Harry Brightside; Or, the Young Traveller in Italy. by Aunt Louisa (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. The following week Mr. Vernon invited Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson, Donald, Rose, and Edith, to join them in a pic-nic to the Bay of Baise. So off they all started in two carriages. The road is the same as to Puzzuoli, for this town is in the Bay of Baise; but soon after passing this place, they noticed the remains of villas quite in the sea, and then they came to much larger ones, and the sea heing as clear as glass. you could trace room after room in the water. Baise was a very favourite residence of the Roman emperors and their people. Mr. Ferguson pointed out some ruins, which are said to be the palace of Julius Csesar. A part of it only is in the water, so the children went scrambling about the old walls. Mr. Vernon called them, and told them that, possibly, as the emperor sat in one of the rooms they were thenvisiting, with the blue sea sparkling before him, he might have planned his invasion of England. Harry " But he did not conquer us, did he, papa ?" " Yes, he conquered our rude forefathers, though he did not extend his conquests into the heart of the country, and soon abandoned it. It was Agricola, a most wise and able general who commanded in Britain in the reign of Domitian, who first so far conquered and subdued the Britons as to be able to influence and civilize them; and when you are able to read his life by the historian Tacitus, (who was his son-in-law, ) you will feel that we owe very much to him for having really subjugated and so wisely ruled them. The Romans ruled in Britain 500 years." After gathering some flowers, on they went to the Baths of Nero. They are in perfect preservation, and supplied from the very same hot spring which used to form such luxurious baths for the emperor, whose monstrous cruelties have made his name infamous. ...