has placed its port at the mouth of the Selo Morto, having found ruins of walls under its waters near the sea; determining too, with more precision, that it was the ancient course of the neighbouring river. Similar vestiges, however, may be seen under water, immediately off shore, where the city comes nearest to the sea.

Pæstum is of an irregular figure, in circuit perhaps about two miles and a half; the walls remain all round, from ten to fifteen and twenty feet high, with the fallen parts forming a mound on either side; the eastern gateway stands-inere jambs and a semicircular arch connecting them; some of the watch-towers exist, more or less destroyed, and, with the walls, form picturesque and beautiful masses. The city had four principal gates corresponding with one another, so that it was probably intersected by two right-lined streets connecting them: here and there are smaller gates, most likely to facilitate communication, as we cannot now learn if passports were used by the ancient inhabitants. The ruined monuments, which give its real interest to Paestum, stand in the heart of the city, with their western fronts, nearly in a right line, looking upon the imaginary street between the northern and southern gates, and about thirty or forty paces from it. They are called by the country people, "I Seggi di Pesto."

The history of Paestum is wrapped in obscurity. Many of the ancient writers have mentioned it, and several moderns have endeavoured to collocate the facts given by them, of which the following is a summary:

This ancient city had various names: it was called Posidonia, Pæstum, and Neptunia; at times, indeed, Lucania, the name of the whole region, was given to it; Posidonia and Pæstum, however, are the only names found on its coins. According to the opinion of Mazzocchi, the name Pæstum comes from the Hebrew word Pistah, or from the Chaldean Pistan, which both signify flax, of which great quantities were there cultivated. The same author gives also this more probable etymology: The origin of Pæstum is more certainly from the Phoenician word Pesitan, that is, Neptune." _Matthew Bamonte, the brother of the Canon, derives the name Pæstum (Pæste) by antiphrasis; lucus a non lucendo! The name Posidonia is from the Greek nou (Neptune); and from Neptunus, Neptunia.

The origin of Pæstum and its foundation is lost in the night of antiquity and the obscurity of fable. The Sirens, in figure beautiful women to the groin, and thence finishing as fish or dragons* (as may be seen by the lasso relievo on the eastern portal) are renowned in the Greek and Latin poets :this fable was either invented at Pæstum, or at least was soon known there. The first historical notice of Paestum we have from Herodotus, the father of history, who lived four hundred and forty years before Christ. He tells us that in the first expedition of the Greek Phoceans, they came into this country and founded Velia, and that they availed themselves of the services of a Pastan architect;-"Phocenses primi Græcorum longis navigationibus usi sunt;" and a little after," Civitatem possiderunt in agro notriæ, quæ nunc appellatur Hiela: eam autem condiderunt a viro Posidonite edocti.t" (Lib. 1. cap. 163 and 167.) which happened about the time of the Trojan war, and that was one thousand one hundred and eighty years before the Christian era; so that in those very remote times Pæstum existed, and was in such a flourishing condition, that it could give an instructor, an architect, for the foundation of Velia.t From the quoted passage of Herodotus, it is clear that Pæstum existed when the first Greeks came into Italy; and it may be established as a fact, that it was not founded by the Greeks, but by the Etruscans or others, the first inhabitants of the country.

Strabo says, that there was at Port Alburnus, a temple to Juno Argiva, built

The Padre Paoli says fowl:-" In forma di donna fino al ventre che terminavano poi in figura di galline." I rather incline, however, to fish, because of the basso relievo which I found, as well as of that on the gate.

+ Pæstanæ Dissertationes.

Lempriere says that Velia was founded six hundred years after the coming of Eneas into Italy, which would bring it down to the time of Herodotus himself.

by Jason and his Argonauts; "Proximeque ad stadia quinquaginta Posidonia." Virgil (Georg. lib. 3. v. 146,) beautifully describes the effects on cattle of the usilus or gad-fly, in the vicinity of the Silarus (Selo); "Est lucus Silari circa," &c. The same effects are now seen, at times, in the neighbourhood of Paestum. In the country about Pæstum is found also the tarantula ; it has the form, and is about the size of a field spider, and is of various colours; it makes no web, and appears generally about harvest-time. Those who are bitten by it, feel the poison immediately all over the body, and are driven to a state bordering on madness, by excessive pain ;-for this there is no remedy but music and dancing: after having heard the sounds of various instruments, and different tunes played, they begin to dance with whomsoever they choose among the persons present; becoming warmed with the exercise, they break out in sounds of joy and almost of madness, evincing at the same time the greatest pleasure, and finally fall exhausted into the arms of persons who stand prepared to receive them. After sleeping for a short time, they awake quite recovered, without the slightest pain, and without any recollection of what has happened,-not even of having been stung! So goes the story!

But, to return to the history: A passage of Strabo has led some to believe that the Sybarites were the founders of Pæstum ; but the Padre Paoli gives it a different meaning, to prove that they were the conquerors of it, and that, having taken the city by assault, they drove out the previous occupiers :* this might have happened about six hundred years before the Christian era. The laws of the Greek Sybarites were observed in Pæstum, and the sciences which were professed in Sybaris were taught in Pæstum, and to the Sybarites, I think, may be attributed the Temples of Pæstum. Most likely it was not till a more recent age that the inhabitants became so effeminate and luxurious as to make the word Sybarite proverbial, to mean a man devoted to pleasure. They allowed no artificer who made a noise in the exercise of his art to remain in their cities, that they might not be disturbed; cocks were excluded for the annoyance occasioned by their crowing.

Under

About the year 440 before Christ, the Lucani, a colony of Samnites, assailed the Sybarites in Pæstum, and made themselves masters of the city, which they retained till the year 273 before Christ; when, having made common cause with the Tarantines against the Romans, they were totally defeated by the Consuls C. Fab. Dorso and C. Claud. Cœnina, and Pæstum fell under the dominion of omnipotent Rome. Roman laws and governors it remained till the incursions of the Goths and Vandals had destroyed the Roman power. After having worn the yoke of the Barbarians for some time, we learn that the Province of Lucania (including Pæstum) yielded obedience to the Greek Emperors, and Cassiodorus obtained for it a diminution of the tribute which it had been accustomed to pay in pigs. Lucania had always had considerable commerce in these animals, and to the Lucani is attributed the invention of sausages; whence the Latin name of them, Lucanica.

Overrun and harassed by the continual wars of Greeks and Barbarians, Goths, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths, the beautiful cities of Magna Græcia were depopulated and its fields laid waste. At length the Longobardi, in the sixth century, finished what their predecessors had begun, and reduced the whole region to a desert waste. To such a state was it brought that a field was given for a sword, or an olive-yard for a horse.

The exuberance of water, which had been the boast of Italy, now became its pest; marshes and staguant ponds increased, and with their exhalations infected the air and ruined the fields; the rivers ran from their accustomed courses, and the magnificent bridges were ruined by neglect, or destroyed by barbarian fury :- -it was at this time that the gardens and vineyards about Pæstum became bogs and fens.

"Sibaritæ murum ad mare posuere, habitatores autem sursum commigraverunt." Instead of posuerunt, the Padre understands the Greek text to mean deposuerunt, and reads it "threw down," for why should the inhabitants take themselves off because of the building of a wall?

The Longobardi established the duchy of Benevento and the principality of Salerno, which, in the middle of the ninth century becoming embroiled with each other, called in the assistance of the Saracens, who had already possessed themselves of Taranto and Bari. Its natural consequences followed the introduction of these new auxiliaries; their swords were turned against their employers; whatever had escaped, or (during three centuries) partially recovered from the effects of the previous barbarian inundations, was then completely destroyed.

Pæstum went with her compeers, and was forgotten in the black darkness that mantles the history of the time. It may not be amiss, however, to relate the popular tradition of the country about its final destruction. The Saracens, it says, were encamped at Agropoli, and held Pæstum besieged; but the strength of its walls was for them an insurmountable obstacle; they made an assault, and were repulsed with great loss. But, on the 25th of April, the feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, the Pastans went out of the city in grand procession (perhaps to bless the cultured fields), and the Saracens, entering by surprise, made themselves masters of it, and destroyed the whole by fire and sword. A few of the inhabitants escaped to the neighbouring mountains, and founded Capaccio Vecchio.

There lay Pæstum, grand in her ruins, "mighty in decay," from the ninth century till near the middle of the eighteenth, when the Conte Felice Gazola, general of artillery to Charles the Third of Naples, happened to hear that such a place existed. He immediately visited it, and determined to publish a work on the subject, with engravings representing the new-found treasures: however it was not done during his lifetime, though he did not die till nearly thirty years after the discovery, but at length the work made its appearance from the hands of the Padre Paoli. Bamonte says, that foreigners have asked him if the temples and the walls of the city had been buried in fact, and appears indignant at their ignorance,† though he fails to account for the erudite blindness of his dear countrymen for the space of nine hundred years, who had eyes, but saw not, and hearts that did not understand. Ay! and there is a Royal Hunting-seat within ten miles of Pæstum! Capaccio too is an episcopal town, in which a cathedral was built in the very earliest part of the last century, so that Neapolitan architects, as well as bishops et hoc genus omne, must have seen Pæstum at least thirty or forty years before it was discovered! "Biferique rosaria Pasti," have been sung by the Latin poets, and their songs have been echoed by others. Tasso, although a native of Sorrento, (on a promontory from which Pæstum can be seen,) speaking of the "vermiglie rose," says, come si narra," evidently borrowing his strain from his predecessors.

66

Fields and vineyards now occupy the space within the walls of the city; and besides the celebrated monuments of its former grandeur, there are in Pæstum, a farm-house and its appurtenances,-a mean little church called a Cathedral, and a meaner house called the Bishop's Palace,-a peasant's cot, and the dirty little Taverna, or osteria, in which we were domiciliated, containing altogether perhaps about thirty or forty souls. There are certainly three or four primitive shepherds' huts besides; but as they appear not to be fixtures, I do not reckon their inhabitants among those of the city of Pæstum. The people in this part of the country are not cleaner, nor are the women handsomer, than they are farther north; however, I have seen fine Greek

"In questo tempo arrivata a sua cognizione la notizia di talimonumenti dimenticati e sconosciuti, ed in solitudine deserta fra spinai sepolti, come era di animo intraprendente, e per l'avanzamento delle arti al somino trasportato, si portò ad opervarle, e giudicò dovere esser di gran vantaggio alla republica letteraria, se delineate con esattezza, e con precisione incise, si pubblicassero. Comin ciarono d' indi in poi i letterati a parlare frequentamente, e in ispecie gl' intendenti d'architettura, della città di Pesto."-Pæstanæ Dissertationes.

"Tutto restò sepolto sotto le rovine, eccetto i dice Tempj, la Basilica, e le mura, che sempre scoverti sono stati e non sepolti, come falsamente credono taluni forestieri, da' quali ne sono stato io interrogato."-Le Antichità Pestane.

profiles among the peasant women, though they are not otherwise handsome; the men look like any thing but Greeks, with their conical hats, and light blue jackets hanging over their shoulders. On our way to Eboli this afternoon, we met several groups of them returning from its fair, and many with one or two new hats piled on their old ones, looking like Lord Peter in the "Tale of a Tub." As our steeds were not very swift, and the carriage was open, we had plenty of time to admire the lovely scenery about the Selo. A great part of the country near the river on this side is covered with copse and underwood, as shelter for wild bears and the like, for royal hunting. Buffaloes swarm all over the marshes; they are odd-looking animals, invariably black, with horns like rams' horns, and they carry their heads so that their faces are nearly parallel to the horizon: cheese is made of buffaloes' milk, which is very white, and so completely in filaments, that it may be almost wound off like so much thread.

The locanda at Eboli was formerly a convent, and, in the ruined church belonging to it, the bones of its former tenants lie exposed to the rude insults of its vagrant occupiers of the present time.

15th. While travelling in Italy, those who are determined to have clean sheets, must be content to have them damp; and those who wish to have their beds to themselves, should look to see that they are not previously occupied. Last night I should have had a large scorpion for a bedfellow, had it not been for that precaution: on turning down the sheets to see that they were clean, couched between them lay the largest reptile of the kind I had

ever seen..

At half-past five this morning we came off for Naples in a calash, which we were much mistaken in supposing that we should have to ourselves, for there were no less than four besides ourselves and the driver. One who had not seen a set-out of the kind, would be puzzled to know how seven persons could be accommodated in a vehicle not larger than our one-horse chaise, although it was drawn by two horses abreast, one in, or rather under, the shafts, and the other on the near side, harnessed like a trace-horse. In our road we saw several instances of eight grown persons on one of these vehicles drawn by but one horse, and that one swinging along at full trot. However, loaded as we were, we soon reached Salerno, where we breakfasted, and were quickly on the road again for Naples. The scenery up from Salerno does not show to half the advantage it does in going down, yet still we had enough to admire. We took a peep at the remains of Pompeii on passing them, and afterwards loitered an hour at Torre della Nunziata, while the horses rested. On arriving at the barrier of the Ponte della Madalena, we were detained some time about the disgusting passports, and were at length discharged, by our vetturino, a lad of about twenty, getting a sound box on the ears from one of the people there.

NEW SERIES OF ARABIAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS.*

NEW Arabian Nights!-What! New Arabian Nights' Entertainments of the old stock! genuine! more Scherezade and Dinarzade! more Zobeide and Camaralzaman, and Commanders of the Faithful, and ladies in veils, and enraptured linen-drapers, and genii, and magicians, and "light of my soul," and heads made no more of than turnip-tops!

To hear of more Arabian Nights was, to us, like being told that we were to have a new piece of Childhood,-three volumes of Rejuvenescence, a spring-time within the spring,-happy wonder,-a glut of

--

* New Arabian Nights' Entertainments, selected from the original Oriental MS. by Jos. Von Hammer, and now first translated into English by the Rev. George Lamb.-3 vols, small 8vo.

willing credulity. It is the next thing to having wings to one's shoulders. We have a respect for the common-places of life; nobody has more ;-but we do not find the goods and chattels of the world of imagination less tangible on that account; nay, perhaps the very height to which we carry our regard for the one, enables us to be properly at home with the other. As imagination fetches out the beauties of a common-place, so the pleasure which the latter gives us, adorned or not, is traceable to the very same mystery by which we receive impressions from a thing imaginary. People are not pleased with a horse, merely because he carries them from Richmond to London; they admire in him the mysterious qualities called beauty, and grace, and good-humour, things intelligential and spiritual; nor is the power by which he carries them less mysterious, when they come to investigate it; no, not a jot less so than that of the enchanted horse of the Calenders. It takes therefore no violent process with us to turn the every-day horse into the horse romantic. We dismount Sir Charles and unchristen Sir Billy; and lo! in the twinkling of a switch, the animal that we took for a good beast enough, with no other ideas in his head than himself, becomes the steed

men.

On which the Tartar king did ride.

Many a time have we met Cambuscan in a country road, and ridden with Odin down a gap in a forest. So with houses, and men, and woNot having the insight of beaux and materialists into the supernatural world, it is impossible for us to say how many ethereal existences there may or may not be round about us, or whether they may not occasionally be in our studies and sitting-rooms. A palace full of enchantment is, therefore, no such outrageous matter in our eyes. We take it as kindly as we did when boys; have a respect for the perilous chapel, and a handsome misgiving before the forbidden door. Men with us are not merely Joneses and Tomkinses. God forbid! Shall we consent to take a carpenter, or a fishmonger, or a man of fashion, merely for what he pretends to be? Not we! Nothing shall induce us. Hath not the commonest of his tribe, organs, and properties, and dimensions, and comforts, and cares? Has he not (though you would not think it, to look at him) been a little interesting infant, a mysterious creation, the object of a thousand caresses and anxieties to at least two other beings, as ordinary-looking and wonderful as himself? Has he not (though he is not old) gone through sensations infinite? and were we to know them all, should we not be tempted to laugh, and to weep, and to respect the stupid-looking cut of his face with those touching wrinkles in it, and to recognize in him, not simply a man and a brother, but a sensitive existence we know not what, a fellow-wonder, suffering and enjoying, come we know not whence, and going we know not whither? May the angel of Death find no truth in our hearts, if we have not given the benefit of these meditations (a great deal more than we ought to have done) to the veriest knave whom it hath been our lot to encounter! And woman! Is an interesting woman nothing but what a common-place fellow, or a formalist, or a debauchee, takes her for? Forbid it love, and poetry, and all that, in resorting to the colours of imagination, does but do justice to the emotions which she excites! Is the mystery of a cheek, or an eye, or a kind heart, a thing that contains no more in it than what the tongue of an every-day slave can utter?