universal destruction of the forests is one of the great misfortunes of Italy. In many parts of the Roman Apennines even the soil has been washed away, and only in a few crevasses do we meet with brooms and briers. The valleys on the western slope of the Apennines are enclosed between calcareous spurs of the main range, some of which attain a considerable elevation. The Tiber itself thus passes between two lofty mountains, rising at the lower extremity of two of these Sub-Apennine spurs, and forming a kind of triumphal gateway. These are the Soracte (2,270 feet) and Gennaro (4,162 feet). These fine mountains, with the Sabine Hills and the volcanic groups near them, form the horizon of the Roman Campagna, and their natural beauties are enhanced by the memories of art and history which attach to them. [Illustration: PEASANTS OF THE ABRUZZOS.] Several ranges of hills and detached mountain groups of calcareous formation, {259} like the Sub-Apennines, border upon the shore of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the marshes which extend along it. Such are the hills, rich in alum, which are grouped around the ancient trachytic cone of the Tolfa. Such, too, are the Monte Lepini (4,845 feet), the naked crest of which has been likened to an ass’s back—_schiena d’asino_—and which bound the Pontine Marshes on the east. In some of the recesses of these hills there still exist forests of chestnut-trees and beeches, where the descendants of the ancient Volsci may pasture their hogs; but almost everywhere else the hill-sides are bare of vegetation, and the scorching rays of the sun have split the rocks into innumerable angular fragments. To the east of the marshes rises a summit with ten pinnacles, covered with dense shrub on the land side, but barren towards the sea, a few stunted palms excepted, which grow in the fissures of the rock. This isolated hill, a counterpart of the Argentaro of Tuscany, is the Circello (1,729 feet), famous as the residence of the enchantress Circe. The grotto where she changed human beings into animals is still pointed out there to the curious, and the remains of cyclopean walls recall the mythical age of the Odyssey. The ancient Greeks, who were but imperfectly acquainted with Italy, looked upon this dreaded promontory of Circe as one of the most important islands of the Western Cyclades.