was called one day to confess two foreigners condemned for piracy who were to be executed next day. On entering their cell he found them unable to understand a word he uttered. Overwhelmed with the thought that the criminals should leave this world without the benefits of religion, he returned to his room resolved to acquire their language before morning. He accomplished his task, and next day confessed them in their own tongue. From that time on, he says, he has had no difficulty in mastering the most difficult language. The purity of his motive in the first place, he thinks, influenced the Deity to assist him miraculously. A short time since a Swede, who could speak a patois peculiar to a certain province of Sweden, called on him, and addressed him in that dialect. Mezzofanti had never heard it before, and seemed very much interested. He invited him to call on him often, which he did, while the conversation invariably turned on this dialect. At length the Swede calling one day, heard himself, to his amazement, addressed in this difficult patois. He inquired of the Cardinal, who had been his master, for he thought, he said, there was no man in Rome who would speak that language but himself. "I have had no one," he replied, "but yourself-I NEVER forget a word I hear once." If this be true, he has a miraculous memory at all events. This the priest told me he had from MezzoAt home this would be headed "Strange if true."

fanti himself.

I forgot to say, while speaking of the ceremony of washing the pilgrims' feet, that there is a separate apartment in the same building for the females, and that princesses are sometimes seen engaged in this menial office. Every one so washed receives a certificate of it, and if he wishes, a medal entitling him to beg.

At the ceremony of washing there were several pilgrims that were mere boys, who seemed frightened enough at the sudden notoriety they had acquired. One little fellow in particular attracted my notice. He was half frightened and half roguish ; and between the curious gaze of the spectators, the odd position he was in, and the Cardinal in his awful robes at his feet; his countenance had a half scared, half comic look, and his eye rolled from the Cardinal to the spectators, and back again in such queer bewilderment that it quite upset my gravity, and I indulged in one of Leather Stocking's long silent laughs. Truly yours.

LETTER XXXII.

New Mode of Selling Milk-Lake Tartarus-Adrian's Villa-Tivoli.

TIVOLI, April, 1843.

DEAR E.-This morning, for once at least, I was up before the sun. A gentleman who formerly held an appointment under our Government and finally married a wealthy English lady and spent his time in travelling, promised to call and take me in his carriage with him and his lady to Tivoli. Of course I was sure not to keep them waiting, but was up betimes, and by means of it I made a remarkable discovery which I give for the exclusive benefit of New-Yorkers.

Morning after morning I had been awakened by a shrill signal whistle under my windows, and what it could mean at that early hour would always puzzle me till I fell asleep again. This morning as I opened the windows and stepped out upon the balcony (and by the way windows here are never made to raise, but to open like a double door), I was greeted by this same shrill whistle ringing directly beneath me. I looked down, and lo, it was the milkman's cry. A boy had driven to the door six or seven goats, and with his fingers in his mouth was whistling out the servant. In a few moments she appeared with her pint cup, which he took, and stepping up behind the goats milked it full, received his penny and drove on. Under a palace directly opposite I saw three cows standing in the same way, the boy who drove them whistling away till the servant appeared, when he milked the measure full, and then passed on towards the Corso. This plan, you perceive, introduced into New-York, would effectually prevent watering the milk; and give it always fresh and pure from the fountain-head.

In a few minutes the carriage drove up, and under as bright a sky as ever bent over the Cæsars we rattled out of the city. We

passed San Lorenzo gate, and trotted along the "Via Tiburtina," crossed the Anio, and finally fetched up by the monument of "Giula Stemma." I will not describe it. At length the walls on either side of the way, built entirely of petrifactions, reminded us that we were in the vicinity of Lake Tartarus, “Lago di Tartaro," the petrifying qualities of whose waters furnish the stone called travertine. Its sulphur stench was Tartarian enough, and at length it sparkled on our sight, a mere pond, in the midst of a large field. Petrifying its own borders, it has contracted its limits till it bids fair to petrify itself to death and become a stone lake. The rocks around it are all formed from moss and turf and masses of cane, whose tubes still remain in the stone. Remembring a certain brother of mine who has a perfect mania for odd specimens of this sort, and who had never failed in every letter to insinuate in no ambiguous language that he supposed I would "forget to pick up some old stones" for him, I loaded down the carriage with fragments of rock to my particular discomfort.

Leaving this we came to the Solfatara (sulphur) canal. The odor from this stream, which drains the ancient Aqua Albulae, was still stronger than from Tartarus. This canal is nine feet broad, two feet deep, and two miles long, and the water that flows rapidly through it is almost of the color of milk. The Aqua Albulae is about a mile distant, and by its petrifying qualities has contracted itself from a mile in circumference to 500 feet. Near by are the Baths of Agrippa, patronized by Augustus and enlarged by Queen Zenobia, who was permitted to retire to Tivoli with her children, after she had graced the triumphal entry of the ravager of Palmyra into Rome.

A little distance from the road stands the ruins of Adrian's villa -the most picturesque and imposing of any in Italy. They surpass those of the Palace of the Cæsars. This villa was overthrown during the siege of Tibur by Totila. I will not describe to you the old Greek Theatre with its ruined Procenium; nor the beautiful Nymphaeum; nor the Pecile, 600 feet long, with its double row of columns still standing, nor the imperial Palace, nor the old barracks of the Pretorian guards-nor the grand Serapeon of Canopus, nor the beautiful VALE of TEMPE-nor the prome nades of the poets and philosophers who used to loiter in their

green shades. I will leave you in ignorance of them all. You cannot appreciate them unless you wander in "propria persona amid their haunted shades, with the dark cypress waving above you and the spirit of the Past whispering in your ear.

Amid these ruins were found all the Egyptian antiquities in the Roman Capitol-the beautiful Mosaic of Pliny's Doves; and the Venus di Medici. The road from hence up to Tivoli (the ancient Tibur) is through the most venerable olive grove I have ever seen. Between its dark foliage you get a glimpse now and then of the Roman Campagna, stretching on toward the sea-toward the eternal city-and the Sabine Hills. I should like to run on awhile about this ancient Tibur throned on its beautiful hill. Horace was accustomed to spend much of his time here, and wrote enthusiastically of its beauty. Not the broad Lacædæmon, said he, nor the rich fields of Larissæ strike me so much

"Quam domus Albuneæ resonantis,

Et preceps Anio; et Tiburni lucus et uda
Mobilibus pomaria rivis.”

Here he would sit and compose his verses, and prayed that it might be the retreat of his old age. But a truce to Horace. I like him not and never did. His heartless lines ran in my head all the while I was on the track of his journey to Brundsuium, on which the lazy, voluptuous sneerer lingered. He always appears to my imagination like a little, thin, weasle-faced man, strutting slip-shod along, turning up his nose to mankind, and loving wine and women as much as the latter feared him.

As I ascended the long hill toward the town, I thought more of the royal Zenobia than of all the emperors and poets that ever lived here. As she stood and looked off on the same valley on which I was gazing-now so desolate-then so magnificent with temples and palaces, how often she sighed for her queenly Palmyra―the beauty of the desert. Her realm exchanged for the Tiburtine hill, and a throne for the irksome kindness of a haughty captor, was enough to break her queenly heart. But let us enter Tivoli, once the head-quarters of the Ghibelline chiefs, and afterward of Rienzi, in his expedition against Palestrina. It is a dirty, contemptible little city of 17,000 inhabitants. Its situ

ation is highly picturesque, but its climate so unhealthy that the popular distich runs,

"Tivoli di mal conforto

O, Piove, o tira vento, o suona a morto,"

which perhaps might be rendered thus:

"Oh Tivoli! small comforts in thy climate dwell,

Where blows the wind, or rains, or tolls the funeral knell."

The morals of the inhabitants may be gathered from the fact that in the year 1838, out of a population of 17,000 there were brought before the magistrate of the district 1,500 cases of fights, in which 180 persons were dangerously wounded, and 22 killed.

The same ratio of crime in New-York, putting the population at half a million, would give 45,000 fights during the year, 5,400 persons dangerously wounded, and 660 murders. At home this would be headed "HORRIBLE STATE OF PUBLIC MORALS.' ""

But I beg pardon: I came here to see its water-falls, the most beautiful with the exception of Terni in the south of Europe. However, the Tivolians deserve this exposure for the villanous dinner they gave me. I will not bore you with the description of the ruined villas and temples that attract the traveller to Tivoli. I will mention but one-the Temple of the Tiburtine Sybil, perched on a cliff overhanging the valley of the cascades. It is a circular temple surrounded with an open portico of 18 columns, ten of which remain. Standing on that eminence, with its fine proportions and ancient classical look, it forms one of the most beautiful images I ever contemplated. As we emerged from the narrow path on to the platform of rock, which forms its base, we saw a table spread and an English company sitting around it, who had ordered their dinner to be brought to this picturesque spot. There they sat eating under the shadow of the Temple of the Tiburtine Sybil, with the gulf beneath them, and the roar of the water-falls in their ears. English like :-they can eat any where. Standing on the edge of this cliff, the chief waterfall of the Anio is full in view a little to the left, on the other side of the gulf. Right out from the green hills it leaps, 100 feet into the mass of verdure below. From the moment it starts it shows a belt of foam, and from the disordered rocks where it strikes, springs a rainbow,