and that in an age when Rome was still in the days of her early growth. This at once marks a wide difference between Rome and other cities of that time. Even the most famous of the early seats of maritime enterprise had the port separate from the city, later than the city. Corinth herself had her two havens, apart alike from her mountain citadel and from the venerable columns at its foot. When Corinth started in life men shrank from the close neighbourhood of the sea. It marks a later stage when Corinthian enterprise planted colonies absolutely in the sea--Syracuse on her island, the elder Korkyra on her peninsula. It was not till long after Ostia had arisen that inland Athens yoked herself to the sea. But, as the site of Rome itself on the broad Tiber showed that men had even then learned to understand the value of sites widely different from Tusculum on her height or Veii with her encircling brooks, so the creation of Ostia proves yet more. Rome, far more distant from the sea than Corinth, Megara, or even Athens, had already learned that a hold on the sea was needful for her power. There could have been nothing like it in Italy. There were inland cities and there were maritime cities; but there was no inland city which had put forth a maritime outpost at such a distance. Indeed, no other city had put forth such an outpost at all, maritime or otherwise. For Ostia was not a colony, not a dependency. It had no separate being of its own. It was a limb of Rome transplanted to a distance of fifteen Italian miles from the main body. Ostia, then, called into being because Rome stood on the Tiber, is eminently a child of the Tiber. But Father Tiber is unluckily one of those fathers who do not scruple to swallow up their own children. He has changed his course, and he has changed it in a way which is not a little dangerous for what is still left of Ostia. The diggings which have been carried on by the Italian Government are most praiseworthy, and they have brought to light much that is most interesting and instructive. But streets, storehouses, temples, theatres, will in vain be dug out if the ravenous river god is to gulp them down as soon as they are well dug out. At the present moment one street, with its pavement laid bare, with its buildings still standing on each side, leads in a perilous manner into the stream. That is to say, one end is gone; the rest will soon follow; the pieces of wall nearest to the stream are crumbling to their fall. Surely it would be well to imitate in the haven of Ancus the work done for the mother-city by his successor. Fence in the flood, as the elder Tarquin fenced it in beside the mouth of the _cloaca maxima_; make a strong wall of defence against the waters, and the remains which are left of Ostia may abide as long as the _cloaca maxima_ itself.