beautiful veil over the surrounding objects. Amongst however, the charms of this valley, I should not omit the _Styrax officinalis_, which grows abundantly in some parts, and is now covered with flowers; I am assured that the fruit yields an excellent oil, not inferior to that of the olive, and sometimes in greater quantity. The usual tour follows the left-hand of the two roads abovementioned, but I one day took the right-hand path, with a young abate, a relation of the landlord of the inn, to look after Cyclopean walls. In England, a little more than 200 years carries us back to a distinct and peculiar style of architecture, and we consequently consider its productions as antiquities. In Italy, what does not exceed 400 years is absolutely modern, and a production is hardly considered as ancient, unless it date at least before the destruction of the Roman empire, under the reign of Augustulus, at the close of the 5th century. The buildings of the early emperors have an undoubted claim to the title, and still more those of the republic; but what name shall we apply to those which were erected 1,800 years before Christ. This date is boldly claimed for some of the Cyclopean walls; of which construction, it is said, that there are 108 citadels in Italy, and the thorough-going Italian antiquary, though he is contented to admit, that the oldest were not erected more than 2760 years before the Christian era, yet will not admit that any of them can be more recent than the foundation of Rome. They were, according to him, introduced into Italy by Saturn, but their earliest use in the temple of Hercules, at Tyre, was 2,760 years before Christ. Leaving these suppositions, we may be justified in considering the walls in question as the earliest remains of building in Italy. They are, as you know, built with great irregular blocks of stone, made even on the face, or nearly so, not squared, nor laid in regular courses, but the inequalities are fitted to each other as much as possible, and the interstices filled up with smaller stones. In what is probably the earliest style of all, no tool seems to have been applied to the stone, but the rude masses are merely heaped on one another, taking care in the position of each successive block, to place it where it would most nearly fit into the work, and probably keeping the smoothest side outwards, to form the face of the wall; but the work is always rude and uneven. In the second style, the tool has been used more or less, in order to make the great stones fit with some degree of accuracy; and in both these, one may easily conceive the use of the leaden rule described by Herodotus, which, being bent to the internal angle, left on the top of the wall, would be applied to the external angles of the stone intended to be placed in it. In the third sort of Cyclopean walls, lines nearly horizontal are decidedly more numerous than those in any other direction, and here and there, are some appearances of level courses.