We are bound for Naples

We are bound for Naples! And we cross the threshold of the EternalCity at yonder gate, the Gate of San Giovanni Laterano, where thetwo last objects that attract the notice of a departing visitor,and the two first objects that attract the notice of an arrivingone, are a proud church and a decaying ruin--good emblems of Rome.Our way lies over the Campagna, which looks more solemn on a brightblue day like this, than beneath a darker sky; the great extent ofruin being plainer to the eye: and the sunshine through the archesof the broken aqueducts, showing other broken arches shiningthrough them in the melancholy distance. When we have traversedit, and look back from Albano, its dark, undulating surface liesbelow us like a stagnant lake, or like a broad, dull Lethe flowinground the walls of Rome, and separating it from all the world! Howoften have the Legions, in triumphant march, gone glittering acrossthat purple waste, so silent and unpeopled now! How often has thetrain of captives looked, with sinking hearts, upon the distantcity, and beheld its population pouring out, to hail the return oftheir conqueror! What riot, sensuality and murder, have run mad inthe vast palaces now heaps of brick and shattered marble! Whatglare of fires, and roar of popular tumult, and wail of pestilenceand famine, have come sweeping over the wild plain where nothing isnow heard but the wind, and where the solitary lizards gambolunmolested in the sun!

~Charles Dickens