Alatri seems to have been somewhat of an out-of-the-way place in all ages. Not lying on any of the great roads of Italy, it has no place in the Itineraries, and now it lies much further than Anagni or Ferentino--nay, even than Cori and Norba, from common tracks of going and from the common haunts of men. Yet it cannot be looked on as seriously inaccessible; it may at least be reached without calling in the help of asses and mules. The party whose track we are now following--a party, be it noticed, numbering two ladies among them--reached Alatri in a carriage from Frosinone, having slept there after seeing Ferentino. The old Hernican town of Frusino had scant justice done to it by our wayfarers; as no man or book had pointed it out as a seat of primitive walls, it was treated merely as a resting-place between the wonders of Ferentino and the wonders of Alatri. Frosinone was slept in, but was not examined; yet a glance from its railway station, the point which connects Alatri with the modern world, shows that it at least possesses a by no means contemptible bell-tower. From Frosinone then our travellers made their way to Alatri, and, as Alatri gradually rose before them, they were for a while puzzled, perhaps for a while even disappointed, with what they saw. But it was not for lack of a striking object to crown the Alatrian hill-top. Of all the walls of our series, the inner range of the walls of Alatri, the walls which fence in the _arx_, are the most prominent in a distant view. Even the circuit of empty Norba, beyond our immediate range, hardly outdoes these defences of a still inhabited town. At Alatri indeed the primæval walls are so prominent that in the distant view no one would suspect them of being primæval walls at all. They are still so nearly perfect that they can and do discharge what may be looked on as a survival of their original function. They still fence in the innermost and loftiest quarter of the town, where, as in so many other cases, the ancient citadel has become the episcopal precinct. But at Alatri the episcopal precinct puts on a distinct and central character which is rarely found in Italian cities. The _arx_ is not in a corner, but in the middle; the lower town, fenced in by the wall of its own outer circuit, lies around it on every side. The _arx_ forms an open, lofty, and airy platform, looking forth from every point of the compass on the mountains which keep watch around--on the little towns, Veroli among them, perched here and there on their heights--on the houses and churches of Alatri, covering the slope of the hill which the _arx_ crowns. It is seldom that we find in an Italian town a church or any other building standing in this way free on a commanding site, not hemmed in on any side by parasitical buildings. These hill-towns are perhaps better off in this respect than most others; at Anagni, at Ferentino, the cathedral churches stand grandly on their