88 PEOSE HALIEITTICS. 



the genius loci, in supposing it to have been a large 

 marine boarding-house of many stories, adapted for the 

 separate maintenance of different tribes of scaly lodgers. 

 There, too, stands the temple of Jupiter Serapis, record- 

 ing another tale of ancient sheU-fish ; those eroded co- 

 lumns now standing out of the sea, were perforated many 

 centuries ago by industrious lithodomi, who effected 

 their work at a time when Neptune took forcible posses- 

 sion of his brother's temple; and many a small-fiy of 

 anchovies and sardines frisking round the half-sunk 

 altar, or scudding up the nave, show that they stUl con- 

 sider it his property* Besides all that these remains 

 are apt to conjure up iu the way of ancient association, 

 there are many places without vestige which open an in- 

 teresting field for conjecture ; the precise whereabouts 

 of Cicero's and LucuUus's villas,t of those vines where 

 the af9icted Hortensius used to retire to mourn in pri- 

 vacy the death of his favourite lamprey, and the very 

 spot where the dolphin would come, morning after morn- 

 ing, just half-an-hour before school-time, to carry his 



* This temple, after ainVing with the subsidence of the coast, 

 and remaining for many centuries up to the shoulders in water, 

 was suddenly upheaved in 1543, and once more placed on — terra 

 firma, we were going to say, but there is no terra firma at Naples ; 

 the ground has been slowly yielding for a long time. Many of 

 the present inhabitants are old enough to have witnessed a con- 

 siderable fall along the coast, and at some periods the centripetal 

 action has been at the rate of a foot or more annually. 



t Of the site of LucuUus's villa we know nothing positively ; 

 of that of Cicero, a good deal. Pliay, in whose time it was still 

 extant, describes it as a dehghtfal manor, situated over the sea, 

 on the highway leading from the Lake Avernus to Puteoh ; much 

 renowned for the beauty of its grounds, and also for the stately 

 galleries, porches, alleys, and walking places, which set off and 

 beautified it. It was called Academia, because Cicero wrote his 

 Academics within its walls ; tepid springs were discovered in the 

 vicinity after Cicero's death, which still continue in high repute 



