I was much more gratified in beholding the remains of this Villa than in visiting Tivoli and I remained here several hours.  At four o’clock in the afternoon I started on my return to Rome; it was imprudent not to have started sooner, as it is always dangerous to be outside the walls of Rome after dark, in consequence of the brigands who infest the environs and sometimes come close to the walls of the city.

I reached my hotel in Rome at nine o’clock, one hour and half after dark, but had the good fortune to meet nobody.  The Roman peasantry generally go armed and those who feed cattle in the fields of the Campagna or have any labour to perform there never sleep there on account of the mal’aria.

[93] Horace, Epist., II, 1, 156.—­ED.

[94] Horace, Sat., i, 5, 26.—­ED.

[95] A carlino is of the value of half a franc or five pence English.  The
    accounts in Naples are kept in ducati, carlini and grani.  Ten
    carlini make a ducat and ten grani (a copper coin) make a carlino. 
    A grano is a sou French in value.  The ducato is an imaginary coin. 
    The soudo Napoletano, a handsome silver coin of the size of an ecu
    de six francs, is equal to twelve carlini.

[96] Not one of these vases was found at Pompeii.—­ED.

[97] Horace, Carm., II, 1, 7.—­ED.

[98] Virgil, Aen., VI, 264.—­ED.

[99] Virgil, Aen., VI, 129.—­ED.

CHAPTER XII

NOVEMBER-DECEMBER, 1816

From Rome to Florence—­Sismondi the historian—­Reminiscences of India—­Lucca—­Princess Elisa Baciocchi—­Pisa—­The Campo Santo—­Leghorn—­ Hebrews in Leghorn—­Lord Dillon—­The story of a lost glove—­From Florence to Lausanne by Milan, Turin and across Mont Cenis—­Lombardy in winter—­The Hospice of Mont Cenis.

FLORENCE, Novr. 20th.

I bade adieu to Rome on the 28th October and returned here by the same road I went, viz., by Radicofani and Sienna.  I arrived here after a journey of six days, having been detained one day at Aquapendente on account of the swelling of the waters.  The day after my arrival here I despatched a letter to Pescia to Mr Sismondi de’ Sismondi, the celebrated author of the history of the Italian Republics, to inform him of my intended visit to him, and I forwarded to him at the same time two letters of introduction, one from Colonel Wardle and the other from Mr Piton, banker at Geneva, who mentioned me in his letter to Sismondi as having des idees parfaitement analogues aux siennes.  I received a most friendly answer inviting me to come to Pescia and to pass a few days with him at his villa.  Pescia is thirty miles distant from Florence and the same from Leghorn.  I was delighted with the opportunity of seeing a man whom I esteemed so much as an author and as a citizen,