It _may_ be here a river, but not _certainly_. Do you suppose he went down in sight of the whole neighbourhood to bathe in the little river? for _little_ river it is, and cold enough, too; for I have bathed in it, and can testify of its coldness. Would you take him, 1 say, down from his house to the river itself, when he had it conveyed to his own home by a _rivus_, or channel, and by a _fons_ such as has been described, from which, without doubt, he was supplied with water enough for his hot and his cold baths? The gelidus Digentia rivus, I well know, and, as I said, bathed in it. A countryman seeing me, cried out, "Fa morir!" The Italians now (at least inland) never bathe; they have a perfect hydrophobia. Few even wash themselves. I asked a boy, whom we took about with us to carry our sketching materials, when he had last washed his face. He confessed he had _never_ washed it, and that nobody did. CURATE.--We know Horace delighted in Tibur,--his "Tibur argeo, positum colono." In the passage criticised in the Pentameron, I shall always see Tivoli, with its wood, its rocks, and cascatelle. He had the scene before him when he wrote,-- "ego laudo ruris amaeni _Rivos_; et museo circumlita saxa, nemusque." Tibur still; its rocks, woods, and rivus again; and perhaps the "nemus" was "Tiburni lucus." AQUILIUS.--Perhaps a line in this epistle from the lover of country to the lover of town, may throw some light on "obliquo" and "trepidare," if indeed he has _the_ scene in his eye. "Purior in vicis aqua tendit rumpere plumbum, Quam que _per pronum_ trepidat cum murmure _rivum_." Great indeed is the difference, whether the water passes through a leaden pipe, or by the rivers, a mere direction by a channel open to the sky, and whose bed is the rock. But there is a passage which still more clearly, I think, marks the distinction between the rivus and the river. The poet invites Maecenas to the country, and tells him,-- "Jam pastor umbras cum grege languido _Rivumque_ fessus querit, et horridi Dumeta Silvani, caretque _Ripa_ vagis taciturna ventis." Now, if the shepherd had driven his flock to the river, all bleating and languid with heat, the bank of the river would scarcely have been _taciturn_; doubtless the shepherd sought the "fontem," into which the water was _conveyed_, and under shade, a place not exposed to the sun, or the wind, as was the ripa, the river's bank. And besides, in this passage, the rivos and the ripa are certainly spoken of as two separate places.