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E had arrived at the little town of PUTEOLI, which had its name most probably from the medicinal springs which abounded in its neighbourhood. Puteoli was as much as to say "the Wells." But, alas! one cannot enter this once crowded sea-port and former haunt of pleasureseekers without feeling sad at heart it looks so forlorn, and is so entirely cut off from all connection with the world, on whose greatest highway it once sat so gaily. The few inhabitants who remain in it move through its streets like automatons. Their faces, like their lives, are mere blanks, and speak only of a dreary vacuity within. They have no books to read, no topics to discuss; for scarce even an echo of the great events of the world outside ever reaches them. In this respect they are about as far removed from the nineteenth century as their fathers were who lived in the first. The women gossip all day at the fountain. The men sleep in the street, or saunter lazily by the shore, or gather at the doors of the cafe, and pass the hours in rattling the dice or shuffling cards, in which improving occupation the priest does not disdain to take part with them. It is in this fashion that the years and centuries run round in this little town. How noiseless their passage! Silent is the shore on which the little town sits; silent the hills that watch round it; and silent the feeble tides that flow and ebb at its feet.

And yet this forlorn, wretched little town must ever be dear to the heart of the Christian. Here the footsteps of Paul have left their ineffaceable traces; and by this one event must Puteoli be content to be remembered in the ages to come. The apostle's visit has done more to invest it with an undying interest than all the renown of its ancient commerce, and than all the crowds of conquerors and tributary princes who were con

tinually passing in and out at it. It owes its place on the page of the New Testament to the presence of the humble preacher of the gospel. Here Paul spent a whole week, solacing himself in the society of the disciples after the perils of his voyage, and in prospect of the yet greater perils of his appearance before Cæsar; and here, doubtless, though it is not recorded, he preached and dispensed the Supper on the Sabbath. To the apostle this must have been a week of very varied emotion; now of joy and triumph, now of sorrow and sadness. He whose spirit was weighed down at Athens when he surveyed its numerous shrines of superstition, could contemplate with no indifferent eye the monuments of idolatry which rose on every side of him at Puteoli-the temples of the gods, the trophies of cruel war, and the haunts of vice and wickedness, which adorned, as some would have said, polluted, as Paul thought, the whole region. The crowds of pleasure-seekers, who fled from the sultry air of Rome when the dog-star began to burn, brought with them all the impieties and profligacies of the capital; and Paul knew that the region, fair as it then seemed, was a very sink of vice, more abominable and unmitigated than even Rome itself. When he thought of these things he was sad; but when he thought of the mighty power of the gospel, and the moral regeneration it was destined to work, his spirit revived, and he said, I will go forward to Rome: and if I should die there, the gospel will still live, and win triumphs, and fill the earth with righteousness, when all these monuments of superstition and wickedness shall have been swept away for ever.

Soon after Paul's visit the region was visited with judgment. The gay crowds on this shore, when holding their revels, little dreamed of what was under their feet, and of what a tempest of

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villa, said to be of sovereign virtue for the restoration of sight, and this was regarded as an emblem of those living streams which had gone forth from this spot, in former times, to give sight to the soul.

"No marvel though this place doth thus produce
For Tully's sake streams of such sovereign use;
That being through the whole world read they might
More waters yield to cure decaying sight."

Briers grow abundantly among the ruins, and sheep and goats are now pastured where the Muses had once their habitation.

A little beyond is the stony and desolate mountain Gaurus. This hill is full of caverns, which popular belief has filled with gold and precious stones, guarded, however, by hobgoblins and spirits. Some have even seen these wonderful chambers, and have returned to tell of kings seated on stately thrones in the midst of halls glowing with the carbuncle and the sapphire. Fired by these reports, many have gone thither in the hope of possessing themselves by magic of a little of this buried wealth; but only to find, to their mortification, that those who guarded this treasure were greater adepts at the Chaldean art than themselves. Others have had recourse to the more worldly expedient of digging for it with spades and pick-axes; but the coveted gold has equally eluded their grasp. Instead of a shower of precious stones and other riches, bituminous torrents have burst upon them in which they have been carried away, or poisonous vapours have been disengaged in which they have been partially or wholly suffocated. After so many ill-starred attempts, the natives have come to the determinatia to let the kings and hobgoblins possess their treasure in peace. A wise resolution, we think, in which we shall follow them and pass on.

We come next to the Lucrine Lake. It once formed the head of the bay; but, for the sake of the fish that resorted to it, it was enclosed, first by a series of winding channels, which admitted the fish but repressed the commotion of the waves, and latterly by a solid embankment of earth, the reputed labour of Hercules. Strabo mentions it, and

lake. It yielded, on a certain occasion, another kind of produce than oysters. A mountain one night shot up in its bed, and reduced it to the narrow limits we now see-a pool or lake of some three hundred paces in circuit.

Here is laid the fable of the Dolphin-if fable it be. A youth of Baiæ, the son of a poor man, went every day to school at Puteoli. But there was no bridge in those days, and the way was long on foot, and so he managed to get himself carried across on the back of a dolphin, which he had attached to him by giving it every day food from his hand. Daily at a certain hour came the dolphin to be fed, and by-and-by he offered his back to his kind almoner, and clasping him tightly between the two dorsal fins, he bore him safely across the bay. When the school dismissed, the sagacious fish waited for him duly at the hour to carry him home; and this he did day by day. Pliny has recorded the story. Appian says that he was an eyewitness; and states, moreover, that crowds of people came daily to Puteoli to see the strange sight, till at last, the thing continuing so long, it ceased to excite attention. Other writers of name have related the same story. It is hard to say why the ancients have invented so many fables about the dolphin; but were we to quote all they have written respecting the docility of this fish, its affection for man, and its willingness to serve him, the story of the dolphin of Baia would appear not so incredible after all. Similar is the story of Arion the musician, related by Herodotus and others

"Whom past belief a dolphin sets him on His crooked back; a burden erst unknown. There set, he harps and sings: with that price pays For portage, and rude seas calms with his lays." We have spoken of the mountain which so unceremoniously displaced the Lucrine Lake; or good part of it. That mountain made its appearance on the night of the 20th of September 1538, rising to the goodly altitude of 3000 feet; and it has ever since borne the name of the New Mountain. some days previous, the tremblings of the earth gave warning that something unusual was about to happen, but little did the miserable inhabitants dream what dangers impended over them, and what terrors they were doomed to witness. ` Old Sandys has well described the awful occurrence.

For

"After that the sea had retired about two hundred paces from the shore," says he, "this mountain visibly ascended, about the second hour of the night, with an hideous roaring, horribly vomiting stones and such store of cinders as overwhelmed all the buildings thereabout, and the salubrious baths of Tripergula, for so many ages celebrated; consumed the vines to ashes, killing birds and beasts; the fearful inhabitants of Putzol flying through the dark with their wives and children, without their clothes, covered with ashes, uttering shrieks and shedding tears.

Loud roarings from earth's smoking womb arise
And fill with fearful groans the darkened skies."

Passing this mountain, with which so tragic memories are associated, on the right, and going round the base of another mountain, on the left, we sight a lake or pool, reposing amid bare and blasted hills, and looking so dark and sullen that the bright sky overhead seems scarce able to enliven it. This is Lake Avernus, of which Virgil thus sings,—

O'er which no fowl unstruck with hasty death

Can stretch her strengthless wings, so dire a breathi

Mounts high heaven from black jaws. The Greeks the same Avernus call."

Certainly birds now fly over it without any such dire mishap befalling them; nor is the place at all so gloomy as the poets have painted it. We must grant a large license to Virgil, who, no doubt, felt it necessary to use dark colours when describing "the mouth of hell." But Pliny-a more accurate describer, and who himself, doubtless, had visited the lake, for we find him living in the neighbouring town of Cuma when the eruption of Vesuvius took place-describes this lake in nearly similar terms with the poet. The fact we take to be that Avernus has often changed its conditions. Anciently tall forests with matted branches stood round it; these would necessarily deepen the hue of its naturally dark waters. Then came the environing mountains to add to the gloom. Volcanic eruptions at its bottom might at times impregnate its waters with noxious vapours, and poison the atmosphere above it. If, while these were the conditions of the lake, one with the images of the poets in his mind paid it a visit, he might see in it all that they had pictured, and he would return with the belief that

he had stood at the very gates of the pit, the very threshold of Pluto's Hall. But the woods were cut down by the order of Augustus, and the air around Avernus is now sweeter and clearer; and the visitor finds no terror in the spot, save what arises from its blasted shores, and the memory of the foul rites which were often enacted here. Here infernal sacrifices were offered to Pluto, and here the Manes were supposed to give the responses. For this purpose, Homer brought hither Ulysses, and Virgil in like manner Æneas; to this spot, too, came Hannibal to sacrifice to the infernals. The following vivid picture of these horrible rites we give from the "Eneid," in the quaint Saxon of an old translation:

Four black-backed steers he ordains: on their curled skulls
The priest sheds wine from turned-up cups: then pulls
Hair from between their large hornes; and the same
Gave (a prime offering to the sacred flame,
Invoking Hecate great in heaven and hell.
Others warm streams receive in bowls that fell
From wounds. A black-fleeced lamb, Æneas to
The furies' mother and her sister slew.

A barren cow, Proserpina, to thee.

To Stygian king night altars then rears he :
Whole steers laid on, which hungry fire devours,
And fat oil on the burning entrails pours.
When, lo, about the prime of day, the ground
Groaned under foot; hills quaked, with tall trees crowned,
And dogs howled in sad shades at the approach
Of the pale goddess."

Such were the rites of heathenism. They were foul and horrible, and are felt to be so despite the fascination which the poets have attempted to throw around them. Truly it was no fiction when it was said that this place was the mouth of hell. Here verily the horrible rites of Pandemonium were enacted. Let us leave the accursed spot.

Roman tradition always follows close on the footsteps of Pagan mythology. The medieval fathers have accepted the classic dogma that this was the door of hell; and accordingly they make Avernus to be the gate by which Christ made his triumphant return from Hades, accompanied by the prophets and holy fathers, who were imprisoned in that region, but set free by Christ at his resurrection. Thus Alcadinus

"There Christ Avernus' sad gates broke in two,
And holy fathers thence victorious drew."

Proceeding along the shores of the bay, and passing an imposing ruin-the remains of the temple of Pluto according to some, of Apollo according to others; but which some who profess