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Updated: June 16, 2025
Arbuthnot paid a second visit to Trieste, and the pleasure that the vent gave to Sir Richard is reflected in a letter to Mr. Payne written the same month. I have read every word with the utmost pleasure. We might agree to differ about Cazotte. I think you are applying to 1750 the moralities of 1890. Arbuthnot's visit has quite set me up, like a whiff of London in the Pontine marshes of Trieste.
Is it him, who, from the miracles of his beneficent industry, has done a work which defied the power of the Roman emperors, though with an enthralled world to labour for them; is it him, who has drained and cultivated the PONTINE MARSHES, that we are to satisfy of our cordial spirit of conciliation, with those who, in their equity, are restoring Holland again to the seas, whose maxims poison more than the exhalations of the most deadly fens, and who turn all the fertilities of nature and of art into a howling desert?
An adept in all manly exercises and especially in horsemanship, he sometimes used to ride without stopping from Rome to Naples, a distance of forty-one leagues, passing through the forest of San Germano and the Pontine marshes heedless of brigands, although he might be alone and unarmed save for his sword and dagger.
From the road across the Pontine marshes, a carriage drawn by half a dozen horses, came driving at a furious pace the postillions smacking their whips like mad, as is the case when conscious of the greatness or the munificence of their fare. It was a landaulet, with a servant mounted on the dickey.
After a pleasant evening at the embassy, with Cardinal Gizzi, Monsignore de Falloux, the Princes and Princesses of the Massimo family, and a very charming young lady, Princess Rospigliosi, sister to a naval cadet attached to my staff, named Champagny, who afterwards became the Due de Cadore, I returned to Naples by the Pontine Marshes and Terracina, where the strains of Auber's Fra Diavolo kept springing to my lips.
A number of other pictures testified to the activity of the artist's pencil at Rome: "Combat of Brigands against the Pope's Riflemen," "Confession of the Dying Brigand," also at the Palais Royal, but also we fear destroyed by the popular vandalism of the 24th February; a "Chase in the Pontine Marshes," "Pope Leo XII. carried into St. Peter's."
On, over the Liris at Minturnae, upward, over the mountains behind Tarracina and descending again into the Pontine plain; through the shady groves of Arician ilex that crown the Alban Hills, down to Bovillae, and then away across the Campagna to Rome a marvel of deep cuttings through the hills, a marvel of giant superstructures over valleys, the Appian, the Queen of Ways.
The next day brings us on the Pontine Marshes, wearily flat and lonesome, and overgrown with brushwood, and swamped with water, but with a fine road made across them, shaded by a long, long avenue. Here and there, we pass a solitary guard-house; here and there a hovel, deserted, and walled up.
The portion of the Diary which relates to this celebrated proceeding is lively and picturesque. Yet we read it, we own, with pain; for it seems to us to prove that the fine understanding of Frances Burney was beginning to feel the pernicious influence of a mode of life which is as incompatible with health of mind as the air of the Pontine marshes with health of body.
'The Pontine marshes.... I repeated, and a sense of grandeur and of desolation came upon me. 'But why have you brought me here, to this gloomy forsaken place? Let us fly to Rome instead. 'Rome is near, answered Alice.... 'Prepare yourself! We sank lower, and flew along an ancient Roman road.
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