"Indeed, so striking were these coincidences that we were as nearly as possible going off on the wrong tack, and singing 'Io Paean' to Dame Nature herself at the expense of the bard; but we were soon brought back to our allegiance by a sense of the way in which all we saw tallied with the description of him who sang of nature so surpassingly well, who challenges posterity in charmed accents, and could shape the sternest and most concise of tongues into those melodious cadences that invest his undying verse with all the magic of music and all the freshness of youth. For this was clearly the 'angulus iste,' the nook which 'restored him to himself'--this the lovely spot which his steward longed to exchange for the slums of Rome. Below lay the greensward by the river, where it was sweet to recline in slumber. Here grew the vines, still trained, like his own, on the trunks and branches of trees. Yonder the brook which the rain would swell till it overflowed its margin, and his lazy steward and slaves were fain to bank it up; and above, among a wild jumble of hills, lay the woods where, on the Calends of March, Faunus interposed to save him from the falling tree, and where another miracle preserved him from the attack of the wolf as he strolled along unarmed, singing of the soft voice and sweet smiles of his Lalage! The brook is now nearly dammed up; a wall of close-fitting rough-hewn stones gathers its waters into a still, dark pool; its overflow gushes out in a tiny rill that rushed down beside our path, mingling its murmur with the hum of myriads of insects that swarmed in the air." On this farm lovers of Horace have been fain to place the fountain of Bandusia, which the poet loved so well, and to which he prophesied, and truly, as the issue has proved, immortality from his song (Odes, III. 13). Charming as the poem is, there could be no stronger proof of the poet's hold upon the hearts of men of all ages than the enthusiasm with which the very site of the spring has been contested. "Bandusia's fount, in clearness crystalline, O worthy of the wine, the flowers we vow! To-morrow shall be thine A kid, whose crescent brow "Is sprouting, all for love and victory, In vain; his warm red blood, so early stirred, Thy gelid stream shall dye, Child of the wanton herd. "Thee the fierce Sirian star, to madness fired, Forbears to touch; sweet cool thy waters yield To ox with ploughing tired, And flocks that range afield. "Thou too one day shall win proud eminence 'Mid honoured founts, while I the ilex sing Crowning the cavern, whence Thy babbling wavelets spring." (C.)