where near the Porta Capena was a spot in which it was supposed Numa held nightly consultations with the nymph*, and where there was a grove and a sacred fountain, and fanes once consecrated to the Muses; and that from this spot there was a descent into the valley of Egeria, where were several artificial cavest. It is clear that the statues of the Muses made no part of the decoration which the satirist thought misplaced in these caves; for he expressly assigns other fanes (delubra) to these divinities above the valley, and moreover tells us that they had been ejected to make room for the Jews. It is probable that the cave now shewn may be one of these artificial caverns, of which, indeed, there is another a little higher up the valley, under a tuft of alder bushes: but a single grotto of Egeria is a mere modern invention, grafted upon the application of the epithet Egerian to * Lucus erat, says Livy, quem medium ex opaco specu fons perenni rigabat aquâ, quò quia se persæpe Numa sine arbitris, velut ad congressum deæ, inferebat, Camoenis eum lucum sacravit; quòd earum ibi consilia cum conjuge suâ Egeriâ essent.—I. 21. + Substitit ad veteres arcus, madidamque Capenam; Hic ubi nocturnæ Numa constituebat amicæ. Nunc sacri fontis nemus, et delubra locantur Judæis, quorum cophinus foenumque supellex. Omnis enim populo mercedem pendere jussa est Arbor, et ejectis mendicat silva Camoenis. In vallem Egeriæ descendimus, et speluncas Dissimiles veris. Quanto præstantius esset Numen aquæ, viridi si margine clauderet undas Herba, nec ingenuum violarent marmora tophum.-Sut. iii. 10. these nymphæa in general*. Our English Juvenal care fully preserves the plural of the original +: In vallem Egeriæ descendimus, et speluncas Dissimiles veris.-SAT. iii. 17. Thence down the vale we slowly wind, and view The Egerian grots-oh, how unlike the true!-Gifford. The fountain which now goes by the name of Egeria, whether correctly named or not, is, as Mathews observes, "a pretty fountain in a pretty valley; and if really that of which Juvenal speaks, time has realized his wish, and the water is now again inclosed-viridi margine—with 'a border of living green;' and the only marble that now profanes the native stone is a headless statue-but not of the nymph Egeria; for it is evidently of the male sex." The valley abounds with springs, and over these springs, which the Muses might haunt from their neighbouring groves, Egeria presided: hence she was said to supply them with water; and she was the nymph of the grottos through which the fountains were taught to flow: Egeria est quæ præbet aquas, Dea grata Camoenis.-Ovid. Fast. iii. See Notes to the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold. WORKS OF THE EMPIRE. Oblectat me, Roma, tuas spectare ruinas, Ex cujus lapsu gloria prisca patet.-PICCOLOMINI. "AMONG the remains of old Rome," says Addison," the grandeur of the commonwealth shews itself chiefly in works that were either necessary or convenient, such as temples, highways, aqueducts, walls, and bridges of the city. On the contrary, the magnificence of Rome under the emperors, was rather for ostentation or luxury, than any real usefulness or necessity, as in baths, amphitheatres, circuses, obelisks, triumphant pillars, arches, and mausoleums; for what they added to the aqueducts was rather to supply their baths and naumachias, and to embellish the city with fountains, than out of any real necessity there was for them." Architecture was thus made to exhaust all her powers on palaces, triumphal arches, historical columns, and tombs. The Imperial Palace took root in the modest mansion of Hortensius. Suetonius tells us that Augustus "lived at first near the Roman Forum, in a house which had belonged to Calvus the orator; and subsequently on the Palatine Hill, but still in an unpretending house of Hortensius's, remarkable neither for extent nor ornament: its short porticos consisted of pillars of Alban stone, and the rooms had neither marble nor ornamental pavement to boast of. He continued to occupy the same bed chamber, winter and summer, for more than forty years." —(Vit. Aug. c. 72). It was burnt down during the reign of Augustus, by whom also it was rebuilt. Some additions were afterwards made to it by Tiberius; and Caligula carried it on as far as the Forum, by means of a bridge. The temple of Castor and Pollux was now converted into a sort of vestibule to the palace, and porticos of great extent were annexed to it. This structure, too, was destroyed by fire, and its magnificence was afterwards completely eclipsed by Nero's Golden House, which occupied the whole of the Palatine, and extended as far as the Esquiline Hill, covering all the intermediate space where the Coliseum now stands. When it was finished, the emperor is said to have exclaimed, "that now at last he had begun to live like a man!"-(Suet. Vit. Ner. c. 31). Thus, from Augustus to Nero is the period of its increase; from Nero down to Valentinian III. its history is but a succession of fires, devastations, and repairs. In one quarter of these ruins are three chambers, discovered towards the close of the last century. In these chambers—which, being on the ground floor, and therefore less exposed to casualties than the upper stories, may perhaps be the work of the Julian family—we have a favourable specimen of the taste of the old Romans in the construction and proportion of their apartments. Like the Pantheon, they appear, in this instance, to have received light from above; and, instead of resembling the formal square and oblong of modern times, they are bent on each of the four sides into a circular recess or bow-a flowing outline which produces a far more pleasing effect than the stiff straight-sided parallelogram. That accumulation of soil which we have more than once had occasion to notice as existing in other quarters of the city is also observable here; for these chambers, though they must have been originally on the surface, are now thirty feet below it. Such is the present chaos of broken walls and arcades, that any attempt to retrace the general design of the palace, as it existed in any one reign, must of course be merely conjectural. Notwithstanding the efforts of Bianchini and other antiquaries, we come at last to the conclusion, that, upon this subject, nothing certain can now be known: Cypress and ivy, weed and wall-flower grown On what were chambers, arch crushed, column strown In subterranean damps: . Temples, baths, or halls? Pronounce who can; for all that Learning reaped From her research, hath been-that these are walls.— Behold the Imperial Mount! 'tis thus the mighty falls!-BYRON. This complete demolition of the Imperial palace was the joint work of foreign and domestic plunderers. The Goths sacked it in the beginning of the fifth century, and Genseric in less than fifty years afterwards: the troops of Belisarius, as well as those of Totila, were quartered in it; nor is there, says Hobhouse, " any certain trace of the palace of the Cæsars having survived |