cation of astonishing workmanship and astonishing strength; in front of the gate is a bridge of great consequence over the Tiber, which is the first in going in or out of Rome; nor is there any other way of passing, except over this bridge, but this cannot be done except by leave of those who guard the fortress. The fortress itself is of so great a height, that a church, which is built at the top of it, in honour of the Archangel Michael, chief of the heavenly host, is called the Church of St. Angelo in the Heavens." There is still a figure of an angel upon the top; but a writer of the sixteenth century speaks of it as a thing which had existed, but did not exist in his days.

In the severe contests, of which Rome was continually the theatre, between the popes, the antipopes, the barons, and the people, the Mole of Hadrian figures conspicuously. The first pope who obtained possession of it was John the Twelfth, who filled the papal chair in the middle of the tenth century. Succeeding popes and antipopes at times held it securely, and at times were driven out of it by the turbulent barons and citizens. Its importance, as an engine for overawing a rebellious people, did not escape the discernment of the pontiffs; neither did it escape the observation of the people themselves, who deliberately declared by a public decree, that when they should obtain possession of it, they would uproot it from its very foundations. In 1378 this decree was near being carried into effect; the partisans of Pope Urban the Sixth, having taken it from those of the Antipope Clement, in spite of the garrison which the French cardinals, who opposed Urban's election, had placed there, proceeded as far as they could in the work of destruction, and contrived to disfigure the structure and reduce it to its present shapeless mass. They stripped off the marbles, and destroyed the form of the square basement, and were only stopped from further mischief by the strength and solidity of the building.

The fortress remained dismantled till 1392, when the two Romani said to Pope Boniface the Ninth, "If you wish to maintain the dominion of Rome, fortify the Castle of St. Angelo." He followed their advice, and the event is thus significantly recorded by a great Roman antiquary. "Pope Boniface the Ninth first fortified the Mole of Hadrian, and established the dominion of the Roman Pontiffs." The people foresaw and feit the fatal consequences. They petitioned Innocent the Seventh, the successor of Boniface, to restore to them "their liberty, the capitol, the Milvian Bridge, and the Mole of Hadrian." They even seized, for a moment, the first three; in an attack on the mole they were repulsed by the pontifical troops, and completely routed in the gardens of Nero, in the Vatican. The popes had now no longer to fight for this fortress with the people, for the future they only fought for it with one another.

The castle underwent many alterations and additions at the hands of succeeding pontiffs. Alexander the Sixth constructed the brickwork on the summit, and also the bastion; to him likewise is to be attributed the secret communication with the Vatican. His additions to the works enabled the castle to withstand the siege of the Imperialists under Charles the Fifth, and it was at last surrendered, hot taken by assault. Paul the Third and Paul the Fourth also did much towards ornamenting and strengthening it; but the great engineer was Urban the Eighth, who occupied the pontifical throne from 1623 to 1644; he added a mound, a ditch, a bastion, and a hundred pieces of cannon, thereby making it appear, as a Roman antiquary quaintly observes, that his bees (the arms of his family, the Barberini,) not only gave honey, but had stings for the fight."

The most interesting event in the history of this castle, is the siege of it by the Imperialists in 1527, when they were led by Charles de Bourbon, (commonly called the Constable de Bourbon, as he was Constable of France,) on bis celebrated expedition for the plunder of Rome. He arrived before the walls of that city on the 5th of May; and on the following morning at daybreak commenced the assault. He was himself the first to mount the walls, and he was also the first who fell; Benvenuto Cellini, the sculptor, tells us, in his amusing memoirs, that it was he who fired fatal shot, but there is of a uncertainty upon the point. The city was captured and exposed to ravages' greater, perhaps, than it had ever suffered in its decline, from the barbarian Goths and Vandals as we style them. Pope Clement the Seventh withdrew to the Castle of St. Angelo, where he sustained a siege in company with thirteen cardinals.

During the siege Benvenuto Cellini directed the artillery

of the castle, and according to his own account, made sad havoc among the Imperialists. Indeed, he tells us plainly, that but for him the castle would have been taken when the city fell. After killing the Constable, he and a companion contrived to make their way to the gate of the castle: "When we arrived at the gate above mentioned," he says, part of the enemy had already entered Rome, and we had them at our heels. The castellan having thought proper to let down the portcullis, there was just room enough made for us four to enter. No sooner had we entered than the Captain Pallone de Medici pressed me into the service because I belonged to the Pope's household, and forced me to leave Alessandro very much against my will. At this very juncture Pope Clement had entered the castle of St. Angelo by the long gallery from St. Peter's, for he did not choose to quit the Vatican sooner, never once dreaming that the enemy would storm the city. As soon as I found myself within the castle walls I went up to some pieces of artillery which a bombardier named Giuliano, a Florentine, had under his direction. This Giuliano standing upon one of the battlements, saw his house pillaged, and his wife and children cruelly used: fearing to shoot any of his friends, he did not venture to fire the guns, but throwing the match upon the ground made a piteous lamentation, tearing his hair, and uttering the most doleful cries. His example was followed by several other gunners, which vexed me to such a degree, that I took one of the matches, and getting some people to assist me who had not the same passions to disturb them, I directed the fire of the artillery and falcons where I saw occasion, and killed a considerable number of the enemy. If I had not taken this step, the party which entered Rome that morning, would have proceeded directly to the castle; and it might possibly have been a very easy matter for them to have stormed it, as they would have met with no obstruction from the artillery. I continued to fire away, which made some cardinals and gentlemen bless me and extol my activity to the skies. Emboldened by this I used my utmost exertions: let it suffice that it was I who preserved the castle that morning, and by whose means the other bombardiers began to resume their duty; and so I continued to act the whole day."

Cellini was then posted by the Pope's desire with five great guns in the highest part of the castle; " I obeyed his orders," he says, " with alacrity, and had better success than if I had been following my own business." Of the marvellous skill with which he performed the duties of this new station, Cellini has left us an accurate account, embellished in his characteristic manner with various anecdotes more amusing, as Mr. Roscoe, (from whose spirited translation of the Memoirs we have quoted,) says than credible.

"There passed not a day," he says, " that I did not kill some of the army without the castle. One day, amongst others, the pope happened to walk upon the round rampart, when he saw in the public walks a Spanish colonel, whom he knew by certain tokens; and understanding that he had formerly been in his service, said something concerning him, all the while observing him attentively. I, who was above the battery, and knew nothing of the matter, but saw a man who was employed in getting the ramparts repaired, and who stood with a spear in his hand, dressed in rose colour, began to deliberate how I should lay him flat. I took my swivel, which was almost equal to a demi-culverine, turned it round, and charging it with a good quantity of fine and coarse powder mixed, aimed it at him exactly; though he was at so great a distance that it could not be expected any effort of art should make such pieces carry so far, I fired off the gun, and hit the man in red exactly in the middle. He had arrogantly placed his sword before him in a sort of Spanish bravado, but the ball of my piece hit against his sword, and the man was seen severed in two pieces. The pope, who did not dream of any such thing, was highly delighted and surprised at what he saw, as well because he thought it impossible that such a piece could carry so far, as by reason he could not conceive how the man could be cut into two pieces. Upon this he sent for and made inquiry into the whole affair. I told him the art I had used to fire in that manner; but as for the man being split into two pieces, neither he nor I was able to account for it. So falling upon my knees I entreated his holiness to absolve me from the guilt of homicide, as likewise from other crimes which I had committed in that castle in the service of the church. The pope lifting up his hands, and making the sign of the cross

over me, said that he blessed me, and gave me absolution for all the homicides I had ever committed, or ever should commit, in the service of the apostolical church. Upon quitting him I again went up to the battery, and continuing to keep a constant fire, I scarce once missed all the time; my drawing, my elegant studies, and my taste for music, all vanished before this butchering business; and if I were to give a particular account of all the exploits I performed in this infernal employment, I should astonish all the world; but I pass them by for the sake of brevity."

It was the fortune of Benvenuto Cellini, at a subsequent period, to become a prisoner in the fortress where he had performed these prodigies of gunnery. He contrived upon this occasion to employ his skill in effecting an escape, the particulars of which he has detailed with considerable minuteness in his memoirs. He succeeded in descending from the battlements of the castle undetected and unhurt; but in attempting to scale one of the outer walls, he fell, and became insensible. On recovering his senses, he imagined he had been beheaded, and was in purgatory. Notwithstanding the injury he had received, he contrived to crawl away; and though the pontiff, Paul the Third, had himself, in his youth, made his escape from the same confinement; he caused Cellini to be again committed to the prison, where he suffered incredible hardships, and witnessed still more incredible visions.

The castle of St. Angelo received the appellation which it now bears in the pontificate of Gregory the Great, who, in crossing the bridge of St. Angelo as he went to offer up prayers for the deliverance of the Romans from a pestilence with which they were afflicted, beheld, according to the story, on the summit of the Moles Hadriani, the figure of an angel sheathing a sword. In commemoration of this vision, the brazen statue which still crowns the castle was erected, and the building, as already stated, received the name by which it has since been distinguished. It has been long used as a public prison, and contains about four hundred wretched criminals, who have been sentenced to the galleys. The

upper apartments, which present little worthy of notice, are used as prisons for the confinement of state criminals. In the principal saloon is exhibited a bust of Hadrian; and this apartment was used as a theatre for the representation of a tragedy during the fifteenth century. From the summit of the castle a fine view is presented of the windings of the Tiber; except for the purpose of ascending to the summit to enjoy this view, the interior of the castle is scarcely worth a visit.

As a fortress the castle of St. Angelo is now almost worthless." Since the modern improvements in artillery," says Sir John Hobhouse, "it is clear that a castle, commanded as it is by all the neighbouring hills, could never resist a cannonade. It was surrendered during the late war in 1814, after an idle menace from the French captain that the angel on the top should sheathe his sword before the garrison would capitulate."

On Easter Monday there is a splendid display of fireworks from the castle of St. Angelo. Mr. Galiffe speaks of it in high terms. "If my expectations," he says, "were disappointed in the illumination [of St. Peter's], the fireworks far surpassed everything that I had ever seen or imagined. The signal for their commencement is given by a cannon-shot, a little after ten, which is instantly fol lowed by the simultaneous explosion of three thousand sky-rockets, expanding in their flight in the form of a sheaf of corn. I had seen an explosion of fifteen thousand at once in the gardens of Peterhoff; but they did not produce the twentieth part of the effect of this one-fifth of their number, thus skilfully managed, and shooting upwards from the summit of the grand castle of St. Angelo. A beautiful cross-fire of all sorts of fire-works ensues, and the scene terminates with another flight of three thousand skyrockets, similar to that with which it commenced. This certainly is the grandest exhibition of the kind that I have ever seen. The windows facing the castle, on the other side of the Tiber, are in great request on these occasions, and let at high prices.

THE SHORES OF THE LOWER LAKE-THE TOWN OF KILLARNEY-THE CASTLE AND GAP OF DUNLOH. ONE of the chief sources of attraction at Killarney is to be found in the very varied character of the scenery upon the borders of the body of water composing the two lower lakes,-Turk Lake and Lower Lake, as they are respectively called. Its southern and western shores are bounded by the lofty mountains which form so remarkable a feature of the county of Kerry, and which comprise among them the most elevated summits in all Ireland. Very different is the scenery on the other sides. The northern shore is bounded by hills of moderate height sloping gradually down to the water's edge. The part also of the eastern shore, lying contiguous to the northern, is bounded by similar hills; as is likewise that part of it which lies contiguous to the mountains of the southern shore. But throughout the remaining or middle portion of the eastern side, the hills recede considerably, so that for the space of about two miles, a low and level tract intervenes between them and the lake, instead of their coming down close to its waters. This level ground, in itself the least interesting part of the shores of Killarney, becomes of I VOL. XI

importance to the general effect of the scene, from the striking contrast it offers to the mountains, and the apparent increase it gives to their height.

To the southward this flat commences where the hills adjoining the peninsula of Mucruss terminatethat is to say, at Castle Lough Bay, as that great inlet is called which lies to the north of Mucruss peninsula, and forms the south-eastern corner of the Lower Lake. Near the head of the bay formerly stood the old fortress of Castle Lough on an insulated rock; it was a place of strength at least for its size, but was so completely demolished by the Parliamentary army under Ludlow, (whose capture of Ross Castle we recorded in a former number*,) that not a trace of it can be discovered, except a few fragments of walls scarcely discernible from the rocks on which they stand. The name of Castle Lough is at present given to a private demesne.

As far as the river Flesk, which enters the lake opposite the southern end of Ross Island, the flat forms a part of the demesne of Cahernane, an extensive and well-wooded place, described as interesting and possessing many advantages, notwithstanding See Saturday Magazine, Vol. XI., p. 195.

364

source, or rather commencement, is at the northwestern corner of the Lower Lake, whence it runs in a rapid course between the end of the hills on the northern bank, and the end of the vast mountain mass which lies on the western bank. Soon after leaving the lake it is crossed by a bridge; near which stands Dunloh Castle, the remnant of an ancient fortress, which seems to have been originally erected for the purpose of guarding the river, and a defile in the great chain of mountains. It stands on the summit of a small conical hill, whose apex has been cut away to afford a more convenient space for building; and its position must have rendered it, until the introduction of cannon into modern warfare, a place of great strength. It suffered considerably in the wars of the Earl of Desmond, during the reigns of Henry the Eighth and Queen Elizabeth; but it was rebuilt about the period of Sir George Carew's administration in Munster. Subsequently, when the forces of the Parliament came into this part of Ireland, the castle was again attacked, and a great part of it demolished by a bombardment. The only =part of the edifice now standing is a square tower, which constituted but a small portion of the original 1 fabric; this has been converted into a dwelling-house, "which affords more room and convenience than could be expected from the exterior aspect." Owing to the extraordinary thickness of the woods covering the hill upon which the building stands, no part of the lake or of the surrounding country is seen from the area in front of the castle, and even the windows afford but a very confined view; the battlements, 7 however, command a noble prospect of the lake, and of the windings of the river Laune. Our engraving represents the castle as it appears from the banks of the river; in the distance appears the defile or opening in the mountains already mentioned.

This defile, which lies between Tomies Mountains and Macgillicuddy's Reeks, is called the Gap of Dunloh. The entrance is formed by the Holly Mountain and the Bull Mountain, which are shoots from the two larger masses above mentioned.

Amidst the vast mountainous region on the western side of the county of Kerry, there is no scene which exhibits a more varied and sublime combination of the boldest features of uncultivated nature than the Gap of Dunloh. By some terrific and mighty operation, the chain of mountains at this place seems to have been abruptly severed, and the stupendous rocks of which it was formed rent asunder and dispersed in wild disorder through the chasm. On the brow of the mountain which guards the entrance on the right hand, immense projecting masses of stone, suspended in their lofty beds, overhang the pass, threatening destruction to all who approach this savage solitude; and the vast fractured stones which are observable at the base of the cliff, plainly indicate that the danger has not always been imaginary.

One almost shudders at thinking of the horrible crash which must have been produced by these ponderous stones Tumbling all precipitate down dashed, Rattling round loud thundering to the moon, whilst the echoes in the still of retirement repeated the tremendous sound through the windings of the vale. A clear stream at the bottom of the defile winds amongst the rocks,

.......now rapid and now slow,

Now murmuring soft, now roaring in cascades.

This stream forms a communication between a chain of small lakes, some of which are very deep, but others seem only to be a dilatation of the stream, where it has been obstructed in its course by the accumulated ruins of the impending precipice.

The entrance to the gap is very narrow; and the

mountains on each side rise perpendicularly. At a short distance within is a little wild romantic glen, containing a small lake, the waters of which, from the shade cast upon them by the enormous mountain which hangs above, assume a peculiarly dark hue. As the visitor penetrates further into the defile, his admiration of the wild and savage scenery which surrounds him gradually gives way to a feeling of awe. At one point the defile becomes so narrow that there is space merely for the scanty road and the little dark gloomy lake beside it; on either side are steep precipitous crags, while in every direction are seen enormous masses which have been detached from the body of the mountains. Such, indeed, is the fearful sublimity of the pass at this particular spot, that instances have been known in which persons became so paralyzed with terror on reaching it, that nothing could induce them to advance further and brave the apprehension which had seized them, that the mountain might fall and overwhelm them. There are two small bridges thrown across the stream which runs through the defile, at the narrowest parts of the channel; they are of very simple though solid structure, and are in good keeping with the character of the scenery. One of them situated at the head of a cascade, and resting at each end on a single stone, has a very romantic appearance, The object of the bridge is to carry the road from one side of the defile to the other, where the obstacles on the former happen to be insurmountable. The road itself has been formed with considerable skill. In some places it passes along the edge of precipices where the way has been with difficulty cut through the solid stone; in others between immense detached rocks which have fallen from the mountain, and which are just sufficiently separated from each other to admit a single carriage, thus affording a natural passage that could not have been opened elsewhere without prodigious labour and expense. At one particular part of the pass the road runs along the margin of a black pool," and is so unprotected as to inspire the equestrian traveller with fears that should his horse trip he might be precipitated into the lake."

But a scene of this description (says Mr. Wright), defies the address of the most expert tourist and the pencil of the ablest master: it must be seen to be understood. Those who have visited the passes of Borrowdale, in Cumberland, may form a faint idea of the chilling dreary grandeur of Dunloh; but the pass of Llanberris in North Wales, bears a still greater resemblance, and he who has seen the Gap of Dunloh will not be over-awed by the sublimity of Llanberris, nor will the deep-rooted image of Dunloh be eradicated by the combined beauty and grandeur of Borrowdale*.

The defile is three miles in length, and at the termination of it a view of the Upper Lake is to be had. It opens into the vale of Comme Duff, through which the road proceeds. Nearly opposite the termination of the gap is a beautiful waterfall of considerable height, and always plentifully supplied. The waters of this fall flow into a succession of small lakes, occupying the whole length of the valley; in some of these are islands bearing shrubs on their surface and decorated with water-lilies.

"The scenery," says Sir R. C. Hoare, "is truly Alpine, and on a grand scale: the track rugged, but well worth the trouble of ascending. The horrors of the black surrounding rocks are much heightened by their reflections in the different lakes at their base. The scenery resembles that of the Pass of Llanberris under Snowdon in North Wales, but the vegetation amongst the rocks is much more luxuriant. This valley and pass afford many good subjects for the pencil, and are highly worthy the artist's attention."

Ir is the virtue of few words, to render plain that which thousands have obscured; as one glass will transmit a bright image of the sun, where hundreds produce but darkness and confusion.MACCULLOCH.