HAVING in my last given you a little sketch of Naples, and of my mode of life there, I shall now proceed to some account of its neighbourhood. The first time of my going to Pozzuoli was on foot; I walked through the Chiaja, and afterwards along a short street, a sudden turn in which exposes the lofty entrance of the Grotto of Pausilippo. Just at the point where this turn takes place, there is a little monument, erected in 1668; which is introduced into most of the published views of the grotto, but the entrance cannot be seen till we arrive at the monument, and consequently their union in one scene is fictitious. Beyond this point there is a high rock on each side of the road, not made perpendicular by nature, but cut so by art, and on the top of the left-hand precipice is the tomb of Virgil, which however I could not distinguish from below; and another more visible fragment exhibiting a portion of a vault, which is, I suppose, a tomb, but I know not of whom. The grotto is at present about ninety feet high at the entrance, but diminishes as we proceed towards the middle; it existed in Roman times, but was complained of as narrow and dusty, and it was necessary to ascend part of the hill in order to reach the entrance. Robert, King of Naples, passing through it one day with Petrarc, required his opinion on the tradition of the neighbourhood, that Virgil had formed it by magic in a single night; but the poet replied, that he saw many marks of iron, but none of demons. Alphonso the First lowered part of the road on the side towards Naples, but D. Pietro di Toledo, viceroy in 1537, cut it down to the present level, and consequently gave it its actual height, and enlarged it considerably. The paving is still more recent, and it is now lighted by lamps night and day. As I walked through it leisurely, frequently stopping to look at the rock, and at the effects of the external scene, as seen through the narrow and lofty arch, I perceived nowhere any deficiency of light; but on other occasions, when I have passed it rapidly in a _corribolo_, I was hardly able to distinguish any object. From the termination of the grotto, after passing through the miserable village of Fuori Grotta, a straight road between vine-covered poplars, leads down to the sea-shore, which we coast for two or three miles, to Pozzuoli; the scenery is beautiful, but the sea is shallow and rocky. We pass under cliffs of lava, ejected from the Solfatara, rising in broken masses immediately above the road. The town is on a projecting rock, most picturesque in itself, and in its situation; and abundance of fragments of walls and vaults are seen on its rocky and broken shores, but they are mere fragments. Inside, there are some remains of the temple of Augustus, which appears to have been pseudo-peripteral, as the tops of six half-columns are seen in the wall of the cathedral, but all the ornament of the capital is gone, and we can only just determine the order to have been Corinthian.