THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 21 



sideration ; and therefore it is not to be wondered at, that so 

 learned and devout a f\ither as St. Jerome, after his wish to have 

 seen Christ in the flesh, and to have heard St. Paul preach, 

 makes his third wish, to have seen Rome in her glory ; and that 

 glory is not yet all lost, for what pleasure is it to see the monu- 

 ments of Livy, the choicest of the historians ; of Tully, the best 

 of orators ; and to see the bay-trees that now grow out of the very 

 tomb of Virgil ?* These, to any that love learning, must be 

 pleasing. But what pleasure is it to a devout Christian to see 

 there the humble house in which St. Paul was content to dwell ; 

 and to vi&w the many rich statues that are there made in honor 

 of his memory ? Nay, to see the very place in which St. Peterf 

 and he lie buried together? These are in and near to Rome. 

 And how much more doth it please the pious curiosity of a 

 Christian to see that place on wliich the blessed Saviour of the 

 world was pleased to humble himself, and to take our nature 



• Virgil's tomb is at Naples, a mile or more north of the city, on the 

 hill immediately over the entrance of the grotto of Posilippo. Silius 

 Italicus, according to Martial, restored it to notice. It is a small roofed 

 building, entirely stripped of decorations, and grown over with creeping 

 plants, in a vineyard. Pietro Stefano, in the thirteenth century, says that 

 he had seen the urn, which Robert of Anjou conveyed to Castel Nuovo for 

 safety during the civil wars, from which time it has been lost. It had this 

 modest inscription, said to have been written by the poet himself, a few 

 moments before his death, 



" Mantua me genuit ; Calabri rapuere ; tenet nunc 

 Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces." 



Walton would have puzzled Nibby's archaeological skill, had he visited 

 Rome lately. Rennie says here, " Walton's opinions on Livy and Cicero 

 are far different from those now commonly entertained — of the one being 

 a tedious fabulist, and the other a mere builder oi flowing sentences, 

 without pith or point " ! ! How does the zoological professor account for 

 his not having long ears on his own head .' — Am. Ed 



t Some learned men, Scaliger, Salmasius, F. Spanheim, Bower, have 

 denied that Peter ever was at Rome, whence the disbelief of that fact by 

 Protestants generally ; but Protestants as learned are on the other side, 

 Cave, Pearson, Bassnage, Le Clerc, and especially Lardner (Credibility of 

 Gospel History), who pronounces it worse than folly to deny without proof 

 the general, uncontradicted, disinterested testimony of ancient writers, 

 Greeks, Syrians, and Latins. — Am. Ed. 



