By the bye, talking of robberies and murders, a man was executed the day before yesterday on the _Piazza del Popolo_ for a triple murder. I saw the guillotine, which is now the usual mode of punishment, fixed on the centre of the _Piazza_ and the criminal escorted there by a body of troops; but I did not stop to witness the decapitation, having no taste for that sort of _pleasuring_. This man richly deserved his punishment. [84] These lines are from Voltaire's _Henriade_, a poem which no Frenchman reads nowadays, but that Major Frye could quote from memory. The correct reading of the first verse is: _Des prêtres fortunés_, etc. (_Henriade_, canto iv. ed. Kehl, vol. x, p. 97.)--ED. [85] Horace, _Sat_., 1, 9, 4.--ED. [86] Lady Elizabeth Hervey, second wife of William, fifth Duke of Devonshire (1809); died March, 1824.--ED. [87] A singular slip of the pen; Frye must have known that the equestrian statue is a Roman work--ED. [88] Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, xxxiii, 2, 4.--ED. [89] See Lucian, _Imag._, iv; _Amores_, xv, xvi.--ED. [90] Major Frye's description is incorrect in many particulars, on which it seemed unnecessary to draw attention.--ED. [91] Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_, XI, 67, 6. [92] That colossal marble statue was given to the Duke of Wellington by Louis XVIII, and is still to be seen in London, at Apsley House.--ED. CHAPTER XI From Rome to Naples--Albano--Velletri--The Marshes--Terracina--Mola di Gaeta--Capua--The streets of Naples--Monuments and Museums--Visit to Pompeii and ascent to Vesuvius--Dangerous ventures--Puzzuoli and Baiae--Theatres at Naples--Pulcinello--Return to Rome--Tivoli. I started from Rome on the 26th September; in the same _vettura_ I found an intelligent young Frenchman of the name of R---- D----, a magistrate in Corsica, who was travelling in Italy for his amusement. There were besides a Roman lawyer and not a very bright one by the bye; and a fat woman who was going to Naples to visit her lover, a Captain in the Austrian service, a large body of Austrian troops being still at Naples. We issued from Rome by the _Porta Latina_ and reached Albano (the ancient Alba) sixteen miles distant at twelve o'clock. We reposed there two hours which gave me an opportunity of visiting the _Villa Doria_ where there are magnificent gardens. These gardens form the promenade of the families who come to Albano to pass the heat of the summer and to avoid the effect of the exhalations of the marshy country about Rome. As Albano is situated on an eminence, you have a fine view of the whole plain of Latium and Rome in perspective. The country of Latium however is flat, dreary and monotonous; it affords pasture to an immense quantity of black cattle, such as buffaloes, etc.