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As the report which the Ferrarese ambassadors sent their lord from that place contains a vivid description of the journey, we quote it at length: ILLUSTRIOUS AND HONORED MASTER: Although we wrote your Excellency from Narni that we would travel from Terni to Spoleto, and from Spoleto to this place without stopping, the illustrious Duchess and her ladies were so fatigued that she decided to rest a day in Spoleto and another in Foligno.
The poet employed his short time at Rome in visiting on horseback the most famous sites in the city and neighbourhood as the Alban Mount, Tivoli, Frascati, the Falls of Terni, and the Clitumnus re-casting the crude first draft of the third act of Manfred, and sitting for his bust to Thorwaldsen.
In those days the railroad did not extend beyond Terni in the direction of Aquila, and it was necessary to perform the journey of forty miles between those towns by diligence. It was late in the afternoon of the next day before the cumbrous coach rolled up to the door of the Locanda del Sole in Aquila, and Prince Saracinesca found himself at his destination.
Terni is an agreeable town, pretty well built, and situated in a pleasant valley, between two branches of the river Nera, whence it was called by the antients, Interamna. Here is an agreeable piazza, where stands a church that was of old a heathen temple. There are some valuable paintings in the church. The people are said to be very civil, and provisions to be extremely cheap.
He had already obtained the necessary permission to leave his parish; he then asked for a young friend from San Beda to take his place in the village; left his little dog to the care of Nerina; took his small hoard in a leathern bag strapped to his loins, and went on his way at daybreak along the southwest portion of the valley, to cover on foot the long distance which lay between him and the nearest place at which a public vehicle went twice a week to a railway station; whence he could take the train to Terni and so to Rome.
Following its course, which takes a more direct line than the devious Tiber, past Spoleto on its woody castellated height, the traveler reaches Terni on the tumultuous Nar, the wildest and most rebellious of all the tributaries.
There are no lamp-posts in Terni; and as it was growing dark, and beginning to rain again, we at last inquired of a person in the principal piazza, and found our hotel, as I expected, within two minutes' walk of where we stood. May 26th. At six o'clock this morning, we packed ourselves into our vettura, my wife and I occupying the coupe, and drove out of the city gate of Terni.
Emerging from the woods upon the high bank overlooking the English rapids, the whole unequalled scene burst once more on his view, as he had patriotically tried to remember it when looking at Terni and Schaffhausen.
And on the 20th of September we take up our knapsacks and turn our faces towards Rome, creeping slowly along, with a pause at Arezzo, and a longer pause at Perugia, and another perhaps at Terni. Then we plan to take an apartment we have heard of, over the Tarpeian rock, and enjoy Rome as we have enjoyed Florence. More can scarcely be. This Florence is unspeakably beautiful . . . Oct.
And here was no novice modesty in the tackling of affairs; as O'Hara, who would be there, said: "You must have been born in the City; you have the airs, the very tricks, of Threadneedle Street, you Jew". In a day the prelate counted seven hundred and thirteen telegrams from the Terni Cannon foundry, many a diamond dealer, polisher, cutter, the Vulcan Shipyard of Stettin, the Clydebank, Cramp of Philadelphia, the Russian Finance Minister, San Francisco, Lloyd's, metal brokers, the Neva, and one night, the eve of a dash to Amsterdam, he, with O'Hara, Loveday, and five clerks, sat swotting till morning broke, sustained by gin and soda-water.
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