THE GI-UENARD aEOUP. . 159 



'most serene {banking) Princes/ as humanity might 

 desire. There, in deep retirement, amidst the labyrin- 

 thine alleys of some dark rectangular ilex grove (where 

 lizards rustle all day long, and the hoarse rattling of 

 sultry cicadse supplants the sweet jargoning of birds), 

 outside of which time-worn termini, still on duty, mark 

 the boundary angles, and into whose close-clipped in- 

 taghoed sides are ensconced noseless busts of incontinent 

 empresses) exhibiting to posterity, in innocent marble, 

 striking cases of ' majorum immerita lues/ Niobe se- 

 dulously hiding- herself and her children from the sun ; 

 Romulus and Remus sucking a long-backed wolf; 

 recumbent Tiber resting on his urn; piping Fauns, 

 dancing Hebes, struggling Centaurs, (not fabulous, if we 

 may trust their statues) ; and casts of half the coelicolse 

 of the Vatican ; there, where many converging paths issue 

 upon a large tazza of clear lymph, bubbling in perpetual 

 twilight, in that very spot you will be likely enough to 

 see, caged in iron safe, or fixed to a ring by the leg, an 

 imhappy detenu eagle, placed in such unwonted site with 

 a view to startle the unfrequent wanderer through these 

 dark retreats. We have seen them in yet viler durance, 

 fresh winged from the Abruzzi, caged and bleeding in the 

 turkey coops of the Rotunda, ticketed at a vile price, 

 and bearing ignominious usage from the descendants of 

 those nobler Romans who used to admire the great bird 

 of Jove, adopted him on their ensigns, and marched 

 with him in triumph to the world^s end. Nor is the ill- 

 treatment of eagles confined to Rome and its suburbs ; 

 it obtains throughout Italy: in far remote Alpine dis- 

 tricts, where nature is all untamed, these birds are some- 

 times set in apparent freedom, but no less prisoners, 

 on the pinnacle of some picturesque crag, in careful ob- 

 servance of the wild genius loci, to heighten the efiect of 

 the solitudes around. 



It must, to any right-feeling mind, seem a very wanton 



