600 
To these poor barns [bairns] there comes a she- wolf wild — 
Most strange a wild beast should not hurt a child. 
Yet that was nothing ; she assists and nurses 
Those whom their kindred to their death enforces ; 
She stands and fawns upon the middling twins, 
And with her tongue licks o'er their tender skins." 
The cave above alluded to, and thus immortalized for all 
mundane time, appears to be a spacious natural grotto, 
possessing three large compartments. Situate at the foot of 
Mount Palatine, upon which Romulus is said to have laid the 
first foundation for his capital, of buildings subsequently 
replaced by the immense palace of the Caesars, it occupied 
a central position in the later imperial city. In earlier times 
the approach to it lay through a dense forest, and several 
streams issued therefrom. It became sacred to the great 
deity of natural providences, Pan. From the traditional 
discovery here of the Alban infants, it was designated the 
Lupercal, or cave of the wolf, originating, it is said, from the 
wife of Faustulus, who nursed them, being named Lupa. 
Games and bacchanalian revelries in honour of Pan had 
their head- quarters here, whence, in the annual saturnalia, 
wild and licentious processions issued, parading the streets 
of Rome to the great indignation of the Christianized por- 
tion of the community, in the first and second centuries. 
These orgies were known as the Lupercalia, and it is a 
singular coincidence that I had no sooner commenced writing 
my description of this Eomano-British Mosaic than the 
telegraph flashed over the civilized world the news of the 
re-discovery of this celebrated Lupercal, after an obscurity 
of many centuries. It seems that a certain "Signor Gori, 
an advocate, on visiting the Cloaca Maxima of Tarquin, 
directed his attention to a very limpid stream of water, 
flowing from a lateral conduit, and, after considerable in- 
vestigation, guided by historical memorials and his own 
