Passing a house or two of the Prince of Angra, we trotted on by a straight even road, for a league or two farther. The country had become more wild and sterile, though it could be hardly termed a desert. It had the appearance of neglect rather than of barrenness, and, like the Campagna of Rome, doubtless has gotten the upper hand of industry, by having been so long permitted to go uncultivated. The coachman stopped the carriage by a copse of bushes, and told us the spot was the scene of a recent robbery and murder. A newly-married English couple were going into Pæstum, when their carriage was stopped at this place. A lad was stationed with a musket by the copse, while two or three others appeared in the road by the horse’s head. This lad wanted nerves for his task; for on the Englishman’s remonstrating, most probably against his holding the gun pointed, he fired, and shot man and wife through their bodies, as they sat side by side. Both were killed, or both died of the wounds, and the robbers were subsequently taken and executed. A hamlet, against the Apennines, was pointed out to us as the place in which they had lived. It was said, murder formed no part of their original intention. Since that time, however, the police has been much more active, and no robbery has occurred. As for ourselves, the affair of the “runner” between Bologna and Florence has completely removed all uneasiness on the subject. A few yards beyond the thicket of the robbers, we came to the ruined fragments of a gateway and of walls, and then entered within the precincts of the ancient city of Pæstum. There are three or four modern houses within these walls, one or two of which are of respectable dimensions, belonging to the proprietor of the country, and they injure the effect, although, in the season when one may sleep here with impunity, they contribute to the comfort of a visit. It would have aided the general effect, had the site of the city itself been left to its solitude, and the dwellings might have stood without the walls as well as within them.