Rome and Victoria. 163 



the hills ; and the prodigious sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, is 

 conjectured to have been constructed as a sort of emissarium 

 to drain the last of the city waters. 



The history of Travertin may help us in the question of 

 time. At Tivoli the foaming falls and sparkling cascatella 

 wear down the thick beds of travertin which repose upon 

 the tufa. This rock was formed in an ancient lake, which 

 may probably have been one of the craterform sources of the 

 earlier ashes, but which became converted into a lake upon 

 the elevation of the land after the eruption. Ages must have 

 passed for soil of such quantity to be produced as to make 

 the sweet valley of the Anio so tempting to those Greek 

 adventurers, who sang their Attic songs at Tivoli before a 

 Roman hut appeared. 



When I saw both tufa and travertin united in the walls 

 of the Temple of Vesta, which looked over the laughing 

 waters a.t the Villa of Horace, 1 learned the alliance of earth 

 and intellect, and felt that one purpose of Deity in raining 

 showers of fire, and growing limestone hills, may have been 

 that man might rear new forms of beauty, and transmit 

 sentiments of elevated pleasure through those lithic works 

 of thought. 



The history of the volcanic process in Rome and its imme- 

 diate neighbomhood may perhaps be thus described. Basaltic 

 currents ran in very early times. Subsequently, tufa lithoide 

 fell upon the earth, or mingled with the shells of the ocean. 

 A subsidence followed ; and during the tranquil ages the 

 Mosaic Tertiary beds were formed. A fresh convulsion dis- 

 turbed this serenity, and threw up hills which yet retain 

 their capping of the ancient deposits, while all around was 

 denuded by tumultuous waters. The sea now receded, and 

 then came water formations of varyingly aged travertin, or 

 sediment brought down by rivers. A highway may have 

 existed from Africa to Europe, and the elephant, hippopota- 

 mus, and rhinoceros, may have travelled beside huge rivers 

 that fell from Alps now lost in the Equatorial Atlantic. 

 Carcases of these monsters were carried down by flooded 

 creeks, and buried with the dilu\dum in the waters of Rome. 

 The travertin stole quietly in when the ancient rivers were 

 turned, and the Roman lakes were undisturbed by eddying 

 streams. More tufa and lava followed. Another change 

 lowered the level of the country, much of the diluvial 

 deposit containing the elephants was washed away, and 

 there was a renewal of the sedimentary process at the 



M 2 



