I turn with pleasure toward my proper mark, from the wearying task of gleaning detached and mostly unimportant notices concerning the Italian nations; and I withdraw myself from the seductive impulse, of trying to divine the nature of what has perished by the continually repeated contemplation of these often uncertain fragments. Yet I must still linger awhile on ground which is of the same kind with the most insecure part of that I have just quitted, but which belongs essentially to Rome, and over which our road must needs pass to the mythical part of Roman story; which must be kept separate, but may not be excluded.

If the investigation concerning the Trojan colony in Latium aimed at deciding with historical probability, by means of direct and circumstantial evidence, whether such a colony actually settled on that coast, a prudent inquirer would decline it. He would deem it absurd to expect evidence as to an event that preceded by five hundred years the time when all is still fabulous and poetical in Roman history: and what traces could be preserved, to supply the place of evidence which obviously cannot possibly exist, when the Trojans with Æneas, even according to the account which assigns the greatest importance to them, were not an immigration such as alters the people it unites with, and distinctly impresses its character on the new formation?