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    ( Continued from p . 89 . ) I had now seen , not all the curiosities of Rome , but at any rate the principal ; and though I might have wished to devote a few days more to them , I had much to accomplish in other places before rny return to England , and the weather was becoming unpleasantly hot . I therefore determined to turn

    my steps Northward ; and accordingly made an agreement with a vetturino to take me in six days to Florence . I set out at an early hour in the morning of the 30 th of April . [ But the details of this part of my journey I am under the necessity of abridging , and must beg my readers to imagine , if they can , the wonders of the Cataract of Velino , and the teeming fertility of the Plain of Clitumnus . l

    In the afternoon of the fourth day , on ascending to the top of a high hill , we came in sight of the Lake of Thrasymene , so celebrated for the defeat of the Romans by Annibal . We slept at Pasignano , and the next morning walked over the ground on which the battle is said to have been fought . It lies between the villages of Touro and Collina , on the banks of a little stream , which has derived its name of Sanguinetto from the Roman blood with which its waters were dyed on that disastrous day . We asked some

    men on the road , which was the precise spot where the battle took place ; and on their pointing it out , we again asked them for their authority ; to which they replied , " X vecchii ci lo hanno detto . " f" The elders told us so . " ) The nature of the ground corresponds exactly to the disposition which Annibal is recorded to have made of his forces . It is a plain , shut in on one side by the lake , and on the other by a range of woody hills , which extend for some miles in a semicircular form . On these hills the Carthaginian General stationed his forces , and thence poured them down upon Flaminius , who had ventured to bring his army into the plain below , without

    being aware that he was so completely surrounded by his enemies . The battle began from the Westward . The Romans , taken by surprise and overpowered by numbers , were compelled to give way ; and their retreat was intercepted by a body of troops , whicb Annibal had placed in ambush at Pasignano , where there is only a very narrow passage between the mountains and the lake . That Flaminius should ever have suffered himself to be drawn into a situation where the very nature of the ground gave a skilful enemy so decided an advantage , was an error of judgment for which it is not easy to account .

    At Carmuccia , two or three miles further on , we entered the Tuscan territory , and soon became sensible that we were now in a more flourishing country , and under a better government than those of his Holiness . There was an air of greater wealth and industry , and more pains were taken with the roads . We arrived at Florence in the evening of the sixth day , and I was not sorry to come to the end of my journey ; for it was tiresome to be

    so long in accomplishing about 200 English miles , and the inns at which we had slept were certainly not of the first order . The brick floors of the chambers formed a striking contrast to the painted ceilings above , and the knives and forks , the plates , tables , and chairs , must all have been made in the year one . Yet , with all its miseries , I look back on this journey with feelings of no ordinary pleasure ; for we were highly favoured in the weather , our road lay through a country which bore the appearance of a perpetual garden , and I had for one of my fellow-travellers a young Englishman ,

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    JOURNAL OF A TOUR ON THE CONTINENT .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1829, page 168, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2570/page/16/