DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.786#0021
CHAPTER XXXI.
SANTA MARINELLA.—PUNICUM.
I wandered through the wrecks of days departed,
Far by the desolated shore.
Shelley.
Few roads in Italy are more frequented, and none are
more generally uninteresting, than that from Civita
Vecchia to Rome. He who approaches the Eternal City
for the first time, has his whole soul absorbed in her—in
recollections of her ancient glories, or in lively concep-
tions of her modern magnificence. He heeds not the
objects on the road as he winds along the desert shore, or
over the more desolate undulations of the Campagna, save
when here and there a ruined bridge or crumbling tower,
in melancholy loneliness, serves to rivet his attention more
fixedly on the past. How should he 1 He has Coriolanus,
Scipio, Cicero, Horace, and a thousand togaed phantoms
before his eyes; or the dome of St. Peter's swells in
his perspective, and the treasured glories of the Vatican and
the Capitol are revealed to his imagination. The scattered
towers along the coast, to his view are simply so many
preventive stations or forts, and, with the inns by the
way-side, are mere mile-stones—indices of the distance he
has travelled and has yet to travel, ere he attain the desire
of his eyes. And truly, as far as intrinsic beauty is con-
cerned, it would be difficult to find in Italy a road more
SANTA MARINELLA.—PUNICUM.
I wandered through the wrecks of days departed,
Far by the desolated shore.
Shelley.
Few roads in Italy are more frequented, and none are
more generally uninteresting, than that from Civita
Vecchia to Rome. He who approaches the Eternal City
for the first time, has his whole soul absorbed in her—in
recollections of her ancient glories, or in lively concep-
tions of her modern magnificence. He heeds not the
objects on the road as he winds along the desert shore, or
over the more desolate undulations of the Campagna, save
when here and there a ruined bridge or crumbling tower,
in melancholy loneliness, serves to rivet his attention more
fixedly on the past. How should he 1 He has Coriolanus,
Scipio, Cicero, Horace, and a thousand togaed phantoms
before his eyes; or the dome of St. Peter's swells in
his perspective, and the treasured glories of the Vatican and
the Capitol are revealed to his imagination. The scattered
towers along the coast, to his view are simply so many
preventive stations or forts, and, with the inns by the
way-side, are mere mile-stones—indices of the distance he
has travelled and has yet to travel, ere he attain the desire
of his eyes. And truly, as far as intrinsic beauty is con-
cerned, it would be difficult to find in Italy a road more