For a charming description of Clitumnus, see Pliny's letter "Romano Suo," _Epist._, viii. 8: "At the foot of a little hill covered with old and shady cypress trees, gushes out a spring, which bursts out into a number of streamlets, all of different sizes. Having struggled, so to speak, out of its confinement, it opens out into a broad basin, so clear and transparent, that you may count the pebbles and little pieces of money which are thrown into it.... The banks are clothed with an abundance of ash and poplar, which are so distinctly reflected in the clear water that they seem to be growing at the bottom of the river, and can easily be counted.... Near it stands an ancient and venerable temple, in which is a statue of the river-god Clitumnus."--_Pliny's Letters_, by the Rev. A. Church and the Rev. W. J. Brodribb, 1872, p. 127.] [449] {380} [The existing temple, now used as a chapel (St. Salvatore), can hardly be Pliny's _templum priscum_. Hobhouse, in his _Historical Illustrations_, pp. 37-41, defends the antiquity of the "façade, which consists of a pediment supported by four columns and two Corinthian piers, two of the columns with spiral fluting, the others covered with fish-scaled carvings" (_Handbook for Central Italy_, p. 289); but in the opinion of modern archæologists the whole of the structure belongs to the fourth or fifth century of the Christian era. It is, of course, possible, indeed probable, that ancient materials were used when the building was reconstructed. Pliny says the "numerous chapels" dedicated to other deities were scattered round the shrine of Clitumnus.] [nd] _Upon a green declivity_----.--[MS. M.] [450] {381} ["On my way back [from Rome], close to the temple by its banks, I got some famous trout out of the river Clitumnus, the prettiest little stream in all poesy."--Letter to Murray, June 4, 1817.] [ne] _There is a course where Lovers' evening tales_.--[MS. M. erased.] [451] [By "disgust," a prosaic word which seems to mar a fine stanza, Byron does not mean "distaste," aversion from the nauseous, but "tastelessness," the inability to enjoy taste. Compare the French "Avoir du dégout pour la vie," "To be out of conceit with life." Byron was "a lover of Nature," but it was seldom that he felt her "healing power," or was able to lose himself in his surroundings. But now, for the moment, he experiences that sudden uplifting of the spirit in the presence of natural beauty which brings back "the splendour in the grass, the glory in the flower!"] [nf] {382} _Making it as an emerald_----.--[D.] [ng] _Leaps on from rock to rock--with mighty bound_.--[MS. M.]