Few places cherish a stronger local pride than Albano. Tradition identifies this town with no less a place than Alba Longa, so famous in early Roman legends; for though, according to the old accounts, Tullus Hostilius destroyed the city proper of Alba Longa, yet afterwards another town grew on its site, and all around rose up the splendid villas of the Roman nobility. Here, too, Tiberius and Domitian had palaces, where they sought relaxation from the cares of empire in a characteristic way. On reaching this place, their first care was to order dinner, and then, as there would be some time taken up in preparation for that meal, they looked about for some mode of pastime. The landlord recommended to them a visit to a convent at the top of the hill. He informed them that it stood on the site of a famous temple, and that it was visited every day by large numbers of travellers. On, referring to their guide-book, the boys learned that the temple referred to by the landlord was that of the Latian Jupiter. As they had nothing else to do, they set out for the convent, and soon reached it. Arriving there, they found spread out before them a view which surpassed anything that they had ever seen in their lives. Far down beneath them descended the declivity of the Alban hill, till it terminated in the Roman Campagna. Then, far away before their eyes it spread for many a mile, till it was terminated by a long blue line, which it needed not the explanation of the monk at their elbow to recognize as the Mediterranean; and this blue line of distant sea spread far away, till it terminated in a projecting promontory, which their guide told them was the Cape of Terracina. But their attention was arrested by an object which was much nearer than this. Through that gray Campagna,--whose gray hue, the result of waste and barrenness, seemed also to mark its hoary age,--through this there ran a silver thread, with many a winding to and fro, now coming full into view, and gleaming in the sun, now retreating, till it was lost to sight. "What is this?" asked David. "The Tiber!" said the monk. At the mention of this august historic name, a thrill involuntarily passed through them. The Tiber! What associations clustered around that word! Along this silver thread their eyes wandered, till at length it was lost for a time in a dark, irregular mass of something. The atmosphere just now had grown slightly hazy in this direction, so that they could not make out what this was, exactly; whether a hill, or a grove, or a town; but it looked most like a town, and the irregularities and projections seemed like towers and domes. Prominent among these projections was one larger mass, which rose up above all the others, and formed the chief feature in that indistinct mass. "What is all that?" asked David, in a hesitating way, like one who suspects the truth, but does not feel at all sure about it.