Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/216

226 fountain of Egeria. How delicious was the coolness of shade, and of the clear water in the grotto! The walls of rock, and the niches which they contained, formed by the hand of man, showed that the home of Egeria was regarded in ancient times as a holy temple. That home could then have been scarcely so picturesque as now, in its ruinous beauty. Nature had clothed the stones with a mass of water-plants, with lovely Italian lycopodiums, which trembled to the bright, ever-falling tears, of the gentle nymph of the fountain. A very handsome, but stout nymph, of flesh and blood, in the elegant costume of Albano, was busied here, washing and rinsing clothes at the fountain.

At a short distance, on a hill, is a grove of dark-green iron-oaks, called the Grove of Egeria, and declared to be a fragment of the large sacred grove which anciently also inclosed the fountain, and where the wise Numa asserted that he received inspiration from the nymph for the formation of those laws which afterwards made the Romans a strong and well-organized people, capable of prudent legislation for many peoples.

In the beautiful grove, apparently the growth of ancient tree-roots, neither stone memorials nor monuments, are to be met with—nothing but the evergreen trees, and the soft soughing of the wind through their branches;—one fancies that in it one can perceive the whispering of a spirit!

Tradition relates that after the death of Numa, a deputation of senators went out to the sacred grove to discover the divine Virgin who gave the king of