Two miles over the _Via Flaminia_, between garden walls that were ornamented with sculpture and inscription in the time of Augustus, brought us to the _Porta del Popolo_. The square within this noble gate is modern, but very imposing. Two streets diverge before you, as far away as you can see into the heart of the city, a magnificent fountain sends up its waters in the centre, the façades of two handsome churches face you as you enter, and on the right and left are gardens and palaces of princely splendor. Gay and sumptuous equipages cross it in every direction, driving out to the villa Borghese, and up to the Pincian mount, the splendid troops of the Pope are on guard, and the busy and stirring population of modern Rome swell out to its limit like the ebb and flow of the sea. All this disappoints while it impresses the stranger. He has come to Rome--but it was _old_ Rome that he had pictured to his fancy. The Forum, the ruins of her temples, the palaces of her emperors, the homes of her orators, poets, and patriots, the majestic relics of the once mistress of the world, are the features in his anticipation. But he enters by a modern gate to a modern square, and pays his modern coin to a whiskered officer of customs; and in the place of a venerable Belisarius begging an obolus in classic Latin, he is beset by a troop of lusty and filthy lazzaroni entreating for a _baioch_ in the name of the Madonna, and in effeminate Italian. He drives down the Corso, and reads nothing but French signs, and sees all the familiar wares of his own country exposed for sale, and every other person on the _pave_ is an Englishman, with a narrow-rimmed hat and whalebone stick, and with an hour at the Dogama, where his baggage is turned inside out by a snuffy old man who speaks French, and a reception at a hotel where the porter addresses him in his own language, whatever it may be; he goes to bed under Parisian curtains, and tries to dream of the Rome he could not realize while awake. LETTER LIV. APPIAN WAY--TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA--ALBANO--TOMB OF THE CURIATII--ARICIA--TEMPLE OF DIANA--FOUNTAIN OF EGERIA--LAKE OF NEMI--VELLETRI--PONTINE MARSHES--CONVENT--CANAL--TERRACINA-- SAN FELICE--FONDI--STORY OF JULIA GONZAGA--CICERO'S GARDEN AND TOMB--MOLA--MINTURNA--RUINS OF AN AMPHITHEATRE AND TEMPLE-- FALERNIAN MOUNT AND WINE--THE DOCTOR OF ST. AGATHA--CAPUA-- ENTRANCE INTO NAPLES--THE QUEEN.