements
belonging to these baths,--produced a deeper impression upon my mind
than even the ruins of the Colosseum. With the form and majesty of the
Colosseum, owing to its compactness and unity, pictures and other
representations have made us familiar from infancy, so that it excites
no surprise when we actually visit it; but the Baths of Caracalla