SORACTE.

CIVITA CASTELLANA.

Drawn by William Purser.

"The lone Soracte's height, displayed

Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's aid

For our remembrance, and from out the plain
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break,
And on the curl hangs pausing: not in vain
May he, who will, his recollections rake
And quote in classic raptures, and awake
The hills with Latian echoes; I abhorr'd

Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake,

The drill'd dull lesson, forced down word by word
In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned
My sickening memory; and, though Time hath taught
My mind to meditate what then it learned,
Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought

By the impatience of my early thought,

That, with the freshness wearing out before

My mind could relish what it might have sought,

If free to choose, I cannot now restore

Its health; but what it then detested, still abhor.

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so,
Not for thy faults, but mine; it is a curse
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow,
To comprehend, but never love thy verse,
Although no deeper Moralist rehearse

Our little life, nor Bard prescribe his art,
Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce,
Awakening without wounding the touched heart,
Yet fare thee well-upon Soracte's ridge we part."

Childe Harold, canto iv. st. 74-77.

ONE of the most beautiful scenes on the road to Rome from the north, is presented at Civita Castellana. All the finest materials of the picturesque are found there the town, its convents and towers-the palace, like a fortress, raised there by Pope Alexander the Sixth, now serving for a state prison-the precipices overhanging the deep and dark ravines, torn apart by some terrible convulsion-the gulf, thus formed, through which the stream of the Arrone flows-and particularly the magnificent bridge of double arcades thrown over this abyss, which presents a feature that finds its way, with the assemblage of surrounding objects, into the sketch-book of every traveller. Rich woods aid the effect of the scenery; and from the plain of the Campagna beyond rises the beautiful and insulated Mont Soracte, so finely apostrophised by Lord Byron.