The Emperor Hadrian possessed a magnificent villa at Tivoli, of which the ruins still remain. In it he endeavoured to perpetuate his own Recollections of Greece. He there erected buildings to which he gave the names of Poecile and Lyceum; by their side he planted the Grove of an Academy, and he carried the stream of an ideal Peneus through the pleasant Vale of an imitative Tempe.
The Traveller in Greece constructs in his own mind such a villa at this. He furnishes it with the beautiful scenes, which he once visited in that country; he refreshes it with the clear waters and cool shades of a Tempe; he decorates it with the fair porticos of a Poecile, a Luceum, and an Academy.
But his recollections of Greece, like the buildings of Hadrian, are liable to fall into decay; the Author of the following pages has, therefore, attempted to give a permanence to his own remini- scences by constructing a humbler Tivoli, in which he hopes that others may perhaps enjoy some share of that pleasure, which was felt of old by the Greek Traveller in the Villa of Hadrian.
Harrow, Nov. 27.1839