Page:A Picture-book without Pictures and Other Stories (1848).djvu/150

 to Naples to study thorough-bass. In Albano he had exchanged the dress of the monk for a regular handsomely cut suit of black, and he might have been taken for a poet. Besides these three, there was a lady, who was an enthusiast for poets and poetry, but could not sit with her back to the horses. It was, as anybody may see, a very respectable party for Pegasus to draw. They took the road to Naples: we will now listen to the dialogue.

Pegasus.—The road to Albano runs along classic ground; by the side of aqueducts, miles long, which are decorated like the vestibule of a castle, and by graves overgrown by brushwood. A capuchin monk, with his begging-sack on his back, is the only person whom we have yet met. Now we are approaching the tomb of Ascanius. It towers upward with a gigantic colossus of masonry, overgrown with grass and bushes. Sing of all this, you poets inside there! sing of the Roman Campagna!

The Post-horses.—Take care, and pull