These dear people too at Rome and Naples do live so in the very hulk of ship-wrecked or rather foundered Paganism, have their habitation so at the very bottom of the cask, can it fail to retain the scent when the lees are scarce yet dried up, clean or evaporated? That an odd jumble of past and present days, past and present ideas of dignity, events, and even manner of portioning out their time, still confuse their heads, may be observed in every conversation with them; and when a few weeks ago we revisited, in company of some newly-arrived English friends, the old baths of Baiæ, Locrine lake, &c. Tobias, who rowed us over, bid us observe the Appian way under the water, where indeed it appears quite clearly, even to the tracks of wheels on its old pavement made of very large stones; and seeing me perhaps particularly attentive, “Yes, Madam,” said he, “I do assure you, that _Don_ Horace and _Don_ Virgil, of whom we hear such a deal, used to come from Rome to their country-seats here in a day, over this very road, which is now overflowed as you see it, by repeated earthquakes, but which was then so good and so unbroken, that if they rose early in the morning they could easily gallop hither against the _Ave Maria_.”
It was very observable in our second visit paid to the Stuffe San Germano, that they had increased prodigiously in heat since mount Vesuvius had ceased throwing out fire, though at least fourteen miles from it, and a vast portion of the sea between them; it vexed me to have no thermometer again, but by what one’s immediate feelings could inform us, there were many degrees of difference. I could not now bear my hand on any part of them for a moment. The same luckless dog was again produced, and again restored to life, like the lady in Dryden’s Fables, who is condemned to be hunted, killed, recovered, and set on foot again for the amusement of her tormentors; a story borrowed from the Italian.
Solfaterra burned my fingers as I plucked an incrustation off, which allured me by the beauty of its colours, and roared with more violence than when I was there before. This horrible volcano is by no means extinguished yet, but seems pregnant with wonders, principally combustible, and likely to break with one at every step, all the earth round it being hollow as a drum, and I should think of no great thickness neither; so plainly does one hear the sighings underneath, which some of the country people imagine to be tortured spirits howling with agony.