We took a hot bath under the _soi-disant_ villa of Lucullus. Steam, sulphur, and hot water, may be had cheap any where along this coast. An awful place it was to enter naked, and be kept in the dark, stifling, as we were, for some seconds which seemed minutes, till our guide returned with a _milord's_ dressing-gown, which he assured us had been hung up as a votive offering for cured rheumatism. Being candidates ourselves for a similar benefit, we desired to be rubbed down like _milord_, till _aluminous_ perspiration stood thick upon us, the alum being deposited from the walls and atmosphere of the place. We were soon obliged to beg for quarter. The _milord_, whose dressing-gown we were possessed of, was so bad as to be obliged to be rubbed sitting; but so powerful is the remedy, that after fifteen such sittings, he walked round the lake (two miles), and went home in his carriage "_guerito!_" "Such baths!" that had cured _he_ knew not how many persons:-- "Men who'd spent _all_ upon physician's fees, Who'd _never_ slept, nor had a _moment's_ ease, Were now as _roaches sound_, and all as _brisk as bees!_"--CRABBE. What with its hot water, sulphur, vapour, and alum, we too should have fancied Naples might have been comparatively exempt from rheumatisms and skin diseases, in both of which it abounds. LUCRINE AND AVERNUS LAKES. From the sea and its inlet called the Lucrine _Lake_, we pass along a pleasant green lane, about a mile long, which issues on _Avernus_, whose waters we find both limpid and clear; but are instructed that two months later will change them to a dark-red colour, and that the neighbourhood will then become very malarious and unsafe. A piece of semicircular wall on one side of the lake, indicates the whereabouts of a temple of Proserpine, or Apollo, or any god or goddess you please. We were so absurd as to pay a scudo to be taken through a vile tunnel, accompanied by two torch-bearers, and two other dirty wretches, who often carry us pick-a-back through one black hole into another, splashing us through dark pools, putting us down here and there as they pleased, picking us up again, grinning like demons, and by dint of shaking their torches above, and disturbing the water below, raising foul smells enough to intoxicate fifty Sybils. At length, half suffocated by those classical delights, we cry Enough! enough! and beg to be put into our saddles again. The _Stufa di Nerone_, a little further on the high-road, is another volcanic _calidarium_ in full activity, where you may boil eggs or scald yourself in a dark cavern. There you may deposit your mattrass and yourself in any one of a store of _berths_ wrought into that most unpicturesque tufa, of which the exterior face constitutes the whole of the sea view of _Baiae._ If ever there were decorations in these caverns, they are gone; but there probably never were. Diana, Mercury, Venus, and Apollo all claim brick tenements, called temples, in this