These lines show that the most refined and tender feelings were as familiar to the bosom of Catullus as the grossest. Nothing can be more delicate than his description of the emotions of one, who, after many wanderings and vicissitudes of fortune, returns to his home, and to the scenes beloved in youth or infancy: Nothing can be more beautiful than his invocation to the peninsula—his fond request that the delightful promontory, and the waters by which it was surrounded, should join in welcoming him home; and, above all, his heartfelt expression of delight at the prospect of again reclining on his accustomed couch. It appears to me, however, that the beauty and the pathos of the poem is in some degree injured by the last verse,— “Ridete quicquid est domi cachinnorum,” which introduces the idea of obstreperous mirth, instead of that tone of tenderness which pervades the preceding lines of the ode. One would almost suppose, as probably has happened in some other cases, that a verse had been subjoined to this which properly belonged to a different ode, where mirth, and not tenderness, prevailed. The modern Latin poets of Italy frequently apostrophize their favourite villas, in imitation of the address to Sirmio. Flaminius, in a poem, _Ad Agellum suum_, has described his attachment to his farm and home, and the first lines of it rival the tender and pleasing invocation of Catullus. Some of the subsequent lines are written in close imitation of the Roman poet— —— “Jam libebit in cubiculo Molles inire somnulos. Gaudete, fontes rivulique limpidi.” As also the whole of his address to the same villa, commencing— “Umbræ frigidulæ, arborum susurri.” One of the most pleasing features in the works of the modern Latin poets of Italy, is the descriptions of their villas, their regret at leaving them, or their invitations to friends to come and witness their happiness. Hence Fracastoro’s villa, in the vicinity of Verona, Ambra, and _Pulcherrima Mergellina_, are now almost esteemed classic spots, like Tusculum or Tibur.