From primæval and forsaken Norba we go down the hill-side, learning as we go how high Norba stands, to hardly less forsaken, though only mediæval, Ninfa. Ninfa, unlike Norba, has a few inhabitants; there is a house and a mill, if not within the fortified enclosure, at least just outside it, and, if the enclosure itself contains no actual dwelling-places of man, it contains abundance of buildings which have once been so. One can hardly fancy a greater contrast than that which strikes us between the stern primæval wall of Norba, fencing in the thick-standing corn, and the wall of Ninfa, with its towers, its varied and picturesque outline, fencing in a crowd of houses, churches, and buildings of every kind, the oldest of which could not have arisen till a thousand years after Norba became desolate. All are now forsaken, roofless, shattered, forming one of the most singular gatherings of ruins to be seen anywhere, the mummy, as it has been well called, of a dead town. Ninfa was once a place of some consequence, which played its part in local history; perhaps the most notable event suggested by its name is that here Alexander III., a Pope who had so much to do with our own history, was consecrated after his famous disputed election. But its position in the deadly flat, close by a stream, led to its ruin; the malaria was too much for it, and Ninfa ceased to be reckoned among the cities of articulate-speaking men. Some freak might restore the greatness of Norba; for there is nothing to hinder men living there if the fancy took them; they cannot live at Ninfa without greater changes than a Marius or a Sulla can work. There is something specially striking in a town, whose remains are so extensive, standing so utterly desolate. There is something Irish in the look of things at Ninfa, as indeed there is in the look of a good many of the ruined mediæval sites which often meet us in this region. It is not merely the fact of their being ruined, though there is something Irish in that; the tall, slender towers, of which there are many both at Ninfa and elsewhere, have a real likeness to many buildings in Ireland. But, though the general look of Ninfa is singularly striking, there is less to be learned from the particular buildings than might have been looked for. They are spread over several centuries, some of the houses reaching even into _Renaissance_ times. The church of most pretension lies without the walls; several within them keep their apses and the paintings on them, but little more. The whole is a wilderness of ruins, strange, impressive, but hardly venerable. As the ruin of a town, the wreck of many buildings crowded close together, fallen Ninfa has little of the solemnity of our own ruined castles and abbeys. As for the elements of wonder and mystery, they dwell in this region on the hill-top, among the mighty masses of stone which the men of an unrecorded age piled together to make Norba. Segni.