We spent a morning of exquisite delight in the pine-forest in the neighbourhood of Ravenna. Alas! I hear with deep concern that the chief part of those magnificent trees is mouldering to decay. I remember sitting at my mother’s feet for several hours, drinking in the calm and beauty of the scene, while Shelley’s lines rose to my lips in his description of another Pineta, the one at Pisa— “How calm it was! The silence there By such a chain was bound, That even the busy Woodpecker Made stiller by her sound The unviolable quietness; The breath of peace we drew, With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew.” There was a distant sound of the Adriatic, which mingled with the whisper of the wind among the stone pines, and produced a weird music, forming a species of scale, caused by the trees being all of the same form, though of different altitudes. Numbers of wild-flowers studded the ground, and moths and butterflies of variegated colours skimmed and floated around us. How often did my mother and myself talk over that delicious morning, when “Banished from those Southern climes, We thought and spake of other times.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXI ARRIVAL IN ROME, 1846—OCTOBER FESTIVALS AND “POSSESSO” But let me hasten on to Rome, where, on our arrival, we took up our abode in a charming apartment in Palazzetto Torlonia, at the corner of the Piazza di Venezia, than which a more excellent situation could scarcely be found, with the full prospect of enjoyment of every kind, social and intellectual. Our hopes brought no disappointment in their train. October in Rome is a season of great beauty, especially when the citizens look forward to the Festivals. [Sidenote: SALTARELLO]