Tales and Stories : Large Print

IT was to see this beautiful lake that I made my last excursion before quitting Rome.

The spring hadnearly grown into summer, the trees were all in full but fresh green foliage, the vine-dresser wassinging, perched among them, training his vines: the cicada had not yet begun her song, the heatstherefore had not commenced; but at evening the fire-flies gleamed among the hills, and the cooingaziola assured us of what in that country needs no assurance-fine weather for the morrow.

We setout early in the morning to avoid the heats, breakfasted at Albano, and till ten o'clock passed ourtime in visiting the Mosaic, the villa of Cicero, and other curiosities of the place.

We reposed duringthe middle of the day in a tent elevated for us at the hill-top, whence we looked on the hillembosomed lake, and the distant eminence crowned by a town with its church.

Other villages andcottages were scattered among the foldings of mountains, and beyond we saw the deep blue sea ofthe southern poets, which received the swift and immortal Tiber, rocking it to repose among itsdevouring waves.

The Coliseum falls and the Pantheon decays,-the very hills of Rome areperishing,-but the Tiber lives for ever, flows for ever, and for ever feeds the land-encircledMediterranean with fresh waters...