THOMAS ARNOLD 



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channels to the lake. On the other side is seen the blue extent 

 of the lake and the mountains, speckled with sails and spires. 

 The apartments of the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill- 

 furnished and antique. The terraces which overlook the lake, 

 and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as 

 deserve the epithet of Pythian, are most delightful. Letters from 

 Italy. To T. L. Peacock. (Milan, April 20, 1818.) 



In Rome, at least in the first enthusiasm of your recognition of 

 ancient time, you see nothing of the Italians. The nature of the 

 city assists the delusion, for its vast and antique walls describe a 

 circumference of sixteen miles, and thus the population is thinly 

 scattered over this place, nearly as great as London. Wide, wild 

 fields are enclosed within it, and there are grassy lanes and copses 

 winding among the ruins, and a great green hill, lonely and bare, 

 which overhangs the Tiber. The gardens of the modern palaces 

 are like wild woods of cedar, and cypress, and pine, and the 

 neglected walks are overgrown with weeds. The English burying- 

 place is a green slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of 

 Cestius, and is, I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery 

 I ever beheld. To see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, 

 when we first visited it, with the autumnal dews, and hear the 

 whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees which have 

 overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in 

 the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and 

 young people who were buried there, one might, if one were to 

 die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human 

 mind, and so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion. 

 Ibid. (Naples, Dec. 22, 1818.) 



A S it is, my garden claims a good portion of my spare time in THOMAS 

 ** the middle of the day, when I am not engaged at home or ARNOLD 

 taking a walk; there is always something to interest me even in I795 " J 42)< 



