The view was fine from the promontory above the town; but I looked in vain for the opposite coast of Dalmatia. There is a cathedral on this height, and in it a picture of great merit by Guercino, an artist little appreciated by those who have not visited the States of the Church. This town is pretty well fortified, and seems intended for a military post of some importance. On leaving Ancona next morning, we commenced a journey of some twenty or thirty leagues, nearly every part of which was within a mile or two of the Adriatic, and much of it so near as to give us constant views of that sea. The first stage was to Sinigaglia, a pretty little town with a sort of a port; for all the places along the shore have some pretension to be considered sea-ports, although the coast is a low sandy beach, almost without points, or bays, or head-lands: a small creek has usually sufficed to commence a harbour, and by means of excavations, and perhaps of a small mole at the outlet, to prevent the accumulation of sands by the south winds, the thing has usually been effected. Some of the connexions of the family of Bonaparte reside in or near Sinigaglia, which has many good houses in its vicinity. We passed the night at Fano, a town of several thousand souls, in which there are some respectable Roman remains, though of the later periods of the empire. The next morning we went to La Catolica, a small and insignificant place, to breakfast; passing Pesaro, a place of more importance, without stopping. We saw the remains of a considerable castle near La Catolica, which had once belonged to the Dukes of Urbino, and is even now, I believe, kept up as a sort of fortress of the pope’s. It was rather a striking structure of the sort for Italy; this country not being at all remarkable for buildings of this nature. One reads of moated castles among the Apennines in Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels; but I have not yet seen an edifice in all Italy that would at all justify her descriptions. Such things may be, but none of them have lain in my path. With the exception of the Castel Guelfo, near Modena, and the regular forts and citadels, I do not remember to have seen a moated building in the whole country. Some of the castles on the heights are gloriously picturesque, it is true, of which that of Ischia is a striking example; but, on the whole, I should say few parts of Europe have so little embellishment in this way as Italy. The Romans do not appear to have built in the castellated form at all, it being a fashion of the middle ages; and during the latter period, most of the fastnesses of this part of the world were made out of the ruins of Roman works. At all events, after passing near two years in Italy, and traversing it from Nice to Naples, and from Naples to this point, I have not seen the castles of the romances at all.