His lordship, you observe, who can himself write Latin lyrics as though he had drunk with Augustus, and capped verses with Ovid, makes the second syllable of Albunea long, and a very diffuse argument might be held on this disputed quantity. Compare these with the original, and say which you like best— “Quam domus Albuneæ resonantis, Et præceps Anio ac Tiburni lucus et uda Mobilibus pomaria rivis.” By the way, nobody who has not endeavoured to render Latin poetry into English can appreciate the vigour and terseness of the older language. Here are six lines in the one version and four in the other, required to translate three of the original, perhaps without producing after all so full a meaning or so complete a picture. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding his poetical predilections for the country, Horace, like many other people, seems of his two homes to have always preferred the one at which he was _not_. An unhappy prejudice little calculated to enhance the comfort and content of daily life. Had he settled anywhere in the neighbourhood of our hermitage here, he need not have accused himself of this fickle longing, which he denounces by the somewhat ludicrous epithet of “ventose.” He might have combined the advantages of town and country, alternating the solitude of the desert with the society of his fellow-men, blowing the smoke out of his lungs while inhaling the fresh breezes off the Serpentine, stretching his own limbs and his horses’ by walks and rides round Battersea, Victoria, and Hyde Parks.