CHAPTER XXXI - SANTA MARINELLA—PUNICUM

Summary

I wandered through the wrecks of days departed,

Far by the desolated shore.

Shelley.

Few roads in Italy are more frequented, and none are more generally uninteresting, than that from Civita Vecchia to Rome. He who approaches the Eternal City for the first time, has his whole soul absorbed in her—in recollections of her ancient glories, or in lively conceptions of her modern magnificence. He heeds not the objects on the road as he winds along the desert shore, or over the more desolate undulations of the Campagna, save when here and there a ruined bridge or crumbling tower, in melancholy loneliness, serves to rivet his attention more fixedly on the past. How should he? He has Coriolanus, Scipio, Cicero, Horace, and a thousand togaed phantoms before his eyes; or the dome of St. Peter's swells in his perspective, and the treasured glories of the Vatican and the Capitol are revealed to his imagination. The scattered towers along the coast, to his view are simply so many preventive stations or forts, and, with the inns by the way-side, are mere mile-stones—indices of the distance he has travelled and has yet to travel, ere he attain the desire of his eyes. And truly, as far as intrinsic beauty is concerned, it would be difficult to find in Italy a road more unattractive, more bleak, dreary, and desolate; and to one just making an acquaintance with that land of famed fertility and beauty, as so many do at Civita Vecchia, nothing can be more disappointing.