46

LIFE OF COLONEL MACERONI.

the torrent; and the bowlder may find Itself, after bowlingfrom shelf to shelf, a very great distance from where it had ;been first manufactured by the Naiades; or in the lapse of ;time, and the gradual diminution of the level of the general \waters, rivers have ceased to flow in many places where theydid before, and this cessation must commence upon the ihigher lands approximating their sources. All this is plain iand clear to those who do not look to fairies and hobgoblins ito perform the works of nature. I have seen bowlders of jall sizes, and some as big as St. Paul’s, more or less ap- !proaching to the sphere ; and in every situation it was clearas the sun, that they owed their origin to the process I have |described. But our orthodox philosophers and geologists, jassure the British and American readers (not thinkers), that 1the bowlders which they talk of, were rolled up hill into theirpresent situations by the waters of the “ Deluge.”* j

After a ramble of about three weeks, Greenough and |myself returned to Rome . On our way, we journied over |at least twenty miles of ancient Roman polyangular paved jroads, for the most part, as perfect as when first laid. ;Wherever it was broken up, it had evidently been by idesign, for the sake of the large stones, which we frequently !saw in the walls or in the yards of neighbouring farm-houses. I shall treat of the ancient Roman, as well as ofother pavements, in another part of this work.

The worst cultivated, the least populous, civilized, or jindustrious portion of the Papal states, or indeed of anypart of Italy , is included in the radius of twenty miles roundRome . The pestiferous influence of priestly misrule is, likethat of the Upas tree, of course less fatal at a distance. Tointroduce my readers into the Augean stable of the Vatican,

* In a work which I am about to publish under the title of Opusculi,my readers may see an essay on Bowlders, and on a great variety ofsubjects which I cannot well connect with this biography.