e Albano Saturday August 20^th
A ninth day at Rome.
At five this morning we began to cross the campagna
and at eight o.clock we were here eighteen miles
from Rome on the sub Apennines ^at a height of 1200 feet^ that overlook the
City. I had come here because it is the site
of the villa of Pompey and the spot where his wife
when the wife of Pompey interned the remains
of that great chief I came here to find the villa
of Pompey, and his tomb erected by his wife Cornelia)
I found have found not his villa but other villas
doubtless even more luxuriant in begotten wealth
than his; for art his improving in architecture
since his day, but the architecture of these
modern villas is cheap and Pompeys structures
here are found only in the skills taken from
them by the modern nobles of Rome to greece
their own mean ones. But the tomb of Pompey
is still here. It A great square ^square^ tower forty feet
in diameter and more than a hundred feet
high, now of rugged stone and brick exterior
but manifestly (once covered with a thick
veneering of marble, dwarfs all the other structures

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in the vicinity and challenges attention far
across the campagna below. I needed no
guide to recognize it. But it stands in the
midst of a field lovely cultivated and I n did
need permission to enter. The owner was not
found and brought with his key to the potato
patch without raising a troup of mendicants
who formed for me an escort ^in numbers^ worthy of the
Republican pilgrim who came from far
distant lands to pay homage to the ashes
of the Republican chief who nobly died in
resisting the fatal ambition of Caesar. On I
went turning pota the ripened potatoes out
of the earth with my feet until I came to
this gigantic tomb. Were the ashes still within
was ^not^ the urn there. At least was there not
a statue. What was within the sepulchral
chamber? One side was solid. I tried another.
That was solid also. I tried a third. That
had no aperture, a fourth had a door
wide enough and high enough to permit the
mourning Cornelia to enter. I entered the solemn
sepulchral chamber as she doubtlessly had
done, so often before. There was a chamber 12
feet by 8, a recess in which funeral urn

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or sculptured sarcophagus doubtless once
had stood, but alas the ashes of the mighty
dead were gone, no one knows, when or how
and the sepulchral chambers has thpr a living
tenantry, black hideous loathsome. It is a hog
stye. How in this case hath vaulting ambi-
tion overreached itself. How much better
to let the earth with its green mantle receive
and cover up deep the dust which remains
of us after death, then to preserve it only to
become the be desecrated by successors reckless
of our honor, our fame, our pride.
A ride of two or three miles up the
mountain brought us to what was once Aritia
a strong Latin town of the now
Laritia. The town is has historical importance
but on this I will not dwell. Passing through
the villa of the Duke of Caesarina I came upon
the lofty shore of the beautiful lake of Nemi
a perfectly gem not encased with a mountain
frame, and here I found the grove of the Nymph
Egeria, and I wondered not when I looked
down upon the smooth and lovely surface and
the little lake that Diana had chosen its
banks for the spot where she would be

29
worshipped of men. Certainly there is some
relation between nature and virtue, when we
see that a scene so quiet, so lovely is thought
by nations so little refined as the ancients, unfit
for the worship of power, or passion, and worthy
only to be consecrated to Purity and Truth.
I have not told you about the aconitums
which grow every where here sporadically and
shares its beauteous flowers around with perfumes
I saw to day in an open field the Agave
Americana a Mexican, the century plant, with
its stem twenty feet high and in flower; yet
it blooms entirely unnoticed as if it were
a vulgar weed. I left Aricia, without staying
there all night as Horace says he did
when on his way to Brundisium and without finding
the wines as good as he promises them. But
Aricia was a first. I am a dull practical
man. I went next to search for the site of
Alba Longa the most important town in Italy
when Rome was founded and which figures as
the scene of important events in Virgils Aeneid.
But the site is in dispute and the time allowed
me is not sufficient to excite an interest in the
question, which I leave therefore to the antiquaries
and so returning to Albano to dine and sleep

30
I close the journal of the ninth day in Rome.
I doubt not that my visit in Albano will prove as
useful to its people and to mankind as that
of any crowned head in Europe. But I have nev-
ertheless no reassurance Frer/scati August
to believe that it will be commendable as
it deserves. Here is a marble inscription on a
sl marble slab which confronts every one
who ascends the steps of the stair case in the
Hotel del Europa in Albano.
“A recordare
La Venuta in Albano
Dell a Impenatria de Tutte
le Rufle
Alegrina Vedderov
Veduia di Nicolo I
Et a una/sera dimu/ora in questo loco
Ne giorno TV e Maggio MDCCCVI
Franco O. Joqui pore Prori dau Inento
Memoria