Moreover, bent and riven by unnumbered tempests, the trees themselves are almost ruins, and their pathetic look of suffering excites our sympathy for what they have endured. The situation of the ancient villa is ideal. Beauty and solitude reign there supreme. No houses occupy the promontory. No rudeness from the natives spoils one's reverie. No beggars clamor for a charity, and no official guardian claims a fee. In fact, no human personality whatever intrudes itself between the traveler and the past of which he dreams. For, marvelous to relate, the whole e xtremity of the peninsula is kindly left to Nature and the Muses. The structure which once stood here must have been imposing. One wanders through a multitude of lofty arches, which with the lapse of time have come to look like natural bridges, overgrown with vines and lichens. The huge walls, softened and made feminine - but not effeminate - by ivy, wild thyme, scarlet poppies, and innumerable humbler plants, assume new forms at every turn.

The Olive Grove.

The Ruined Villa Of Catullus.

One tries in vain to picture what the mansion may have been that rose upon these mighty piers; but we can hardly doubt that it was built in classic style, with porticos adorned with statues repeating in Carrara marble the myths and legends of antiquity; and that these walls, then faced with the same pure material, gleamed far and wide above the lake, as they received the morning and evening greetings of the sun. For its distinguished owner was a man of wealth. His father was the friend and habitual entertainer of Julius Caesar, in the latter's journeys to and from Cis-Alpine Gaul; and the poet himself possessed, in addition to this charming residence, a fine estate near Tivoli, and had a private yacht sufficiently large for him to make in it a voyage to the Black Sea.

Courtyards Tenantless, Save For Ancient Olive Trees.

Born at Verona, about the year 87 B.C., Catullus seems to have died a little before the assassination of Caesar, 44. b.c. The references to him by contemporaries show him to have been a man of fine appearance and affectionate disposition; while the one hundred and sixteen of his compositions extant reveal an artist of consummate grace and skill, combined with an intensely passionate nature and profound emotions. Probably many of his works have perished, for other authors mention several, of which no traces now remain; and it is startling to reflect that we should never have read a line of Catullus but for the chance discomposed it, he had just returned from Bithynia in Asia Minor, whither he had gone on a political mission which seems to have proved disappointing. How overjoyed he was to see again his own delightful ("venusta") Sirmio, is evident from the lines:

"Sweet Sirmio! thou, the very eye Of all peninsulas and isles, That in our lakes of silver lie,

Or sleep, enwreathed by Neptune's smiles, -

How gladly back to thee I fly!

Still doubting, asking - can it be That I have left Bithynia's sky,

And gaze in safety upon thee ?

Oh! what is happier than to find

Our hearts at ease, our perils past; When, anxious long, the lightened mind

Lays down its load of care at last;

When tired with toil o'er land and deep,

Again we tread the welcome floor Of our own home, and sink to sleep

On the long-wished-for bed once more.

This, this it is, that pays alone

The ills of all life's former track; Shine out, my beautiful, my own!

Sweet Sirmio, greet thy master back!

And thou, fair Lake, whose water quaffs

The light of heaven, like Lydia's sea, Rejoice, rejoice, - let all that laughs

Abroad, at home, laugh out for me!"

A Corridor Of The Past.

Catullus.

Equally beautiful, but in a very different key, is the pathetic elegy written by Catullus on the death of his brother, whom he evidently dearly loved. No metrical translation does justice to the simple pathos of the original; but the despairing cry of the Roman bard - "All hail, my brother, and farewell!" - is well known to us all.