Near "to Piperno, an abbey, called Fossa Nuova, is situated on the ruins of the little town of Forum Appii, the same of -which mention is made in the Acts of the Aposlles, and by Horace, in his account of his journey to Brundusium:

Inde Forum AppJ Differtum nautis, cauponibus atquc malignis*.

The abbey of Fossa Nuova is said to have made a very valuable acquisition of late, no less than the head of St. Thomas Aquinas. We are told, in the memoirs of that Saint, that he was taken ill as he passed this way, and was carried to this convent, where he died. His body Was afterward required by the king of France, and ordered to be carried to Thoulouse; but before the

Nor were the web or loom the virgin's care, But arms and coursers, and the .toils of war. She led the rapid race, and left behind The flagging floods, and pinions of the wind: Lightly she flies along the level plain, Nor hurts the tender grafs, nor bends the golden grain.

Pitt.

* Tn Fnrnm-Annii th*>nri» vum floor •

remains of this holy person were removed from the convent, one of the monks, unwilling to allow the whole of such a precious deposit to be carried away, determined to retain the most valuable part, and actually cut off the saint's head, substituting another in its stead, which was carried to Thoulouse, very nicely stitched to the body of the saint. The monk, who was guilty of this pious fraud, hid the true head in the wall of the convent, and died without revealing the secret to any mortal. From that time the suposititious head remained unsuspected at Thoulouse; but as impostures are generally detected sooner or later, the venerable brethren of Fossa Nuova (this happened much about the time that the Cock-lane ghost made such a noise in London) were disturbed with strange knockings and scratchings at a particular part of the wall.—On this noise being frequently repeated without any visible agent, and the people of the neighbourhood having been often assem

where the scratching and knocking were always heard. This was no sooner done than the true head of St. Thomas Aquinas was found as fresh as the day it was cut off; —on the vessel in which it was contained was the following inscription:

Caputdivi Thomæ Aquinatis*.

And near it a paper, containing a faithful narrative of the whole transaction, signed by the monk who did the deed.

Some people, not making a proper allowance for the difference between a saint's head and their own, say, this cannot possibly be the head of Thomas Aquinas, which must have putrisied some centuries ago; they lay, the paper is written in a character by much too modern; they say, the monks contrived the whole affair to give an importance to their convent; they fay—but what signifies what they say? In this age of incredulity, some people will say any thing. We next came to Terracina, and here I must finish mv Iptt-pr • !n mv

-* was the capital of the warlike Volsci *. The principal church was originally a temple of Jupiter, who was supposed to have a partiality for this town, and the country round it. Virgil calls him Jupiter Anxurus. Enumerating the troops who came to support the cause of Turnus, he mentions those who plough the Rutulian hills:

Circeumque jugum; queis Jupiter Anxurus arvis

Præsidet, et viridi gaudens Feronia luco:
Qua saturæ jacet atra palus, &c. j-

• Anxur suit quæ nunc Terracinæ sunt: "urbs prona ia palude». Tit. Liv. lib. i».

-I- And the steeD hills of Circe stretch around.

Near this place we fell in again with the Appian Way, and beheld with astonishment the depth of rock that has here been cut, to render it more convenient for passengers. This famous road is a paved causeway, begun in the year of Rome 441, by Appius Claudius Cæcus the Censor, and carried all the way from Rome to Capua. It would be superfluous to insist on the substantial manner in which it has been originally made, since it still remains in many places. Though travellers are now obliged to make a circuit by Casa Nuova and Piperno, the Via Appia was originally made in a straight line through the Palude Pontine, or Palus Pomptina, as that vast marsh was anciently called: It is the Ater Palus above mentioned, in the lines quoted from Virgil. That part of the Appian road is now quite impassable, from the augmentation of this noxious marfli, whose exhalations are disagreeable to passengers, and near which it is dangerous to sleep a single night.

Keyfler and some others say, that Appius