solitary rock overlooking the sea they built their citadel and
established their worship. In this rock was the traditional cave of
the Cumæan Sibyl, where she gave utterance to the inspirations of
pagan prophecy a thousand years before St. John received the visions
of the Apocalypse on the lone heights of the Ægean isle. The
promontory of Cumæ, like that of Carmel, typified the onward course of
history and religion--a great advance in men's ideas upon those of the
past. The western sea-board is the historic side of Italy. All its
great cities and renowned sites are on the western side of the
Apennines; the other side, looking eastward, with the exception of
Venice and Ravenna, containing hardly any place that stands out
prominently in the history of the world. And at Cumæ this western
tendency of Italy was most pronounced. On this westmost promontory of
the beautiful land--the farthest point reached by the oldest
civilisation of Egypt and Greece--the Sibyl stood on her watch-tower,
and gazed with prophetic eye upon the distant horizon, seeing beyond
the light of the setting sun and "the baths of all the western stars"
the dawn of a more wonderful future, and dreamt of a--

"Vast brotherhood of hearts and hands,
Choir of a world in perfect tune."

Cumæ is only five miles distant from Puteoli, and about thirteen west
of Naples. But it lies so much out of the way that it is difficult to
combine it with the other famous localities in this classic
neighbourhood in one day's excursion, and hence it is very often
omitted. It amply, however, repays a special visit, not so much by
what it reveals as by what it suggests. There are two ways by which it
can be approached, either by the _Via Cumana_, which gradually ascends
from Puteoli along the ridge of the low volcanic hills on the western