I gave my young ragamuffin his dinner at Licenza, and five pauls when I got to the gate of the convent, but he still begged for more, and followed me into the monastery, and into my bed-room to obtain it. I told the superior how much I had given, and he replied that it was too much, and that two pauls would have been sufficient: all this passed in the boy’s hearing, yet he still continued his importunity. The lower classes here seem to find no shame in begging, under any circumstances. As nothing is therefore lost by it, and they may possibly gain, they consider that it is foolish to lose anything for want of asking, or even of urging their demands to the utmost. The situation of this convent is on the edge of a wild romantic chasm, through which the Anio passes. Between Vico Varo and Tivoli this river runs quietly along an open valley, generally through a soil of a volcanic deposit; and where we see the more solid rock, it is the native limestone of the Apennines. A long tongue of land begins somewhere in the neighbourhood of Vico Varo, which extending obliquely along the valley, seems at one time to have dammed up its waters till they found or formed the present cleft. This tongue is entirely of a stony deposit like that at Tivoli, and abounds with caverns, some of which are shewn as the residence of St. Benedict. Near Fonte Bello is a rock, the fragments scaling from which have exactly the appearance of giallo antico; in other places we meet with a calcareous breccia, and in one place I observed a dark trap-like looking substance. It is remarkable that none of the springs in this valley appear to form the deposit which the river leaves so abundantly in certain places.