which have any relation to the places and curiosities that I met with; for before I entered on my voyage, I took care to refresh my memory among the classic authors, and to make such collections out of them as I might afterwards have occasion for. I must confess, it was not one of the least entertainments that I met with in travelling, to examine these several descriptions, as it were, upon the spot, and to compare the natural face of the country with the landscapes that the poets have given us of it. However, to avoid the confusion that might arise from a multitude of quotations, I have only cited such verses as have given us some image of the place, or that have something else besides the bare name of it to recommend them.

REMARKS

ON

SEVERAL PARTS OF ITALY, ETC.

IN THE YEARS 1701, 1702, 1703.

Verum ergo id est, si quis in cœlum ascendisset, naturamque mundi et pulchritudinem siderum perspexisset, insuavem illam admirationem ei fore, quæ jucundissima fuisset, si aliquem cui narraret habuisset. CICER. de Amic.

REMARKS ON ITALY.

MONACO, GENOA, ETC.

ON the twelfth of December 1699 I set out from Marseilles to Genoa in a tartane, and arrived late at a small French port called Cassis, where the next morning we were not a little surprised to see the mountains about the town covered with green olive trees, or laid out in beautiful gardens, which gave us a great variety of pleasing prospects, even in the depth of winter. The most uncultivated of them produce abundance of sweet plants, as wild thyme, lavender, rosemary, balm, and myrtle. We were here shown, at a distance, the deserts, which have been rendered so famous by the penance of Mary Magdalene, who, after her arrival with Lazarus and Joseph of Arimathea at Marseilles, is said to have wept away the rest of her life among these solitary rocks and mountains. It is so romantic a scene, that it has always probably given occasion to such chimerical relations; for it is perhaps of this place that Claudian speaks in the following description:

Est locus, extremum quà pandit Gallia littus
Oceani prætentus aquis, ubi fertur Ulysses
Sanguine libato populum movisse silentem,
Illic umbrarum tenui stridore volantúm
Flebilis auditur questus; simulacra coloni
Pallida defunctasque vident migrare figuras, etc.
CLAUD. in Rufin. lib. i,

VOL. IV.

B