HUDSON & KEARNS, PRINTERS, LONDON, S.E. THE GARDENS OF ITALY. TONS, DRA Lik FOUNTAIN OF E T VAUEIEA DEST £E © OFTIALY © : it i BY- CHARLES - LATHAM ME WITH - DESCRIPTIONS - BY ‘e oe S E MARCH - PHILLIPS ey a mtn wtih’ |G ROT Ay = € ib AIAIATRIATATOTOIRT Ae ele RIeIRTALRIMTRTETIeCIATATAIAY a ee IN 4A Se ere | © (ur > iy fad Nhe oe oe | oe i — — Be ZA LAT PHM FOL NREL PULLER LA ON = \ B PD, * AS -HORTVS - INCLV Gigli, \D,. Wed PERFECIVS -AD-1905- [| ae VEY, Bp CROs LG = 5 WF DEDICATED =: Sa UE] G | MAJESTY-THE-KING ]//) 2S- Z VILLA ALBANI. LOGGIA OF THE VIELA—LOOKING EAST. VILLA ALBANI, _ es WEST. VILLA—LOOKING HA OW? TREE 7 LOGG VILLA ALBANT, Be es edd a (ADE—--SOUTH PAVILION. / LTE COLONN BEND OF VILLA ALBANI. Mi TRIACS. Wie: SOUTH WEIS. AiG (CIBIN WIRAUIL FOUNTAIN. VIIA Vv ‘INVA 1V VILLA ALBANI. Mieli3 WAL sb val VILLA ALBANI. AL SIC/BIN'T Ls D IRAE IE ER. SOW! Tis IEE, er HIAIS CHIRICIL IZ. OM Miele CWIPRIESSISS, ‘INVETV VITIA VILLA ALBANI, tMPLE. LIS IEIE B / WAR A St HIshe CARRIAGE DRIVE—WEST. INV. VAI VILLA ALBANI. ROMAN TEMPLE AND FOUNTAIN, (tc) Hides CNTPRIGSS) LEB ING IS INVATV VIIA & exe a a sentra sire ee ee ee se = Sen LN MOSAIC SETTING. INVEIV VITIA VILLA ALBANI, «aie tla Rta st iii TES. T QPIRBSS 1GHia/NG VILLA ALBANI, ROMAN RELIEFS, VILLA ALBANI. THE ILEX GARDEN. - VILLA ALBANI., ; VILLA ALBANI. A TERRACE STAIRWAY. VILLA ALBANI. LE SOGLH. “PAVILION: ( 24 ) VILLA ALBANI. TWN PLL. WE. AGS i G fi THE TORLONIA FOUNTAIN. VILLA PAMPHILJ DORIA, ROME. “J T makes one’s hair stand on end,” says Edmond About in his ‘* Rome Contemporaine,” “ to read the figures of the dowries with which the Jesuit decision, during the reign of Innocent X., permitted the Pope to enrich the various members of his House.” It was laid down as his privilege, to assure the future of his family by his savings from the Holy See. According to this judgment, the pontiff, without being considered over- lavish, might spend 400,000 francs a year, and might give a dowry of goo,ooo francs to each of his nieces. The Pope, therefore, set about founding the Pamphilj family, and in this laudable work he was ably assisted by his sister-in-law, Olimpia Pamphilj, one of those strange personalities which stands out from the past in a vignette and leaves an impression fresh and vivid after the lapse of more than two hundred years. Olimpia was born in 1594 at Viterbo; her father, Andrea Maidalchini, was a man of no particular importance, and his daughter was at first destined for a convent, but though taken there as a child, she had the strength of mind to resist violently, and finding she could make an impression in no other way, she accused her confessors of making love to her, and soon got the character of a dangerous inmate whom the nuns were thankful to get rid of. She married Paolo Nini, a noble of Viterbo. Both he and her little son died almost immediately. She soon after married Pamfilio Pamphilj, a soldier, who seems to have been a rough and unkind husband, and who died in 1639, leaving Donna Olimpia with three sons. She is forty-five before we hear much of her, but for many years past she had been gaining that influence, which made her fortune, over her brother-in-law, the abbé, who became Pope five years after Pamfilio’s death. When her husband died, Olimpia was still a young and beautiful woman, but she gave up all idea of pleasure, renouncing all weaknesses of sex, only going into the world when it was politic to do so, devoting all her energies to becoming a power and influence in the life of her exalted brother-in- law and to Innocent X., melancholy, undecided, her firm, optimistic nature, full of cheerfulness and sympathy, soon made her absolutely neces- sary. When the Pope was elected, the people swarmed according to custom to exercise their privilege of sacking the Pamphilj palace, and it was Olimpia who had prudently removed all the valuable furniture and tapestries, leaving them only rubbish to prey upon. From the first she established a splendid position for herself, only asked the most exalted persons to share her banquets, and Cardinals and magnates, say the contemporary chronicles, bowed before her, as her chair, with a baldaquin over it, was borne into the halls of the greatest nobles and the palaces of ambassadors. She lived in the Pamphilj palace in Piazza ee and the diarists of the time record many her visits to the Vatican and the Pope’s in return to her, It seems, they say, as if she was an integral part of his grandeur. After every event, every ceremony of importance, he would come and sup with Donna Olimpia, sometimes she would carry him off to spend the day in the garden of a villa, together they visited the great artists of the day. Olimpia was received everywhere, and even had permission to enter monasteries where women were not admitted, but where she was entertained by the monks at luncheon. What her real relations with Innocent had been in the past remains undecided and is comparatively unim- portant. At the time of his accession he was nearly seventy, and it is easy to account for the ascendancy of a brilliant, attractive woman, devoting all her tact and talent to pleasing and helping and advising the man whose coarse, obstinate, and weak face is immortalised for us on the magnificent canvas of Velasquez. The Roman people hated her for her power over the Pope, for her rapacity and her ostentatious magnificence, and made many pasquinades, plays upon her name—Olimpia, impia (impious Olimpia), representing her occupied with making hay in the sunshine, arranging mar- riages for her sons, securing the red hat for her brother. In one caricature, nailed to her palace door, Pasquino asks, “* Where is the door of Donna Olimpia?’ The answer was a witty enough play on the Italian words: “Che porta vede la porta, che non porta non vede la Pie = {© Win brings sees the door, who brings nothing, sees it not’). The Pope’s name was found effaced over the THE GARDENS OF ITALY. Lateran, and instead of Innocentius Pont. Max., was “Olimpia prima papessa.”’ Every effort was made to find and punish the authors of these satires, but without success. Still more insulting was the report in Rome that a play, entitled “ The Marriage of the Pope,” had been played in London before Cromwell, ending with a ballet of monks and nuns. It seems doubtful whether such a play was ever acted, but the report, none the less, enraged the Pope and his dominant sister-in-law. Parties were formed against her, and the gazettes of the time are full of attacks and scurrilous stories ; but, in spite of occasional reverses, she held on her way, tenacious, determined to secure solid benefits. For a time the austere Cardinal Maculano worked upon the Pope to banish Olimpia from his Court, where her presence gave such scandal ; but, though openly withdrawn, she was still believed to pay secret visits and to watch vigilantly over her interests. Soon after the Cardinal died, and she was restored to her position. Gigli, in his amusing diary, speaks of a visit by the Pope, when he was carried in a sedan chair to the Pamphilj palace to condole with Olimpia, who had been robbed of some splendid jewels. An unlucky page was put to the torture without avail before an audacious letter was received from the thief, saying she ought to be thankful for what he had left her. The Pope, to console her, made her a present of 30,000 scudi. This was in August, 1654. The last time Innocent left the Vatican was in December of the same year, when he was carried in a litter to Donna Olimpia’s garden in the Trastevere. His health was failing fast, and after this she never left him. Other ladies who had fought for his favours tried to see him, but Olimpia fought them all off, herself locked his chamber door at night, and every night bore away the gold received during the day. Every day money was paid in for benefices, for bishoprics, for negotiations, and she is said in ten days to have carried off 500,000 francs. Just at the last the general of the Jesuits forbade her access to him, but immediately after his death she forced her way back, and dragged from under the bed on which the body lay, two cases of gold, with which she escaped. Then with cold-blooded irony, as the question arose of who was to pay for the obsequies of the dead sovereign, she refused to disburse the cost of even a modest funeral, saying, what could a poor widow render in the Way of funeral honours worthy of a great pontiff? Olimpia tried in vain to conciliate the new Pope, Alexander VII. She even relaxed her usual avarice so far as to send him two gold vases, asking to be allowed to kiss his feet, but the present was returned with the message that the Vatican was not a place for women. She soon received an intimation to leave Rome, and passed the rest of her life in a villa near Viterbo. She is said to have left two millions of gold scudi, and her heirs contrived to keep a tight hold of it, in spite of the attempts of Alexander to recover a part. ( 27 Nowhere do so many traces of her remain to-day as in the magnificent villa erected on the Janiculum for her son, Camillo. The villa had become the indispensable adjunct of every great Roman family. The castles of the Middle Ages, on the campagna, had fallen into ruin and disuse, and an outlet was needed from the palaces some- where, where magnates, cardinals, and ladies could walk and converse and enjoy the frivolous games and conceits then in vogue. And their idea of Nature consisted in arcades, in labyrinths, in shaded walks, in sparkling fountains, in sham-classic temples to Ceres and Diana, in miniature lakes and water- works. The villa erected from the designs of Falda by Algardi, and filled with memorials of Olimpia, was second to none in ample magnificence. ‘The position on the Janiculum is on the ancient site of the gardens of Galba, and here the murdered Emperor is supposed to have been buried, a.p. 69, by his devoted slave Argius. Bartoli says that it was built over thirty-four classic tombs of great beauty, forming “a small village with streets, side walks and squares.” It stands high above the city, and merits its old name of Belrespiro. Of all Italian palaces, it most resembles an English country seat. It is surrounded by a fairly exten- sive, undulating park, where they make hay in summer, and which is plentifully timbered with ilexes and stone pines. Nearer the house a cool, dark wood is railed off and inaccessible to the ordinary visitor, and the villa is surrounded by a finely-laid-out formal garden, with geometrical beds set in box edging, fountains and_ sundials, statues, and lemon trees in terra-cotta vases. In the little wood remains of classic times are freely studded about—here, an old sarcophagus, with flowers rising from it, as the old masters painted them in their Assumptions of the Virgin; there, a green mouldy altar, a mossy faun, a white marble figure of a Roman matron, a portico with twisted classic pillars; while on all sides gleam the blue- grey shafts of aloes. In one direction the eye travels over the wide campagna to where Monte Cavo, with its flat top, the site of the ancient temple of Jupiter Latiarius, towers above the soft range of the violet Alban hills, and looking in the other direction, there is such a view of St. Peter’s as is obtained from no other point. The great mass of Vatican buildings, surmounted by the dome, is seen by itself, cut off from the town by inter- vening hills. Behind it rises Monte Mario, and far away Soracte couches dimly on the plain. These gardens were the scene of fierce fighting in the siege of Rome in 1849, and a temple built in 1851 commemorates the French who fell here. A memorial of a different kind catches the eye, looking to the eastward slopes. The name “ Mary” in huge letters of clipped cypress reminds us that Lady Mary Talbot became the wife of Prince Doria in 1835 ; her sister Gwendoline married Prince Borghese. ) VILLA There are no traces of Donna Olimpia’s reign in the superb Pamphilj palace in Piazza Navona, where she spent more than half her life, but in the villa which she planned and which her son built, are inscriptions and busts of her. In the past there were many more, but the best were moved for greater security to the Doria palace. In that gallery we find Innocent X. in marble and in bronze by Bernini, Pamfilio Pamphilj, Olimpia’s husband, a fine-looking man in his Spanish ruff and seventeenth-century dress, and there, too, is Olimpia herself, no longer young, but still hand- some, with piercing eyes, marked eyebrows, close- shut mouth, a strong, resolute, imperious face. There is a story that a fiery horse galloped through these gardens on April rrth, 1655, herelding the death of Innocent X. In 1760 the last heir male of the house of Pamphilj died, and the property passed to that of the Borghese, into which he had married, and was carried by them to the Dorias. In the last century, Silvagni, in his ‘Corte Romana,” recounts a love-tragedy, in which a son of the House of Pamphilj Doria was one of the principal actors. The delightful gossip and historian describes a funeral he witnessed when a child, when the body of a beautiful young girl, dressed in white, her long hair streaming round her, her head crowned with roses, was borne on an open bier through Rome. The flaming torches in the evening twilight, the suppressed emotion of the crowds, the waxen pallor of the face upon the bier, made an impression the child never forgot. The cortege stopped under the walls of the Doria palace, the murmur of the crowd grew loud and deep, and threats and imprecations were uttered. The lovely maiden was Vittoria Savorelli, who had died for love of Don Domenico, second son of Prince Pamphil} Doria, and all Rome was alight with indignation. The story was a sad and simple one. Vittoria was a lovely and accomplished girl, of a romantic, excitable temperament, full of strong religious enthusiasm, and would have a large fortune. Suitors were not lacking, but she showed no inclination towards any of them until, at the age of nineteen, in the winter of 1836, she met at a ball Don Domenico Doria, who was just twenty-one. He was a good-looking young fellow, a fine shot and rider, a beautiful dancer, but already dissipated and frivolous. He was much attracted by Donna Vittoria, sought her out, and distinguished her in every way, and her letters show very innocently, how irresistible she found him, and how she gradually gave him her whole heart. The son of the Pamphilj Doria was an excellent match, and no obstacles were thrown in the way of his suit. Vittoria tells how she celebrated a Triduo to the Virgin, and on returning home was rewarded by finding that the young man had sent his ambassador to her mother. ‘I had no doubt they were speaking about me,” she writes. ‘“ Never did ( 28 PAMPHILJ DORIA. I find the society of my young cousins so weari- some, but I was forced to endure it, and when they departed, mamma immediately called me, and said that the Marchese had come, in the name of Cuccio ” (diminutive for Domenico or Domenicuccio) “to make a formal request for my hand.” Shortly after the engagement was announced, a fearful visitation of cholera in Rome separated the lovers, the Savorelli going to Castel Gandolfo, and the Doria taking refuge in their villa. This gave occasion for an ardent correspondence, and when the lovers met again they grew every day more attached. In his letters, Domenico calls his betrothed by the pet name of Tolla, and is profuse in his expressions of passionate fidelity. Heer letters tell her warm and loving nature responds to his appeals, she looks forward to the future in confidence of perfect bliss. Like an eager, jealous child, she asks about every movement, gives him directions about curling his hair, tells him what clothes to wear, and how to occupy his time. All seemed to promise well, but a_ sinister influence was at work. A Cardinal uncle of Domenico, who had never approved of the match, persuaded his nephew to go on a journey to England, whither his elder brother was bound, to marry Lady Mary Talbot. Queen Victoria’s corona- tion was also to take place, and the Doria princes started, though Vittoria was inconsolable at the prospect of a long separation. Don Domenico left her with renewed protestations, gave her a ring, and bemoaned his hard fate at being parted from one whom, he took God to witness, he held already as his wife. By a sort of presentiment she wrote to a trusted friend: “ He is gone, and I am a prey to all the terrors caused by a long absence, and the fear of losing him forever. I am almost reduced to despair. I imagine myself abandoned, dishonoured, the talk of the city.” For some time his letters were long, frequent, and tender. He describes the coronation, and says that he loves to see everywhere the dear name of Victoria. His last letter ends : “« My paper fails, but my heart does not follow suit, and is full of the most tender love for my Tolla.— Yours eternally, Cuccio.” Only eight days later he wrote very coolly from Brussels, both to Vittoria and her father, saying that as his uncle opposed the match, he thought it his duty to break it off, and hoped they would soon forget him. The distracted parents, who felt that the sorrow would crush their child, made every effort to induce him to redeem his promise ; but his unscrupulous uncle sent him as companion a man who worked on his weak nature, led him into the wildest excesses, what little good he had in him was swamped in evil, and he entirely renounced his confiding love. For a whole month the terrible truth was kept back from Vittoria, though day by day she grew more sad and anxious, as no letters came ; but at length it was broken to her. She wrote him one more letter, and when no reply iin GARDENS OF ITALY. came her health failed rapidly. Her father and mother persuaded Cardinal Odescalchi to exert his influence with the Doria Cardinal, but all to no purpose; he remained inexorable, and Don Domenico himself was deaf to every entreaty. Vittoria pined away. She. still kept her faithless lover’s portrait; but when all hope was gone she consecrated her ring to the Virgin. On September 25th, 1838, she wrote Domenico a last letter, and traced some loving words of forgiveness on the back of his picture, and a week after she died. When the city realised the news, a storm of indignation arose. Her biography and letters were published, verses were composed, the great public funeral marked the popular sympathy, Edmond (29 ) About gave the name of Tolla to one of his heroines in her honour, and feeling against Domenico ran high. He, meanwhile, was in Venice, where he received the news of her death with every mark of profound indifference. He waited a year before returning to Rome, and then appeared at a party given by the French Ambas- sador. He soon found, however, that he had miscalculated the tenacity of the public memory, and that it was unsafe for him to remain. He left Rome for ever, and settled at Genoa, where, ten years after Vittoria’s death, he married a Genoese lady. He lived till 1873. His memory is still execrated, while that of the fair young girl whom fate used so cruelly, is still dear to the hearts of the Roman people. ° TROOU (WE WIEUE ny | ia WEST STAIRWAY, +i Zi VINOd (IHdWVd VTTIA e VILLA PAMPHILJ DORIA. SOUTHERN ASPECT. THE Vd WIA ‘VINOd fIIHdJ mama oan CORNER OF WESTERN TERRACE. THE WESTERN STAIRWAY. VSIEITAS VINOd lHdNVd PROM LHE SOULH- WEST. Ont 2 Ree Ns as = BI — y ops ‘VINOd (THdWVd VWTTIA PAMPHILJ DORIA, VILLA BETWEEN VILLA AND TERRACE, VILLA PAMPHILJ DORIA. VALILZAL SAROME Sisllss SOW Mal, THE VIELA PAMPHILJ DORIA, VERNGOSS SOCAL, TARETORCA GL FOUNTAIN OF VILLA PAMPHILJ DORIA, ROTUNDA. THE HITIGARTN CIE. (OVE VILLA PAMPHILJ DORIA, VILLA PAMPHILJ DORIA, Dells elle AUN VILLA PAMPHIL] DORIA, IN OUI al SIDE (OUR TEU WIL IE Gl (an) VILLA PAMPHILJ DORIA. BERRA CESs Or Alle GCAS CADIES. NR CASCADES, WESTERN GARDENS. VILLA PAMPHILJ DORIA TOPIARY WORK AND THE LODGE. THE VATICAN GARDENS, ROME. LTHOUGH the Vatican hill was not. sur- rounded with walls until the ninth century, the ground now occupied by the gardens has been a sacred spot from _ prehistoric times. The earliest legends speak of it as the abode of a god. It was the fourteenth of the fourteen regions into which Augustus divided the city. Gardens such as those of Agrippina, and the still more famous ones of Domitian, were situated here. Here was the circus of Caligula, which was rendered conspicuous by the lofty obelisk which now adorns the Piazza of St. Peter, the one obelisk which enjoys the distinction of never having been levelled to the ground, and which towered over the spina of the circus. Here was the sepulchre of Scipio, the young destroyer of Carthage, and that of Honorius and his wife Maria, daughter of Stilicho, the last great Roman general. Here stood a temple dedicated by Nero to the memory of Romulus, one to Mars, and one to Apollo. Pliny speaks of them, and all ancient writers concur that they were the most sublime of edifices. s time wore on, this part of outlying Rome was deserted, and shar ah the general decay. Writers in the eighth century cieeics the Vaticanum as ‘the ae eeable fields,” from the superstitious and licentious rites carried on there, and from its generally evil reputation. In 848, when Leo IV. was Pope, the dreaded Saracens appeared for the second time at Ostia, when a battle and a great storm led to their confusion and defeat, and numbers of slaves were brought to Rome and set to labour at restoring the walls. Leo’s most celebrated under- taking was the fortification of the Vatican district, an event in the history of the city, for out of this fortification the Civitas Leonina, or Leonine City, arose, a new quarter of Rome, and a new fortress destined to be of great importance in later centuries. At the time that Aurelian had enclosed the city with walls, the necessity for including the Vatican had not arisen, and it remained open and outside the city. Even after the building of St. Peter’s, and after convents, hospitals, and deel ings had grown up round it, the necessity for building walls for its protection had not occurred to any Pope till the time of Leo III, He began to build, and had he carried out his idea, the sack of the basilica by the Saracens could never have taken place. The work had been suspended, and the materials of the partially constructed walls had been carried off again for other purposes. Leo IV. revived the project, and, with the help of the Emperor Lothar, worked hard to carry it out. He distributed the expense so that every town in the ecclesiastical state, the convents, and all the domains of the Church hore a part. The walls were begun in 848 and finished in 852. They stretched from Hadrian’s Mausoleum, up the Vatican hill, then making a bend, crossed the hill and came straight down the other side. They were nearly 4oft. in height, and were defended by forty-four strong towers. One of these strong round corner towers still stands on the top of the Vatican hill, and is called the Saracens’ Tower. ‘The line of Leo’s walls may still be traced along almost their entire route. For centuries Rome ad witnessed no such festival as that which on June 27th, 852, celebrated the dedication of the Leonine City. The entire clergy, barefoot, their heads strewn with ashes, walked in procession singing round the walls. Before them went the seven Cardinal-Bishops, who sprinkled the walls with holy water. At each gate the procession halted, and each time the Pope invoked blessings on the new quarter. The circuit ended, he dis- tributed gifts of gold and silver and silken palliums among the nobles, the populace, and the colony of foreigners. The walls were afterwards rebuilt by Pius IV., in the sixteenth century, and the earlier fortifications were almost entirely obliterated. It was Sixtus IV., the Pope to whom we owe the Sistine Chapel, who first laid out the grounds extending up the hill as the gardens of the Vatican. The taste for gardens was just reviving, and the building of medieval castles was giving way tu that of fascinating and luxurious villas; and as Pope Sixtus created the garden, it remains in great measure to-day. It has been enlarged from time to time, and in 1845 the grounds of the Hospital di San Spirito, a religious institution dating from the eighth century, were absorbed. A piece of the facade of the Hospital, with its double cross, still stands against the walls. Pius IX. laid out the THE GARDENS OF ITALY. carriage drive and built some supplementary walls during his so-called « imprisonment.” The gardens are entered from the Museum of Sculpture at the back of St. Peter’s, and for more than a cursory glimpse of them a special permit ig required. This is obtained from one of the Cardinals, and requires to be wiséd by the major- domo, who is to be found near the entrance to the Scala Regia. Armed with this, a delicious early morning wander can be enjoyed. The gardens are cleared at twelve, when the Pope generally walks or drives there. They are of horseshoe shape. On entering, a noble terrace stretches away and goes round two sides of a large formal garden. This terrace, which has a beautiful view of the great dome, is the place where Leo XIII. so often sat, and where the well- known picture of him, surrounded by his Cardinals, was painted. It is sheltered by a high close-clipped wall of greenery, in which statues are set at intervals ; beyond, are dropping terraces with walks dark and shady under bowering ilexes, and openings cut here and there, in which fountains fling high their silver showers. At the end of the first stretch of terrace the carriage road mounts up the hill and encircles the grounds ; but more tempting than the wide, well-kept drive, is an irregular opening in the green wall, through which you pass into a bosky wood, wild and shady, exquisite in the spring-time when the elms and birches are fresh with tender green, the ground starred with blue and white anemones and rosy cyclamen and bluebells, and the blackbirds and nightingales sing in every bush. The little woodland glade is dotted about with relics of antiquity, remains of the masses of marble and stone works which must have once adorned this spot. Here is a little votive altar half hidden in feathery green, there a graceful figure of a nymph stands in the flickering sunlight, or a tall, worn stone cross, a relic of early Christian days, towers above an old sarcophagus. If it were not for these documents in stone, we might fancy ourselves in some lovely English wood ; but they carry us back to a remote past whose sequence with to-day has never been broken. At the top of the wood the ground opens out, and upon the crest of the hill is a small villa with plainly-furnished rooms, and a little chapel, built as a summer residence for Leo XIII. Beyond it is a vineyard with a broad walk leading to the ugly modern grotto of the Madonna of Lourdes, and further on, to a large enclosure for wild animals 3a sort of menagerie. Here are ostriches, pelicans, and other foreign birds, and various kinds of deer. The present Pope often walks here, and comes to watch them through the bars. The long wall here, with the Saracenic tower, was that held by the Roman volunteers who fought so well against the French in 1849. The sculptor, W. W. Story, speaks of his visit during the defénce. “As we looked from the wall on this the third day after (45 the battle, we saw the monks under the black flag looking for the unburied dead who had fallen in the ditches or among the hedges. The French had retreated without an effort to bury their dead, and a living, wounded man was found on this third day with the bodies of two dead soldiers lying across him.” A little below this we come to a tiny summer-house, in which is a gilt chair where His Holiness may rest after the climb uphill. A shady pergola of vines stretches in front of it, under which the light is golden green on the hottest summer day, and this is a favourite promenade of the present, as it was of the late, Pope. Not far off is Pope Leo’s little writing house, in which he used often to transact business with his secretary. During the great heat Leo XIII. often went up to the garden at nine in the morning, after saying mass, and spent the whole day in the garden, receiving everyone there, dining in the garden pavilion, guarded by the Swiss, to whom he generally sent a measure of good wine, and in the cool of the day he would take a drive, and not return to the Vatican till after sunset. The road passes near his little summer- house, and it was at this point that on his last drive the aged pontiff stopped the carriage, and raising himself, looked long over the Eternal City lying below him, with the Alban Hills rising far beyond. Pius IX. used to ride here on his white mule, and the present Pope walks here nearly every day. Past a rough grotto fountain on the slope of the hill, the road leads downward to the lower and more formal part of the garden, past a fine wall fountain, where the water spouts in jets and stars over the brown lip of a basin fringed with maiden- hair fern. As we look at the water gushing from the rocks we may recall that it was brought here in its plenty by Trajan, after a terrible inundation led him to restrain and turn the Tiber. This, according to Falda’s old book of gardens of 1640, went by the name of Fontana delli Torri, and from it the path winds to the entrance to a little palm garden, which of old was the garden of the simples. Immediately below is the entrance to the nucleus, the most beautiful spot in the garden, the Casino of Pius IV., the Villa Pia, the chef d’auvre of the famous architect Pirro Ligorio, built with material taken from the stadium of Domitian in Piazza Navona. A stone-paved courtyard is set round with low walls and seats, above which are ranged stone vases, in which grow stiff yet graceful aloes; at either end is a beautiful porch-like recess, the arch of which is filled by a great, graceful shell decoration, and the sides have busts set in niches, the whole decorated in the rich and fanciful style of the Renaissance with delicate painting and stucco-work. On one side is a large garden-house, airy, yet with a certain stateliness, its facade rich and dainty with wreaths and bas-reliefs. The walls within are painted with gay medallions by Zuccaro, Baroccio, and Santi di Tito. Here are two ancient mosaics, one representing a hunt, the other a bacchanalian ) TSS WAIT CONN, dance, and some old terra-cotta pictures, which once adorned the Borgia apartments and were placed here by Canova. Among the antiques is a Hermes, . a little statue of Asop, a helmeted Minerva, mee of emperors, and a sleeping Genius. Charming putt ride certo on the balustrade, and a eosin in the middle is flanked by two more playing with dolphins. Over all looms the great dome, filling the eye and the mind with its overwhelming size and significance. It is such a summer garden as the old painters loved to place their monks and Fathers in, holding a santa conversazione in the evening of a southern summer. Here Pius IV., who loved an easy, simple, outdoor life, used to converse with his nephew and chief adviser, S. Carlo Borromeo. Here he assembled round him all the men. of his time who were distinguished for their virtue and talents, and held those ‘‘ Notte Vaticane”” meetings at which at first poetry and philosophy were discussed, but which, after the necessity for Church reform became apparent both to the Pope and S. Carlo, were entirely devoted to the discussion of sacred subjects. When the luxurious court of Leo X. was the centre of artistic and literary life, the witty and pleasure-loving Pope held banquets and gave concerts in these gardens, and a circle, to which ladies were admitted, listened to music and recitations of poets on these benches and beneath the shade of the pines and ilexes. Leaving the palazzetto by a broad flight of steps, more box-clipped hedges and long walks lead to a huge formal garden, to which Falda assigns the somewhat inappropriate name of the “secret garden.” It is laid out with box- edged flower-beds, statues, lemon and orange trees in terra-cotta vases, and has four large fountains. A more interesting spot is the inner garden, or the Giardino della Pigna, which is entered by a door at the end of the long gallery of the Museo Chiaramonti, but its shrubs and flowers have been destroyed to make room for a column to the Council of 1870. In front of the semi-circular niche of Bramante is set up the famous pigna, or giant fir cone, rift. high, which was believed to have formed the apex of the mausoleum of Hadrian, or, as some antiquarians hold, was the central ornament of a fountain, perhaps of the Lake of Agrippa in Campus MeMatG. Pope Symmachus early in the sixth century placed it over the fountain he had made, in front of the ancient basilica. It was still there in the time of Dante, who, describing a giant’s head which he saw through the mist in the last circle of hell, says : “La faccia mi parea longa e grossa, Come la pina di S. Pietro in Roma.” —Inf. xxxi., 58. It bears the name of the bronze-founder who cast it,

Cos 35 ee nies = : eae = : wae FS | Re oe ae a : ee aac pe ie e ok Sa 2 ee a Lee = oe oe ee = yy a WEST VILLINO MEDICI THE VATICAN, VESTIBULE OF WEST VILLINO PAVILION, THE VATICAN. SOCMREE if PAVILION—-LOOKIN¢ EAST: OF y VESTIBULE 7 THE VATICAN, COURT OF VILLINO MEDICI FROM THE SOUTH-WEST, STAIRWAY OF THE VILLINO MEDICI. ( 58 ) THE VATICAN. THE WESTERN TERRACE. THE VATICAN. FORMAL PLAN. ON ROOF OF PANTHEON. BRONZE FIR CONE FORMERLY THE VATICAN. es SCEN y NORTH DE VILLA BORGHESE, ROME. HE end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries in Rome saw the creation of the greater part of the modern aristocracy. With the one excep- tion of the Farnese, no Pope of the Renaissance had founded a great family, but now came the period of nepotism, and each successive Pope was ambitious of founding a princely House. Great Roman families were established, and the magnificent palaces and villas required by these, with their unbounded taste for pomp and display, spread over vast sites, till then covered by mean_ build- ings or gardens and vineyards. The family of Borghese was one of the earliest to rise into splendour. It was in 1605 that Camillo Borghese was raised to the papal throne as Paul V., and the splendid patron of art to whom we owe the villa was born in 1576. Scipione Caffarelli was the Pope’s nephew on his sister’s side. He had been brought up at Perugia, where his wit and versatility raised the highest expectations, and immediately on his uncle’s accession he was sent for to the Vatican. The Pope formally adopted him, giving him the name and arms of the Borghese ; he was created a Cardinal, and at once assumed the superin- tendence of the palace, the direction of politics and management of State affairs. In April, 1608, the State archives notice that Cardinal Scipione Bor- ghese intends to establish a grand villa outside Porta Pinciana, and in the following years we more than once find Pope Paul giving him ‘“ another vineyard” to add to it. The nucleus was a small vineyard lying along the long western wall, called Muro Torto, which had belonged to the family before Camillo’s acces- sion. In the year 1612 the church benefices conferred on the Cardinal were computed to secure him an income of 150,000 scudi. The Pope loaded him with presents, jewels, vessels of silver, and magnificent furniture. It is only fair to recol- lect that he and the Pope rivalled one another in acts of generosity and munificence towards others. Cardinal Scipione was deeply beloved. His gentleness and courtesy, his kindness of heart, gained him the title of “the delight of Rome.” ~The gossiping archives of the time constantly mention instances of his goodness and his popularity. 62 A lady, whose daughter is shamefully ill-treated by her husband, appeals to him in heartrending distress, another lays before him all the details of a lawsuit, poets dedicate their works to him, ambas- sadors come to see his latest acquisitions. He was one of the earliest and most generous patrons of Bernini, who has left us two splendid portrait busts of him, which are now in the Accademia in Venice. Here we have the great prelate of the seventeenth century, as he swept through the marble halls of his palace in robe and biretta of crimson silk : the urbane, pleasure-loving patron of the fine arts, the easy, courteous host. Here is his ample face and form, his dignified bearing ; the eyes are small and piercing, yet good-tempered, the nose coarse, the mouth large and genial, the countenance has a look of power and large kindliness. His first idea in making the villa seems to have been the wish to have a place of his own outside the city to which he could invite Court personages and distinguished foreigners. He had already acquired an estate at Frascati, and had there built a superb villa; but as Secretary of State, he found it difficult to go there frequently, much more so to transport there the ecclesiastics of the Sacred College, the Roman nobility, the foreign ambas- sadors, and the Court ladies who made up the society in which he delighted. He designed it also in a measure for the benefit of the Roman people, to whom it was often opened. Scipione Borghese died in 1633, leaving all his possessions to his brother, Marc Antonio, who had been created Prince of Sulmona. In succeeding years there are continual records of vineyards and pieces of land being bought and thrown into the grounds. The Borghese princes always reserved the right to close it on certain days, but about 1828 it became looked upon almost as a public resort. In that year its owner complains of damage done to the fountains, and it was closed for a time, but was again opened at the urgent request of Cardinal Aldobrandini. In 1832 permission was given to open a restaurant, splendid public fétes were held there, and by 1865 it was thrown open on six days of the week. When an attempt was made to close it in 1884 the public rebelled, and the papers declared that the populace, citizens, THE GARDENS OF artists, strangers, the Court, the King and Queen, were all mortified and inconvenienced. For some time it was subject to capricious regulations, and it is a matter for congratulation that the largest and most splendid garden of Rome, which bounds the whole of one side of the city, is at length freely thrown open as the property of the nation. Among those persons who succeeded the old Cardinal, the best remembered Is, perhaps, Pauline, the sister of Napoleon I., who married Don Camillo Borghese in 1803. Silvagni, in his “ Corte Romana,” gives us a vivid description of her, her passion for dress, her beauty, white and transparent with Greek profile, hair done in curls 3 /a Grecgue, her sylph-like form. In spite of her frivolity she was full of wit and delicacy, and all smiles and soft words, and was universally beloved. Her statue by Canova as Venus Vincitrice, almost unclothed, is conspicuous in the villa, and at the time was declared to be worthy of Phidias. The story is well known of her being asked if she had not found posing in “the altogether ” very disagreeable, and her reply, “ Why should 1? The room was well warmed!” The Duchess d’Abrantés, who knew her well, declares in her memoirs that she was quite as beautiful as the statue. Early in the nineteenth century Charles IV., the abdicated King of Spain, had rooms in the villa, a miserable creature, with a wife of whom the Duchess d’Abrantés writes that “she knew not how to be wife or guilty woman, or mother or sovereign. A more sympathetic memory that haunts these halls and woods is that of Lady Gwendoline Talbot, who in 1835 became the wife of a later Camillo Borghese, and whose charity, simplicity, culture, and kindness made a deep impression on Rome, where she was worshipped during her short mar- ried life. Silvagni gives a charming description of her. Fair, with great brown eyes, delicate profile, smiling mouth, and masses of chestnut hair. She helped the poor, befriended and found dowries for orphans, work for able-bodied women, and her courage and charity during a visitation of cholera were long remembered. She was the delight of her husband and the admiration of society, which, corrupt as it was, was still able to appreciate her angelic purity. In October, 1840, the villa was, according to custom, thrown open to the people, and a féte was held there. Lady Gwendoline was full of life, superintending the games, her delightful smile ready to greet all her friends. The following day she had a sore throat, but after two days’ illness was sufficiently recovered to sit up in bed and breakfast with her husband, whose anxiety was quite reassured. Later in the day the doctor came and found mischief hitherto unsuspected, and it was broken to her that she had only a few hours to live. In the midst of the anguish at parting with her husband and her four little children, she kept up his courage and her own and showed the utmost resignation. Rome was in consternation, ( 63 PALLY. and the mourning for her was universal. Her husband was beside himself with grief, and the tragedy was not complete; in a few days three of the children had followed their mother—the last was with difficulty saved. In later days the Borghese family was ruined by building speculations, and, after three hundred and eighty years of sumptuous splendour, the villa was sold to the State for 3,000,000 lire. A writer in 1700, Montelatici, says that the grounds were divided into four parts: The Giardino Boscareccio, which embraced the whole piece from the entrance at Porta Pinciana to the Fountain of Horses and included the palace itself; the piano della Pros- pettina, the stretch at the back of the villa, where there is a fine view towards Tivoli; the park, or middle part, including the Giardino del Lago; and the garden of Muro Torto, reaching to the west wall and going down to the Piazza del Popolo entrance. Broad, smooth carriage-drives make a complete circuit of the grounds and traverse them at intervals. Casinos, of two Storeys, are placed in various parts and serve as park lodges, and there were many little buildings scattered about which have disappeared. The slopes are rich in woods, here park-like meadow stretches, groups of oaks and elms, there close, fine turf under pines and cypresses. We find all the union of art and nature which gives to Italian pleasure-grounds their peculiar fascination. “The ilex trees,” says Hawthorne in “ 'Transforma- tion,” **so ancient and time-honoured are they, seem to have lived for ages undisturbed. It has already passed out of their dreamy old memories that only a few years ago they were grievously imperilled by the Gaul’s last assault upon the walls of Rome never was there a more venerable quietude than that which sleeps among their shel- tering boughs; never a sweeter sunshine than that which gladdens the gentle gloom which these leafy patriarchs diffuse over the swelling and subsiding lawns. “In other parts of the grounds the stone pines lift their dense clumps upon a_-= slender length of stem, so high that they look like green islands in the air, flinging down a shadow on the turf so far off that you scarcely know which tree has made it there is enough of human care bestowed long ago and_ still bestowed, to prevent wildness growing to deformity, and the result is an ideal landscape, a woodland scene that seems to have been projected out of the poet’s mind. If the ancient Faun could reappear any- where, it must surely be in such a scene as this.” Imitation classic ruins are constructed here and there out of the ancient materials which abounded everywhere. The woodland is broken up by groups of interest. Mounting up from the Piazza del Popolo you reach an open space, guarded by two obelisks of red Egyptian granite, stone seats are set round against a low wall, a stone lion keeps guard above, and one tall cypress stands sentinel. Here is the entrance to the ‘Garden of the Lake,” ) VILLA BORGHESE. the most popular corner of the grounds. The enclosure is gay with flowers, brilliant in the spring with purple Judas trees. The lake itself is very pretty, with its swans and its pseudo-Greek temple reflected in the water. Fine sarcophagi and tombs are placed under the old trees, and in spring the glades are blue with ground ivy and bluebells. From the side of the lake a bridge crosses the road, far below, to a wild bit of the garden where there is a beautiful grove of stone pines, and where once was the “seraglio of the lions,” and there the keeper’s cottage is still in use. Opposite the entrance to the garden, a long avenue leads to a beautiful little TTempietto, its slender columns and cupola gleaming silver grey against the dark foliage. The valley below is filled by the circus, a model of a Roman race- course, set round with rows of stone seats rising one above another. Here, under the shadow of immemorial pines, the Roman populace gathers to watch races and contests. Many thousands are easily accommodated, and on a lovely spring day there are few pleasanter ways of enjoying an open-air show. Usually, however, it is quiet enough, nurses and children, or quiet walkers stray under the trees, or a group of young priests play football in the arena. Delightful fountains are scattered through the woods; one of the most conspicuous is ‘the Horses,” placed where several broad roads converge. The tiers of trickling basins are supported on the heads of horses tossed backwards, with flowing, curly manes and dolphins’ tails, and the water spouts in bold curves from between their moss- grown fore feet and falls into a broad basin. This is the fashionable drive, and motor-cars gather here, and the smart carriages of the Roman ladies roll past through the long spring afternoons. Only a stone’s throw off, down below, under giant ilex avenues like cathedral aisles, is a tall, slender fountain, set in a dim, religious light, where, even on a bright day, the sunlight can only strike through in shafts. The banks around are blue with sweet violets when March begins, and the nightingales sing under the rich, green velvet branches of the old trees. In this part of the doscareccio and in the adjoining “park”? were formerly situated the “seraglio of the tortoises,” the “seraglio of the gazelles,” the ‘“ wood for hunting thrushes,” and the “ Ragnaia,” or enclosure for coursing hares. Numbers of animals were kept in the park: deer, goats, Indian pigs, ostriches, peacocks, swans, and ducks, and small birds were as legitimate an object of the chase as they are to-day in Italy. And so we mount up to the nucleus of it all, the casino or pleasure-house which the princely Cardinal built to entertain his guests in, but which was yet only a summer-house and never a home, for the dread malaria forbade its being dwelt in, save very occasionally. “ If you come hither in summer and stray through these glades in the ( 64 ) golden sunset, fever walks arm-in-arm with you, and death awaits you at the end of the dim vista.” The gay house of the courtly prelate is some- thing of a fairy palace. It is set in a courtyard, with flights of steps, balustrades of travertine and fountains, and everywhere we see the dragon and the crowned eagle, the arms of the “ most excellent House of Borghese.” We must try to forget the act of vulgar vandalism, by which the original balustrade was torn away to adorn a millionaire’s villa on the Thames and an imitation substituted. The villa, built from designs by Giovanni Vasanzio, or Fiamingo, the Fleming, is a stucco edifice with two small square towers and a facade enriched with moulded garlands, niches with busts and statues, projecting eaves and a fine wrought- iron grille. Passing to the left you reach a gateway where tall iron gates admit to the garden front. On either side of the entrance are two long enclosures which were called “the secret gardens.” Each has an aviary at one end, now falling into ruin, silent fountains and moss-grown fruit trees, and nowhere do the violets cluster so thickly. It is painful to record that this year the old walls are torn down, the secret gardens thrown open, and modern iron railings placed round them. The stretch behind the villa was that called the Prospettina, and through old ilexes scattered on the grass you come to a quaint pleasaunce which it is easy to believe was a favourite resort of the Cardinal and his guests. A semi-circular space is bounded on the north by a long ornamental wall, built with pillars, niches, vases, and bas-reliefs from old sarcophagi, and reached by flights of steps are windows through which to view the distant ‘* pros- pect,” where Soracte shows blue against the horizon. This spot is approached by an ilex avenue guarded by stately terminal figures, and raised seats are placed round, for the place was a sort of open-air theatre. We can well imagine the courtly gallants, the laughing ladies in be-ribboned brocades, the purple and rose- red of ecclesiastical robes against this background of rich grey-green. So, too, on the wide greensward under the garden front of the villa, we can picture that old-world life. Here the grass is still fresh, and signs of care remain. A fountain, guarded by a dejected nymph, plays languidly into an immense shallow basin, on the edge of which cactuses grow in stone vases. Round about, against a circle of ilexes, are placed some forty or fifty pedestals, bearing ancient wine-vases, statues, antiques or copies, and terminal figures. Many of the fountains have disappeared. Gone is the great fountain of Narcissus, with a life-size figure of the youth in bronze, copied from an antique marble. Clumps of oleanders make a rosy gleam in summer, other- wise the effect of the crumbling grey stone against the dark foliage is soft and solemn. What groups have gathered here in the hot summer days ! Ladies, such as Bronzino shows us, with their cavaliers, beaux in powder and patches, of Goldoni’s and Pietro Longhi’s day, Pauline and her triends in THE GARDENS. OF ITALY. their scanty, short-waisted Empire frocks, and the men in Jacobin costumes, Robespierre hats, and long hair and canes. Lingering here at sunset, when all is hushed, for a moment you may still see the wave of feathers and fans, may hear the rattle of scabbards, the echo of light laughter, the click of high-heeled shoes, and catch a glimpse of those bowing, smiling, vanishing visions, which the statues seem still to watch with their blank eyes. There is no space to tell of the marble halls within, frescoed by Zucchero or Archita of Lucca, a favourite artist of the day. The old museum was sold to Napoleon I., and the antique statues collected by Cardinal Scipione, when every dealer in Rome brought him his best ¢rowvail/le, made the chief nucleus of the Louvre gallery. Much of the present collection has been transferred from the Borghese palace. There still remain the groups ordered from Bernini, the rising young sculptor about whom all Rome was going wild. Pauline is here as Venus Triumphant. Upstairs are gems of Perugino and Francia, none sweeter than that little panel of St. Stephen kneeling in robe of vivid carmine which copyists toil after in vain. ‘The Cardinal bought Raphael’s famous Deposition from the monks of San Francesco, in Perugia, in spite of the expostula- tions of the descendants of the Baglioni, who had placed it there. Last and best of all, we come to that noble masterpiece of Titian, one of the most famous pictures of the world, a picture for which Prince Borghese could have got as much, had free sale been allowed, as he was paid for the villa and all its contents. Call it what you will, Medea, sacred and profane love, Art and Nature, it remains the very embodiment of the religion of beauty. The rich Italian sunshine bathes the country-side, the foun- tain sparkles against the mellow marble, the rose leaves drop lazily one by one, the cupid frolics with the water, the little censer burns away in the blue and breathless air, the fair women dream for ever of love in idleness. It breathes the whole spirit of Italy and the very air of the Renais- sance; dreamlike, joyous, sad, with the remem- brance of things long past, its possession is a fitting crown to the enchantments of this enchanted palace. VILLA BORGHESE. TRIUMPH. ARCH OF Lo SEA-HORSES, CENTR WAVE, AVENUE. “ASHHOUOT VITA 89) ( SAL TEV RUTI PULTE: IN TaFLES: GARDENS. aN @ “is cA CO] D y a Gadteau (ah a “ASHHOUO VITIA 69 LOGGIA OF SI GUR. TEIKOUNES, “ASHHOUOT VITIA of —* S54 Fa IBIS ESE: WALL, SOUTH FORECOURT. “ASHHOUO. VWITIA AVENL LETS: (xj iop) cal : zZ S ‘i S NX LN VILLA BORGHESE. PORTION OF THE AMPHITHEATRE. DRINKING FOUNTAINS, NORTH AVENUE, VILLA BORGHESE, NTRANCEL ESTERN £ WE LHE NEAR > NORTH AVENUI SEATS; ROMAN ) 73 ( GARDENS OF THE QUIRINAL, ROME. HE long, central garden, of which passers-by can catch a glimpse beyond the guarded gates, runs the whole width of the grounds, and is flanked on either side by towering walls of close-clipped box and bay. ‘These must be at least thirty feet high and of great width, with shady roads cut within them. Huge old ilex trees grow at intervals and throw their distorted black arms in all directions. These are more than three hundred years old, and are part of the garden which was originally planted here by Ippolito, Cardinal of Este, adjoining his town house ;_ his country seat being Villa d’Este at Tivoli. These long and lofty éocages map out the garden, and between their ranks are lawns and parterres and the most goodly show of palm trees to be seen any- where in Italy, unless it may be in Villa Pamphilj Doria. The larger ones would take two men to clasp their trunks. The garden is full of old Roman and Renaissance remains—sarcophagi, garden figures, and vases. A fine old marble sundial is conspicuous in one of the square gardens, and in another part there is a large low basin and a fountain where water nymphs sport upon the rocks, and eight or ten groups of arums make a circle round them, among the goldfish. A great part of the garden has been turned into a riding-ground, which of course cannot be anything but unsightly, and looking upon this is the pa/azzina in which are the apartments occupied by the Royal Family, at the opposite end of the garden from the palace proper. The garden is bounded at this end by a high erection of wall with balconies, along the facade of which are ranged long terra-cotta flower-boxes, from which hang masses of rose-coloured ivy geraniums, forming a brilliant curtain upon the creamy background. It is absolutely quiet in the Royal garden. Nothing can be heard, to tell that it is in the heart of a great capital. The distant chime of bells, the twittering of birds, are the only sounds that reach one’s ears. In the grounds are several casinos ; a pretty, bark-covered summer-house has lately been built for the Royal children, who pass a great part of every day playing in the garden. They keep their toys in a simply-furnished room opening on a stone piazza, which is evidently a favourite play-place, to judge by the dédris left 74 lying from the morning’s games, the whips and bricks and the dolls’ feast laid out on a_ bench and decorated with berries and birds’ feathers. A charming little parterre runs along the terrace, which overlooks the distant town and is fenced in by rose hedges on one side and on another by masses of sweet peas trained to make a_ thick wall of shaded colour. From the terrace, on which are groups of garden statuary, one seems to look over all Rome, with St. Peter’s towering on the Vatican hill, and the fortress of Monte Mario rising to the west. If you lean over the balustrade the remains of a huge grotto is to be seen in the courtyard below with an organ fountain, evidently a relic of the old pleasure-ground of Cardinal d’Este, and which recalls the similar erections with which he decorated the slopes of Tivoli. Felice Peretti, when he quarrelled with all the monks of Naples in the sixteenth century, came to Rome, and, being very learned, was set to expound the Fathers to the Abbot of SS. Apostoli, the monastery which lies just below the hill. He remained a long time as his guest, and the abbot and the imperious monk formed a firm friendship. No doubt they often walked in the Colonna Gardens, and Peretti, when he became Sixtus V. in 1585, had learned to love the high, healthy air of the Quirinal hill. Gregory XIII. had already begun building there, and Sixtus carried on and extended his plans, and so built the palace in which till 1870 the Popes lived for a part of every year. It was already a favourite site for gardens. Besides those of Cardinal d’Este, Cardinal Carafa’s gardens stretched along part of where Via XX. Settembre now runs. It was Carafa who first recognised the beauty of the group known as Pasquino, and set it upon that pedestal to which those witty lampoons and _ satirical epigrams were affixed, which have made the name of the statue famous in every language. It soon after became the fashion to build summer palaces on the Quirinal hill, as being healthier than low Rome, and safer than going beyond the walls. Sixtus V. died here, and since his time twenty-one other Popes have died at the Quirinal, each making the curious bequest of his heart and viscera to the Church of SS. Vincent and Anastasius. TIE GARDENS OF IPALY. It is strange to think how quiet these gardens were lying on the day when Pius IX. made his famous proclamation from the great balcony of the Quirinal. It was in 1846, and men are still living who recall the frenzy of joy and hope and enthu- siasm which his announcement of a political amnesty aroused. The piazza in front of the palace was thronged with a vast crowd, whose shouts of “ Viva il Papa Ré!” must have penetrated to these shady walks. As still and peaceful it lay in the midst of the excited city, with the birds singing in its ilex groves, on that great day in 1870, when a detachment of soldiers, with a smith and_ his assistants, marched to the doors of the palace, and, with only a few scattered spectators looking on, forced the doors and took possession for the King of Italy. What angels of Hope and Justice and Liberty entered with them ! May they guard the little black-eyed great-grandson, who will soon be toddling underneath the ancient shades and feeding the goldfish in the time-worn fountains. ee er p Os 3 eee ! LELE: WESTERN GARDEN. ) is K HO SNHdCUV 4H. ‘TVNIWVINO GARDENS OF THE QUIRINAL. A FEATURE OF THE GARDEN. ( 77 ) GARDENS OF THE QUIRINAL. 7 ) TE—BOX AND ILEX. G SEMI-CIRCULAR HED GARDENS OF THE QUIRINAL. THI PALACE AND THE CENTRAL GARDEN. ORANGERY AND | LIES POND, % VILLA MEDICI, HERE is no building in Rome more familiar than the great cream-coloured villa, with its two small square towers, which rises on the Pincian hill against the rich green background of ilex and stone pine, and looks out over the city, across the close-cut grove, under which the fountain splashes into its wide, brown basin, and where St. Peter’s is framed in that famous sunset view, the purple dome against the flaming sky. Twice a week the heavy gate turns on_ its hinges to admit visitors; the surly old guard, a French ex-soldier, passes you in. You are on French territory, and you pass up the shadowy way, dark even on a summer’s day, the guest of the French Academy. To approach the villa, a broad walk runs along a terrace, bounded by a low wall, which in spring and summer is a mass of pink monthly roses. Part of it is now shut in by over- grown trees, but part is kept, as no doubt it all was originally, as a sort of quarter-deck from which to enjoy the prospect to the full. The view from the Villa Medici is not more magni- ficent to the eye than it is suggestive to the mind. It is the centre of a panorama of Rome, and from it almost every point of interest may be discerned—monuments, palaces, and churches, the Colosseum in the distance, even the far-off aqueducts and the horizon line of mountains. The seven hills may be counted, the columns marked, and Hadrian’s mausoleum ;_ and, above all, your attention is claimed by the dome, which seems to be of the city, yet always to rise above every other building. The most beautiful position in Rome was well chosen by Lucullus, by Domitian, by Sallust, for their pleasure gardens. A votive tablet discovered in 1868 proves that the site of the villa formed part of the gardens of the Acilii Glabriones, a family conspicuous in Roman history from the time of the battle of Thermopylae, and of whom two, Maximus Acilius and Priscilla, embraced Christianity about a.p. 152, and were buried in the Catacomb of Priscilla on the Via Salaria. In the gardens of Lucullus, avenues of carefully-cut ilexes, bay, and cypress over-shadowed fountains, and were grouped round temples, shrines, and porticces garlanded with roses and jasmine. ( 8 ) There stood that marvellous Hall of Apollo, wherein Lucullus once feasted Cicero and Pompey at a cost of 50,000 drachme. Near by, it was, that Messalina took desperate refuge, and heard the garden gates behind her being broken down by the centurion Euodus, who came to make an end of her. On the site of the gardens of Sallust, the millionaire historian, the statue of the dying Gaul was found. On the eastern side, the villa garden is built upon the very walls of Rome, those walls of Aurelian which were stormed at this point by the Goths, and a gate opened by traitors, when the villa of Sallust was given over to fire and sword, and when its flaming towers gave the light to guide the conquerors to the first sack of Rome. On the south, the ground slopes down by gentle degrees in gardens and terraces, and adjoins that to which long ages ago the old senator, Pincius, gave his name, and which is still the favourite promenade of the Romans. From the height of the eastern wall we look down on those slopes where Alaric marshalled his army of Goths, and where on a later day was pitched the camp of Belisarius and the Byzantine host. Procopius says, ‘‘ The greater part of these buildings remain half-burnt, even now in my time.” The beauty of those famous gardens perished in 410. In the fifteenth century the ground on which the villa now stands was partly in the possession of Catherine de Medici and partly in that of Cardinal Ricci of Montepulciano, and the deed by which Catherine made it entirely hers is still in the possession of the Ricci family in Rome. In 1540 Ricci had laid the first stone of the new building, but its accomplishment was left to Ferdinand de Medici, one of those ecclesiastical princes of the Renaissance whose dearest occupation it was to collect the precious remains of antiquity to adorn those delicious villas which remain among the chief charms of Italy. Ferdinand finished it, adorned it with antiques, with paintings and sculpture, planted groups of ilex and myrtle, added fountains, and finally gave it his name. This prince, who afterwards succeeded his brother as Grand Duke of Tuscany, was one of the most remarkable persons of his age. He THE GARDENS OF ITALY. was made a Cardinal at fifteen, and as he grew up so used the influence of his position that he practically governed the papal states during the reign of Gregory XIII. When Ferdinand left Rome tor Tuscany, the historian Galluzzi writes of him: “If Florence rejoiced at the coming of her prince, Rome groaned at losing him. His kindness, his humanity, his devotion in the time of public calamity, the emulation which his generous actions woke in all around, had made him the object of the people’s love and reverence. His disinterested character, his far-seeing intelli- gence, made him- looked upon as the most powerful personage in Rome. No one knew better how to combat the indolence of Pope Gregory, or to moderate the impulses of Sixtus V. His noble air and natural gaiety made him universally beloved. There was always room at his table for men of letters, who he recompensed generously.” He established in Rome a library and a printing-press for Eastern literature. He was one of the principal patrons of Gian Bologna, the famous French sculptor, who worked in Italy, and whose beautiful bronze Mercury used to stand in the vestibule of the villa. This great prince, who, after a happy and_ glorious reign, died in Florence in 1608, at the age of fifty-nine years, was one of the best examples of those ecclesias- tical lords who headed the movement in favour of arts and letters in the sixteenth century. In a work dated 1750, Pietro Rossini gives us a description of the villa, when it was probably much in the same state as when Ferdinand died. He tells us of the colossal statue of Rome, that statue which, it is supposed, was one of those which the flames spared when Sallust’s villa was burnt, and which, through all changes and vicissitudes, has presided over the garden as it does to-day. He speaks of “‘ fourteen statues representing the story of Niobe” (he means the famous “ Niobe and Her Children,” now in the Pitti Palace). He speaks of the wood of ilexes through which you ascend to that height, which tradition says was once the Temple of the Sun; and the sixty steps are still there, though the fountain constructed by the Duke of Tuscany no longer exists. Of the splendid lions which stood there, and are now in Florence, one is an antique and one from the hand of Flaminia Vacca. Under the loggia stood statues and the famous Medici vase. The great hall contained a Ganymede, an Apollo, two Venuses, a table designed by Michael Angelo, and among the pictures were a Titian and two by Andrea del Sarto. Another gallery had forty-five antique marbles, busts, and statues. Above the balcony window was an alabaster bas-relief of Constantine the Great. Another writer tells of an obelisk, a porphyry bath, and reports that the ceilings of the second storey were decorated by Sebastian del Piombo. In this chamber to-day are only wooden panels, but in others the paintings, less precious, of Tempesta and the Zuccari still remain. SI Annibale Lippi seems accepted as the archi- has borrowed some ideas—the Ionic capitals of the garden loggia, the garlands, the gallery —from Michael Angelo. The loggia is upheld by six antique columns, two of granite and four of cipollino, of such beauty that it is difficult to match them, even in Rome. The outside of the villa, fronting the city, has granite columns, and the great door has a casing of beaten iron, fastened with a thousand round- headed nails. In this sturdy envelope may be descried three deep holes, which it is said were made by bullets fired from the Castile of St, Angelo, not in time of war, but as a joke, by order of Queen Christina of Sweden, who had promised to awake the master of the villa by “ knocking at his door” to bid him make one of a hunting party. In the villa, above all, once stood the famous Venus de Medici. She was exiled to Florence in 1665. It was the one memorable act in a reign of one month of Innocent XI., who was persuaded that the statue was inimical to morality, and ought to be removed from the eyes of Rome. We can imagine a little what the villa was like in its great days by saying that what we now see are the remains of one hundred and twenty-eight statues, fifty-four busts, eight urns or sarcophagi, twenty- eight bas-reliefs, and thirty-one columns of marble. The little chapel of St. Gaetano, which to-day is occupied as a studio, in the north-west corner, received its name from the founder of the Order of Oratorians, who, in the fifteenth century, took refuge here with his disciples during the sack of Rome. Discovered by the Spanish soldiers, who were hunting for treasure, he was terribly tortured at their hands. They then seized the Father Paoletto, and hung him by the hair from a tree in the garden. He attributed his preservation to a vow which he made to St. Francois de Paul. In 1633-34 the palace served as an asylum to the immortal Galileo, at the time when he had to give an account of his system before the Inquisition. When he discovered the satellites of Jupiter he had given them the name of “ Stars of the Medici,” and so earned the gratitude and powerful protection of the House. Marie de Medici, afterwards Queen of Henry IV., passed here a part of her youth. Her room was on the second storey, with windows looking south upon the town. In 1770 the Emperor Joseph II. and his brother, the Grand Duke Leopold of the House of Lorraine, sojourned here for a time, but it was no longer owned by the Medici, and Lorraine and Austria were masters of Tuscany when the great House of Medici flickered out in 1737. Long before this its splendours had diminished. All depended on one family, and followed the fortunes of its destiny. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the splendour of the Medici concentrated on Florence, and as one Grand Duke succeeded another he thought less of the villa, or tect, and VILLA only thought of it to despoil it. Niobe and her children were taken to Florence; the two lions went to the Loggia dei Lanzi; the Mercury, the Cleopatra, the vase, all the most precious treasures vanished. In 1798 the Neapolitans pillaged its halls, and the little that was left became less. In 1801 it passed by negotiation to the Grand Duke of Parma, and two years later it became the property of the French Academy, the Directors of which have done much to restore its beauty. At every step you come across some beauty of Nature or of Art. The whole shrubbery and garden is set in marvellous hedges of clipped box, above which towers the dark velvet of stone pines, sarcophagi serve as basins to the fountains, crumbling statues gleam from niches cut in the thick greenery, huge ancient receptacles for oil or wine stand on pedestals, vases and tubs of lemon trees are placed on richly-carved capitals of broken columns. In front of the garden entrance is a broad gravelled court, in the midst of which is set a fountain overgrown with arum lilies ; beyond it lies a formal garden, where oleanders glow rosy in the summer and magnolias make the air heavy with perfume. A charming statue of a dreaming Eros is placed here upon an old tomb. At the entrance to a long alley, between two columns, supporting an architrave, which once sheltered a famous statue of Cleopatra, is now placed an antique statue of Apollo, which has been restored by the addition of a most beautiful head, said to be of Meleager, and attributed to the hand of Scopas himself. Standing beneath the graceful canopy, with roses rioting all round it, and the dark ilexes as a background, this statue is one of the most striking features of the garden. Velasquez has left two interesting sketches, which are now in Madrid, of the long gallery in the garden, and a fountain with ilexes. Within the villa it is possible to descend a stair to the depth of 8oft., to where, beneath a heavy vault, flow the crystal waters of the Acqua Virga, which rises eight miles from Rome, and feeds many of the fountains. For a hundred years the history of the villa has been bound up with that of the French Academy. A fine bronze bust beneath the gallery commemo- rates M. Suvee, the Director at whose suggestion the villa was bought. The Act is dated May 18th, 1803, and is signed for France in the name of the First Consul of the Republic. M. Suvee writes at ( MEDICI. &2 the end of the year: ‘I have just transferred the establishment to the new palace; nothing is ready for us, but the impatience of the students, as well as my own, made it impossible to put it off longer.” The French Academy was founded — by Louis XIV. in 1648 at the instigation of the great Minister Colbert. Its annals show a long list of famous names, among them Gaspard and Nicolas Poussain, Horace Vernet, Boucher, Fragonard, David, Ingres, Corot. To-day it maintains twenty- four students who have gained the Prix de Rome, and who live here for four years, with a studio and an ample allowance, besides extra sums for materials and travelling. All the students dine together in a large hall, hung with portraits of the former members for a hundred years past. The splendid library is hung with exquisite Gobelins tapestry, the gift of Louis XIV., and his statue and that of Louis XVIII. stand in one of the salons. The tapestries, which are from designs by Raphael and his pupils, had long lain in some obscure corner, but were unearthed by the painter Ingres, and it was Ingres who fastened to the walls so many classic fragments, and who placed plaster models of the old statues upon the pedestals. Copies of the lions and of Gian Bologna’s Mercury have been placed where the originals formerly stood. During the last two years special interest has been reawakened in some of the bas-reliefs which are sunk in the facade of the villa. Three of these are fragments from the Ara Pacis, the celebrated altar of Augustus, which is now being excavated from beneath a palace in the Corso. Antiquarians are not without hopes that when the altar comes to be, as far as possible, reconstructed, these fragments may find their way back to their rightful position. A short stair leads up to the roof of the garden gallery, from which a fine view is obtained of the villa, with its stone pines, and in the distance the heights of Monte Mario and the dome of St. Peter’s. Behind this terrace lies a deep, dark ilex wood, a haunt for fauns and dryads, and through its shades you mount up to where the Temple of the Sun once stood, and where now all Rome goes sooner or later to watch the glorious sunsets. All round the little belvedere the ilexes are clipped into a marvellous dscage, which stretches away in a smooth green dome. The sky grows golden and scarlet and fades into clearest green, and before you descend the first lights begin to twinkle among the purple depths of the city lying far below, ) SS ers v VILLA MEDICI, LOGGIA. THE LET: GARDEN FROM Baksh VILLA. IOIGAW VTTIA LOUNTAIN OF VENUS. TOIGHW VTTIA 98 RAST: L£ND OF LEE. SOUTH TERRACE, TOIGUW VITTIA GALEES, OF TATE, el CLO GARDENS AND VILLA MEDIC. VTTIA TOICAW VILLA MEDICI, DEE i ETS EAS = 7TGIA., LOG TELLS. SLPS: OF, 6 ROMAN MARBLE RELIEF. ART AND NATURE. NGHW VTITIA ale VILLA MEDICI. Sey fw Way NORTH WALK. renee UT nevennneey NTT, oe 2 We se es hess VILLA MEDICI. THE VILLA MEDI CL. THE COLONNA GARDENS, ROME. ONG before the original stronghold of the Colonnas was built, almost on the site of their present palace, the “ Little Senate” was established kere. It was a woman’s senate, instituted by Elagabalus, an assembly of the fashionable Roman matrons of the day, presided over by the mother of the Emperor. They met to determine how every matron in Rome might dress, to whom she was to yield precedence, by whom she might be kissed ; deciding which ladies might drive in chariots and which must content themselves with carts, whether horses, mules, or oxen were permitted, which ladies might wear shoes adorned with gold or set with precious stones. We can imagine the shrill discussions, the gossip, the jealousies of the ‘ Little Senate.” Aurelian swept it away fifty years later, when he built his Temple of the Sun here to record his triumph over Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra. The temple was enriched with gems, and with fifteen thousand pounds in weight of gold. Much of it was. still standing in the seventeenth century, and it is still doubtful whether the pieces of gigantic cornice which lie on the upper terrace formed part of it, or belonged to a portico of a later period. From this spot started the long procession, memorable even in the annals of Roman triumphs, with the proud and beautiful Queen, decked with jewels and chained with golden chains to her chariot. From the medieval palace of the Colonnas, Isabella d’Este looked down upon the sack of Rome, and on these terraces in the late years of the Renaissance, the good, the beautiful, the learned Vittoria Colonna walked and conversed with Cardinal Bembo, with Ariosto and Bernardo Tasso, and above all with Michael Angelo. Here for five years, in the height of her beauty and happiness, and in the heyday of her husband’s triumph, she held her court and gathered round her all that Italy had of choice to offer, and here, too, she came back, a widowed, childless, heart- broken woman, to die, with the great Florentine painter sitting by her bed, holding her hand, helping her to recollect her last prayer, her faithful servant to the last, in what Condivi calls “that most pure and beautiful friendship.” Torquato Tasso ran about these gardens as a little boy, for his father writes that he does not ( 92 wish the children to go into the country in the summer as they get too hot, but that the duke has lent him the Boccaccio vineyard, as it was then called, ““and we have been here a week and shall stay all the summer in this good air.” There is another woman who is recalled by the wide gates, the courtyard, the gardens as they are to-day. She who was mistress of the splendours of the palace in the eighteenth century—Maria Mancini, niece of Cardinal Mazarin, and wife of Lorenzo Colonna, Grand Constable of Naples. A woman whose life was full of romance, stranger than fiction. When Mazarin went to Paris and became the Minister of the young Louis XIV., and the adviser and passionate lover of the King’s mother, Anne of Austria, he sent for his nieces, Maria, Olympe, and Hortense, and proposed to arrange good marriages for them. Maria has left an account of her life, ‘La vérité dans son jour,” which gives interesting and entertaining details of her history. Less beautiful than Hortense, afterwards Duchess of Mazarin, Maria was clever, spirituelle, and fascinating in no ordinary degree. Beginning by being thin and brown, her looks improved, and a miniature by Mignard represents her with large, sparkling dark eyes, crisp, curling black hair, an espiég/e expression, and exquisite shoulders, exposed in the most Aasardé fashion of the day. Louis XIV. fell in love with her. He had at first been attracted by her sister Olympe, but when she became Comtesse de Soissons in 1657, his continued visits to the Comtesse were prompted by his growing affection for Maria. The young girl’s influence over the young King became daily stronger. She was even then one of the most cultivated women of the time, and she made him read and share all her tastes and ideas. They met continually in the easiest manner. In Paris she was toremost in all the most. brilliant fétes, the King always at her side, and when he was seized with a dangerous illness in camp the following summer, her anxiety and affection could not be concealed. During his convalescence they rode and walked for hours together, and Maria, who had been described in memoirs of the day ) THE GARDENS OF ITALY. as hardie et rude, became soft and gay as everyone tried to please her, and burnt incense before the rising star. It was in the midst of her happy dream that the Cardinal and Queen-mother urged on the King an alliance with the House of Savoy. With a very ill grace the King allowed a non-committing meeting with the Duchess of Savoy and her daughter to be arranged at Lyons, and Maria rode with the Court. The meeting had no result, and all could see the reason. That was Maria’s hour of triumph. The King never left her. He rode by her side, himself saw to the choice of her horse and the safety of her saddle, surrounding her with an atmosphere of love and tenderness, and after long, animated conversations with her, showed himself coldly averse to the proposed marriage. It was on the return from this expedition that he formally asked Mazarin for his niece’s hand. Mazarin, who had the interests of France sincerely at heart, was uncompromising in his refusal; but the King declared his devotion to Maria herself and_ his determination that she should be his wife and Queen of France. It was now that he bought for her the famous string of pearls, which belonged to the exiled Queen of England, with which she never parted during her life, and which may be seen to-day on the neck of her descen- dant, Princess Rospigliosi. The Queen and Cardinal were absolutely determined against such a politically undesirable marriage, and Maria and her youngest sister were exiled to a convent at Brouage. She parted from the King with the memorable words that Racine puts into the mouth of Berenice : “ Ah Sire, vous étes roi; vous pleurez et je pars.” From Brouage she kept up a long and ardent correspondence with Louis, even after he had been persuaded into a betrothal with the Infanta of Spain. That Maria was his truest, purest love is not to be doubted. She had something proud, farouche, chaste in her nature, which then and always preserved her from any less honourable connection. The King, urged on by public exigency, married the Infinta, and Maria suftered terribly from dis- appointed love and from the mortification of her position. She listened now to her uncle’s wish to arrange a marriage for her, and the young Prince Charles of Lorraine was first thought of. Her enemies persuaded the King, on his return from Spain, that she had already transferred her affec- tions to the Prince, and the unhappy girl was met by him with a cold contempt which aggravated her sorrow. The King himself had left his dull, sandy- haired bride on the homeward journey from Spain, to make a pilgrimage to Brouage, to sleep in the room Maria had occupied so long, and to weep bitterly through the night over her loss. The Cardinal decided that it was too dangerous to let her remain in France, and a marriage was speedily arranged with the young and handsome Colonna, ( 93 who was attracted by the account of her charms and the rich dowry given by her uncle. She had never seen him, but all fates seeming alike, she allowed herself to be married by proxy, and set out to Milan to meet him. Before departing, however, she had a violent and agitating interview with the King, in which they poured out all their hearts, and Louis endeavoured to persuade her to throw aside all claims and to remain with him; but the woman who had hoped to be his wife and Queen refused to accept such widely differing terms. She left Paris, taking with her his promise of life-long protection, and thus closed the first act of Maria Mancini’s stormy life. The second opens on her arrival at Palazzo Colonna. She had been attacked during her journey by brain fever, and had lain ill for some time at Loreto, and as she recovered she was brought by easy stages to her new home by the husband who had met her at Milan. The great reception prepared had had to be abandoned, but all the household was drawn up to welcome her. She confesses that her first feeling at sight of the palace was one of disappointment, the courtyard not being particularly imposing. When, however, she passed into those spacious halls, splendidly decorated by Pintoricchio, the Carracci, and Guido Reni, cooled with fountains and hung with fine pictures, she was much struck, and, in spite of her weakness, was full of admiration of the rooms prepared for her. She was so tired that she had to go at once to bed, but she sent to the Constable to beg him to share her meal; so he dined by her bedside, and she seemed more kindly disposed to him than she had yet shown herself. As her health reasserted itself, she received the visits of all the great Roman ladies. Her husband allowed her to live with the freedom of French society, much to the vexation of other Roman husbands, whose wives were accustomed to lead almost cloistered lives. Prince Colonna surrounded her with care and attentions, and she has left a charming picture of their amusements. One hot evening he asked her to walk to see a lake. As they turned a corner, they found them- selves in Piazza Navona, which had been flooded and illuminated and covered with gay boats, their flags flying and some having musicians on board. A larger one, a bower of flowers and lights, awaited the princess ; a concert, fireworks, and waterworks were organised to remind her of the gay fétes she had left at Fontainebleau. The Constable, who at this time adored his beautiful young wife, was always planning some- thing new. As the heat of the day declined, he would take her “in a light carriage, drawn at a gallop by six matchless barbs, to the Villa Borghese, which Prince Borghese had lent him. Strolling in those wonderful gardens, listening to soft music, Maria drank in all the intoxication of the Roman nights. She was only twenty, and, with a charming and devoted lover whispering in her ear, her warm ) THE COLONNA GARDENS, and affectionate nature awoke again to love and happiness. The five following years were the happiest of her life. She had three children, she lived a gay and brilliant life in the beautiful palace, she gave fétes in the gardens. Six weeks after her first son’s birth she received visitors, sitting up in a wonderful bed made like a golden — shell, supported by sea-horses and with little loves holding back curtains of cloth of gold. She herself was dressed in fine lawn and Venetian point, her rippling black hair caught up with gems and with a necklace by Benvenuto Cellini round her throat. The despatches of the time are full of allusions to the lovely Connestabilessa and her marvellous bed. Suddenly all was changed ; from tenderness towards her husband, she becomes cold, and only long after do old documents unveil the truth, that she discovered an intrigue in which he was engaged with a Roman lady. From that time they drifted apart. Enough transpires to show how keenly Maria suffered, for his first infidelity was not the last by many. Yet she kept up the old gaiety with something of the power of enjoyment which never left her. Her lovely and reckless sister, Hortense, Duchess of Mazarin, joined her, and a young Frenchman, Jacques de Belbceuf, gives us a_ vivid description of the balls and masquerades, the dinners, the music and conversa- tion which made up a society where all was ease and variety, and where the Princess Colonna and her sister won all hearts and turned all heads. Yet all the time her quarrels with her husband were increasing. In the spring of 1671 she was several times seized with violent illness, and was con- vinced that he was trying to poison her. Though it seems probable that the suspicion was unfounded, it became so strong that she at length resolved to escape and claim the protection that Louis XIV. had offered her, and she and her sister fled from Rome with one or two trusted servants. It would take too long to tell her adventures and disappoint- ments, for when, after incredible hardships by sea and land, she reached France, Louis refused to receive her. He wrote kindly, he placed a hand- some allowance at her disposal, but his recollection of her influence was too strong, and he would not risk the reopening of an old wound. In vain her husband urged her return. She was impressed, apparently not without some reason, with the certainty that he purposed to avail him- self of the excuse of her flight to shut her up in one of his lonely castles, where she would never be heard ( 94 of again. Such things were not uncommon, and a letter from Cardinal Cibo, hinting at such imprison- ment, fell into her hands. She passed the next twenty years of her life in one convent or another, sometimes in France, sometimes in Spain. For a time she lived at the Court of Savoy, where its Duke, the chivalrous Charles Emmanuel, was sincerely and devotedly attached to her. There is a delightful account of her arrival at what was then one of the most brilliant Courts of Europe, and the stupefaction of the Duke at her appearance when he went to meet her shabby carriage. Her costume consisted of a red petticoat, trimmed with torn lace, a drab cloth coat, and, to keep out the cold, an ugly little woollen shawl, which she had put over her head and tied on with a blue scarf, and out of this frame looked a face of intense pallor illumined by two large dark eyes ; but soon those brilliant eyes, her smile, her beau- tiful teeth, her thrilling voice enchanted the Duke, and he was taken captive by this wayward, fanciful woman, who passed every moment from tears to gaiety, from laughter to despair. Her husband came to Spain, and they met “like lovers,’ but she would not trust him or risk her freedom. He even made one desperate attempt to kidnap her, and when that failed he went home and relapsed into profound melancholy. It is impossible not to feel for his desolated life. He seems to have been a good father to his three sons, and on his death-bed declared that through all his irregularities he had loved Maria the best. After his death, the woman, who all her life loved and suffered and enjoyed with such passionate vitality, came back to Rome and walked again in these gardens, overcome for a time by remorse at her hardness towards her husband. She would not stay in Rome, but went back to Madrid, though she often visited Italy and quarrelled with one daughter-in-law and adored another, and gave presents to her grand-daughters of fans and muffs of the last fashion in England. She kept her looks and her charm till late in life. When she was growing old, Louis XIV. sent a message permitting her to come to Versailles, but she refused to go, saying that her beauty was destroyed, and she never saw him again. She died at Pisa in 1706. She left exact directions to her son, Cardinal Colonna, and following these, she was buried in the place she died in, in the Church of the St. Sepulchre, and her epitaph is only : “Marta Mancini Cotonna. ' Dusr anp Asues.” ) THE COLONNA GARDENS. , PATISAGE: ehLLS, OR THE BRIDGE OM FR CENTRAL STAIRWAV—LOOKING UP CASCADE. SNHYdCYVD VNNOIOO AHL FROM THE PALACE Y Pie BEA of, TO THE GARDEN TERRACES. ‘SSNHYCUVD VNNOIOO FHL THE COLONNA GARDENS N7 E ASCE TH we) Ao 4 o TERRACE. LOWER DATE ron THE COLONNA GARDENS, ( 99 ) ‘ PALAZZO BORGHESE, ROME. T is impossible for modern ideas of grandeur to compete with those of the Renaissance and the seventeenth century in Italy. The Borghese, during the years of their power, acquired eighty estates in the Campagna of Rome. Cardinal Scipione, having a villa at the gates of Rome as magnificent as the chief palace of most great nobles, kept it as a summer-house and lived chiefly in the immense palace in the town. It was begun in 1590 by Cardinal Deza from the designs of Martino Lunghi, and finished by order of the great Borghese Pope, Paul V., by Flaminio Ponzio. The archi- tecture still has something of Renaissance beauty. The courtyard is surrounded by a colonnade, and an airy loggia arches across the garden entrance, such as one might see in a fresco by Pintoricchio. Under the cloistered granite columns, against which are set several ancient colossal statues, we pass into the little garden. It is screened from the court- yard by pedestals set in pairs, on which stand small Roman statues; we can fancy the connoisseur Cardinal deciding that they were poor works, not worthy of gracing his choice collection, but that they would do well enough for the garden. Two low fountains play on either side of the wide iron gate through which you enter the garden. It is locked now and no one passes down the shallow steps, and the garden is the emporium of a dealer in antiquities. In the old times it must have been the ideal of a little town garden, shut in with high walls, into which are built three huge fantastic fountain pieces in the baroque style—tasteless things, yet not without a certain barbaric grace. The canopies supported by young men, crowned with baskets of flowers, cupids rioting with ropes 100 of flowers, goddesses holding out alluring arms, are florid but effective. The banksias fling their careless foliage over the walls, and the arums grow thick and tall in the old sarcophagi; but inside the palace the rooms still retain their painted mirrors, their cupids by Ciro Ferri, and their wreaths by Mario di Fiori, though the celebrated pictures and statues have been taken away. Cardinal Scipione, the stately, genial art patron, lived and died here, and how many others of his house ;- but, perhaps, the vision that comes most clearly before English eyes is of the lovely and beloved Princess Gwendoline, a daughter of the noble house of Talbot, wedded in 1835 to Prince Camillo Borghese, and dying five years later, after three days’ illness, of diphtheria. She was buried in the Borghese Chapel in S$. Maria Maggiore, and half Rome followed her to her grave. The piazza outside the palace could hardly contain the crowd assembled, when at midnight the great gates were thrown open and the funeral procession issued. Forty young Romans in deep mourning took the horses from the funeral car and, yoking themselves to it, drew her up the hill. A great cortége of rich and poor followed, ‘‘so that it seemed as though a whole people were bearing her to her last resting-place,’ and from all the windows, as she passed, flowers were showered down upon her. The mourning was universal, but the horror and pity redoubled when, within a few days, three of her children were laid beside their mother, leaving only one little girl. Poor husband, poor father, poor motherless babe, left alone in the splendour of the palace. The recollection seems to make its vast dreariness seem vaster and more dreary. PALAZZO BORGHESE, IN THE COURT OF THE PALAZZO BORGHESE, ROME. FOUNTAIN OF TREVI, REVI, which fourteen ‘ cross-roads. gives its name to one of the regions”? of Rome, means the In Imperial times the long street leading straight from the Forum of Trajan struck across the street now called Tritone, by the arch of Claudius. The place was called the Fountain of Trevi long before the present splendid fountain was built. The name is connected now with the fountain, for who, hearing it, thinks of anything but the great sea-god, the plunging horses, the ceaseless rush and gush of the Virgin Water below that splendid facade ? From the days of Agrippa the water has borne its name—given it in memory of a maiden who, meeting a tired and thirsty troop of Roman soldiers, marching between Palestrina and Tivoli, led them to a secret spring, hidden in the hills, fresh and ice cold, known only to the shepherds. Agrippa in 733 first brought it to Rome to feed his baths near the Pantheon, when its advent was celebrated by fifty-nine days of feast- ing. It originates on the old Via Collatinus, halfway between Tivoli and Palestrina, and was brought into Rome by a subterannean channel fourteen miles long. The aqueduct passes near Ponte Nomentano, crosses the Via Nomentana and Via Salaria, and, having traversed Villa Borghese, divides at the foot of the Trinita dei Monti into two streams, one of which flows under Via Condotti, while the other debouches at Trevi. In later Roman times it suffered much from being turned aside to feed the Roman villas out- side the walls. It was no one’s business to preserve its aqueducts for a time, and it lost its old reputation for purity, which, Pliny says, caused it at one time to be ranked higher than the famous Aqua Marcia. Under Trajan the raids on it were put a stop to, and the water, in nineteen aqueducts, was dispersed over a great part of the town. Rome, which was accustomed to flood vast spaces for naval combats, and to use millions of gallons in the public baths, was poorly provided in private houses. In the time of the Empire, and long after, water was carried about by water-carriers. Sixtus V. was the first to inaugurate that system of fountains for which Rome is so famous, and which Paul III. com- pleted by carrying the waters of Bracciano to the Janiculum. The water of Trevi has been nounced in analysis to be of great purity, and in 181g it was still carried in barrels to many houses and convents in the town. Clement VII., Paul IIL., and Gregory XIII. would never drink any other, and took it with them on journeys, even out of Italy. It is thought that in classic times a fountain must have stood near where the famous one is now placed, for an inscription was found in the immediate neighbourhood which evidently belonged to one : pro- “Nymph of this place, guardian of the sacred stream, I sleep, watch o’er me, while its murmur fills my dream. O, you who approach this fount and tread its marbles, Disturb me not, if you bathe or drink, be silent.” Nicholas V. had already begun a fouitain ; by three aqueducts, through three masks, the water flowed into a marble shell. This was the work of Leon Battista Alberta, and we cannot help giving a sigh to one of the beautiful lost works of the Renaissance. At that time, as Vasari tells us, it looked towards Piazza Poli, but Urban VIII. turned it round, as it is at present. In Via Nazzareno may be seen the low door which gives access to the aqueduct. It is large enough for a boat with two men to go up it for some distance. The archives relate that on July 8th, 1643, Pope Urban left the Vatican and went to stay at Monte Cavallo, and stopped on his way to see the Fountain of Trevi, which had just been turned about. Above it were the arms of Nicholas V., who had restored it. Pope Urban threw down the houses that had stood behind it and made a piazza, so that it could be seen from Monte Cavallo, and the pressure of the water being increased, it rose much higher than before. This Pope proposed to erect a grand fountain, and, with Bernini’s co-operation, planned to adorn it with statues taken from the tomb of Cecilia Metella; but the popular outcry against dismantling this splendid relic of antiquity was so strong that the Pope thought it prudent to abandon his project. Pope Urban laid a very unpopular tax upon wine, and Pasquino wrote the following couplet upon him : “ Urban having raised the tax upon wine, Regaled the people of the Quirinal with water.” THE GARDENS OF ITALY. It was reserved for Clement XIII., in the eighteenth century, to inaugurate the fountain as we now see it; an edifice which throws all other fountains of Rome almost into the shade. The origin of its design has been much disputed. The art of constructing these grandiose fountains seemed to have died with Bernini, and it is difficult to believe that we do not here see his inspiration. It has all his fantastic impetuosity, his vigour, and his feeling for decoration, It is satisfactory that the researches of Signor Fraschetti have gone far to establish Bernini’s claims to its conception. More than one diary of the time records that Bernini was planning a great facade for Pope Urban’s new fountain, and Prince Doria possesses a sketch signed by Bernini and stamped by Innocent X., which has evidently been the design for the central group. It has the figure of Neptune grasping the trident and rising from a shell, the sea-horses, the dolphins, and the merman sounding his wreathed horn, Bernini always made numbers of sketches for every work he undertook. The first design of Salvi, whose nominal work it is, and who had the principal direction of it, is much nearer the Doria sketch than the ultimate execution, and in an account of him in the Vatican library his study of and reverence for Bernini’s work is specially dwelt upon. The ornamentation of the fountain was carried out under Benedict XIII. In February, 1730, a mass of marble for the statues was landed at Ripa Grande, and Domenica Fontana and other sculptors were at work on them. In October, 1732, they began to pull down the old fountain, and the Vatican archives are full of notes of progress and payments. What was meant to be the last sum was adjudged in 1735, for the central crown, but a little later another fifteen thousand crowns was offered for the final decorations. Niccola Salvi died, old and paralysed, before it was finished, which was not till 1762. It seems probable that he unearthed and modified the design of the great sel-cento artist, but we cannot credit him with the originality and decorative feeling which he showed in nothing else. The design is, indeed, to some extent spoilt by alteration, for Prince Doria’s sketch is far more spirited. The god of the ocean is more majestic, the horses are more wild and graceful, and the fountain group looks cold and mannered by contrast. It is curious that public opinion, without troubling itself to enquire, has always attributed the fountain to Bernini. Memoirs of the time relate how fond Alfieri the poet was of Trevi, and how he would come there at daybreak on a summer morning, from his house near Diocletian’s baths, and sit on one of the low benches fashioned out of the rock, close to the water’s edge, and stay there dreaming and listening to the water, till the noise and bustle of the waking town drove him away. How many people have stopped to drink of the water, half-mocking at, half-believing in, the superstition that says it will bring them back to Rome? It is a spell that has little force in these days of easy travel, when a run to Italy for a few weeks is a thing of yearly occurrence. It was different in the days when it was one of the great events of a lifetime, and when comparatively few could hope to make the long and costly journey a second time. FOUNTAIN OF TREVI. A GROUP OF GARDENS. N the heart of the Corso you turn into the courtyard of the Doria palace, most magnifi- cent of private palaces. It used to be said that a thousand persons lived under the roof, exclusive of the gallery and private apartments, which alone surpassed in extent the majority of Royal residences. Here, in the corti/e, built by Valvasor1 and Pietro da Cortona, there is a garden with tall palm trees, stiff and stately, as befits the surrounding architecture. Near Porta Pia are the beautiful gardens of the English Embassy, rich in tall cypresses and dark ilexes, and gay with the flowers which a succession of English chdte/aines have encouraged there. In one part we come upon a vista, wild with red poppies or purple foxgloves, rising round a broken column, in another a formal garden spreads its gay pattern. The garden is bounded by the walls of old Rome, and on the top of them a walk has been made, from which there is an exquisite view over the campagna and the Sabine and Alban _ hills through the interstices of rose-covered pergolas. Every visitor to Rome knows the imposing entrance to the Barberini palace, but few penetrate beyond Bernini’s splendid gates and palace, and mount the circular stair that leads to the old garden lying on the slopes beyond. It has been encroached on, upon either hand, by streets, but there still remains a considerable stretch, a fine retaining wall with balustrades decorated with rococo figures, and where a gateway formerly opened, is a noble umbrella pine. No visitor is ever admitted into the precincts of the Aldobrandini palace, but its wealth of greenery and the flush of its Judas trees in the springtime, can be — descried from the Via Nazionale. The Brancaccio palace has the largest gardens in Rome, with a beautiful show of palms. They enclose several old ruins, remnants of the Nero, and the reservoir which seen Golden House of served the baths of Titus and of Trajan. From these slopes a fine view is obtained of the Colosseum, with the campagna beyond, The old vineyards of the Esquiline have been turned into shady walks, orange trees have been planted, and lawn-tennis grounds laid out for gay young Romans and Americans. One of the comparatively little-visited villas is that belonging to the Barberini family at Castel Gandolfo, the grounds of which take up the whole side of the hill reaching to Albano. The villa garden is full of vestiges of antiquity, and is an example of the way in which the buildings of the modern world were superimposed upon the decaying sites of the classic era. This is believed in the later times of the Republic to have been part of the possessions of Claudius and of Pompey. Certainly the Emperor Domitian had a magnificent country house here, where he passed much of his time and held assemblies of men of letters. The Amphi- theatre where he used to behold the destruction of a hundred wild beasts in a day, joined his gardens, and the ruins of it can still be traced in an adjacent vineyard, The upper part of the Barberini gardens consists of three long walks, between which are square hedges—at one end a flower garden. The wall to the right is continued along a terrace, raised over an immense gallery, which, no doubt, is part of that of Domitian, that gallery described by ancient authors, where he used to dispute with his courtiers on political and historical subjects. Some scraps of ornament still remain, fragments of stucco and gilding. The general style is that of the Temple of Peace in Rome, built by his father, Vespasian. It is easy to make out, by following the vestiges of a wall which evidently bounded the gallery, that it must have been at least a mile in extent. The avenues of the great Cardinal, who revived the traditions of this villa, are, in their way, nearly as striking. They are shaded by noble ilexes, open to the west winds and the setting sun, and it is impossible to imagine more delightful walks. Fragments of cornices, columns, antique marbles, and porphyry are found in all directions, and small square pieces of glass, or rather of paste, abound, and are remains of the numberless mosaic pavements of the villa. At the extremity of the walk is an antique statue of a river god, and below is a grand old avenue of stone pines. The picturesque stairway illustrated here is in the garden of the Villa Borghese at Frascati. The villa lies immediately below Mondragone, and is the one which Ferdinando Taverna, Governor of Rome, presented to Paul V. It was built for Cardinal Borghese by the Roman architect, Girolamo Rai- naldi, and a grand avenue of cypresses leads from it to Mondragone. It has passed into the possession of a family named Parisi, who now call it by their name. Villa Sciarra, on the Janiculum, which for generations belonged to the Sciarra branch of the great Colonna family, has lately been bought by THE GARDENS OF ITALY. Mr. Wurts, an American, who is passionately fond of gardening and garden decoration. Italians do not usually understand growing flowers, and prefer such roses and flowering shrubs as need little care; but in such a_ climate, when an enthusiastic gardener takes matters in hand, the very perfection of floriculture may be expected. Already in the grounds of the Villa Sciarra, sheets of colour catch the eye at every turn, rose-rhododendrons tower aloft, rare and interesting plants fill the borders. The owner has been fortunate in securing some excellent garden stonework—in one little garden where pansies of every shade make a_ brilliant carpet, twelve picturesque stone figures, representing the months, are set in a semi-circle, against close-clipped hedges, with the happiest effect. From an old villa of the Viscontis comes the beautiful fountain. illustrated, where the most charming of putt play games with the water and the Visconti dragon. The villa itself is a true summer-house, with a labyrinth of rooms, half halls, half loggie, cool retreats, vaulted and: softly lighted, in which to breathe the scent of flowers and to listen to the splash of fountains and to look down on Rome glowing in the sun and away to that ever-glorious view of the Alban hills, ever changing as the hours wear on, from delicate lilac and turquoise, to purple and amethyst and gold. The Sciarra gardens are on the site of the gardens of Julius Cesar, which he left to the people for public pleasure-grounds. | Many remains of Roman days have been discovered in them, among others a magnificent bronze figure, which was sold to the Brussels Gallery. Mr. Wurts has ordered a fac-simile of it in bronze for his palace in Rome, and proposes to place a plaster cast of it in the garden. In later times the fine site attracted the attention, like many other good things, of the Church, and Cardinal Barberini built the villa, which passed by marriage to the Sciarra Colonna. It is encompassed on its south side by the deep bastioned walls of Rome, which were stormed in the War of Liberation, and a stone with inscription marks where the French made a breach and commemorates those who fell! in the defence. to) A GROUP OF GARDENS. (109 5 ROME. PALAZZO DORIA, CORSO, COURTYARD, gol) { ENTRANCE, ee y, Bll LUGS Cae é 0 We PALAZZO BARBERINI. SNUCUVSD AO dNOUD V A GROUP OF GARDENS. TERRACE OF PAVILION, PALAZZO BRANCACCIO. { 109 ) A GROUP OF GARDENS, (gS TO; 5) FRASCATI. VILLA PARISI, Z, ASCEN EN AR G A GROUP OF GARDENS. SEASONS OF THE YEAR, VILLA SCIARRA, ROME. CIRCULAR AVENUF, VILLA SCIARRA, ROME. A GROUP OF GARDENS. SCIA RRA. VILLA ) ry OUNTAIN ff CUPIDS’ LHE ROMAN WALL, BRITISH EMBASSY. CACTI AND CYPRESS ‘SSNHYCUVO AO dNouo Vv A GROUP OF GARDENS PART OF THE GARDEN, BRITISH EMBASSY. ILEX AVENUE, VILLA BARBERINI, CASTEL GANDOLFO. (GarTay >) VILLA D’ESTE, TIVOLI ERHAPS in its ruin the garden of Villa d’Este is even more imposing than when it was exquisitely ordered and gay with flowers. Falda’s old prints show us formally-arranged parterres and newly-planted trees and shrubs ; now, the cypresses, the ilexes, and the plane trees have attained a colossal growth, yet we still recognise that the effect as a whole was planned from the outset. Those old gardeners managed that their scheme should unfold con- sistently with each succeeding year. The garden is a wonderful specimen of symmetrical arrange- ment, and must have been beautiful from the first. On a first survey the impression is one of romantic and bewildering beauty. Everywhere we are met by noble terraces, by old grey-stone stairways and balustrades, by half-ruined fountains, by shady groves and alleys, which breathe the very spirit of romance, and are fit to be the haunt of faun and dryad. Roses—pink, white, and red— hang in sheets over the grey stonework, and Judas trees flush purple in the spring, while in late autumn every corner is aglow with chrysanthemums, Then we try to distinguish the scheme, and we ask who they were who wrought here, and what vas the life they led ? The story of the fallen condition of Tivoli, the ancient Tibur, and its revival in the sixteenth century, are proclaimed in a Latin oration of the poet Mureto, which runs almost literally : “Years came and went, that joy of other days, Tibur, lay ruined, lost her old-world praise. Gone were her streams and orchards, gone the last, The stately footprints of her buried past. Those scenes so oft the theme of classic lay, Mouldered, unkempt, unsightly in decay, Weeping their vanish’d joys, her sylvan daughters, Wandered by mourning Anio’s fainting waters. A wayfarer in Tibur’s heart might stand, And, ‘where is Tibur?’ cry; so marr’d the land. That godlike soul, the sacred choir’s delight, Hypolytus brooked not so sad a sight. He bade the woodlands dress once more in green, With far-flung leafage, wandering o’er the scene. He bade fresh well-springs ooze from out the hills, And in a breath, forth leapt the new-born rills. Saved from the wreck of Time, hail the escape Of marbles fair, to Phidias owing shape. Brow-bound with olive wan, joyful once more, Anio pours wealth into the common store. Well may those hallowed rills, these woodlands vie, In wafting one great name into the sky— List to the breezes, murmuring along, ‘Hypolytus’ is still their tuneful song.’ » The classics are full of the fame and prosperity of Tivoli in the days when Augustus held summer court in the mountains and Horace entertained at his villa; but all these glories disappeared with the glory of Rome. The town, though still possessing some importance, was squalid and poverty-stricken, though, from time to time, the reigning Pope or some Roman noble fled to the mouldering old Castello to avoid the heat of the plains. It was in the spring of 1549 that the courtly and accomplished young Cardinal of Ferrara, Ippolito d’Este, was named Governour of Tivoli by Paul III. The son of Alfonso I., Duke of Ferrara, and Lucrezia Borgia, he must not be confused with his warlike and unscrupulous uncle of the same name, the brother of Isabella d’Este. This Ippolito was her nephew, and had already shown all the diplomatic qualities of his famous house. He had had a distinguished career as Ambassador to the Court of France, he was Bishop of Siena, Abbot of Jervaulx, held half-a- dozen other French dignities, was deep in the confidence of the Pope and the leading Italian statesmen, and a renowned patron of art and letters. Popular, magnificent, beloved and admired, the Cardinal, according to the fashion of the day, was accompanied by a splendid cortege of more than 250 nobles and distinguished /i/terat? as, on a beautiful. spring day, he rode across that historic plain to take possession of his appointment. The Tiburtines mustered all their resources to give him a welcome : a band of horsemen and footmen met him outside the gates (he entered just where the tram-line now ends), the elders and magistrates proffered the keys within, a hundred children in white waved palm branches, trumpets pealed, and salvoes of artillery were fired. “‘ He was so gratified and pleased that his eyes were full of tears.” Almost at once he must have formed the plan of living here, and decided to pull down the old Castello in which he was lodged. He consulted with Pirro Ligorio, a follower of the great Vignola, and they produced an outline for a villa which should rival those at Lante and Caprarola. For a large sum of money THE GARDENS OF ITALY. the land was acquired from the municipality; there were not wanting irreconcilables who protested against the destruction entailed of the humble homes which clustered down the mountain-side, but any individual hardship must have been counterbalanced by the employment and prosperity which the Cardinal brought. It was a gigantic task imposed upon the old builder, the fashioning of that stretch of rough ground and crowded buildings into beauty and symmetry. It was above all a summer palace which Ligorio was to create, and surely never was a construction which kept its purpose more closely in view or of which the resources were handled in more masterly fashion. The river Anio flowed into Tivoli from the mountain heights, and a part of the waters, at vast expense, were turned to flow with great force through the grounds. The natural descent of the mountain was carved into huge terraces, the whole laid out in a grandiose scheme of fountains, grouped with planting, and connected by paths and_ stone stairways. The villa, which is entered from a piazza of the little town, is built round a court with offices and chapel. The grand staircase leads down- wards to the main apartments, and the facade of three stories stretches the whole width of the garden, which falls away in front of it. The villa is a simple structure of a good period of the Renaissance, with rooms opening one into the other, and a long gallery at the back of each storey. They are spacious and airy, every one looks to the sunshine and the view. The two first stories have delightful loggie faced with travertine, and deep- seated windows, temptingly adapted for conversation or for reading and basking. The long gallery at the back of the principal suite is set at intervals with fountains, and must have afforded a deliciously cool promenade in the hottest weather. A double flight of steps leads down to the ample terrace, at one end of which rises a stately archway leading to little loggie, and a belvedere from which to enjoy the enchanting prospect. “A view,” writes Fulvio Testi to the Duke of Modena in 1620, ‘which perhaps has not its equal in the world.” It is not only that from far below there rises up the ‘silver smoke” of the olives, and that far beyond stretches the vast campagna, its gold and purple lights and shadows melting into the hues of the Sabine Mountains, while faint upon the distant horizon may be descried the pearly bubble of the great Dome which broods over the Eternal City ; it is not only the exquisite beauty, but the whole plain teems with memories “ half as old as Time.” Here have marched Roman legions, here Brutus and Cassius have fled, red with Cesar’s blood, here Zenobia passed to her long captivity in Tivoli, here Federigo of Urbino rode at a later day. Yonder stood the villa of Mecenas, and blue Soracte watches unchanged as in the days when it saw the revels of the Antonines or the delights of Hadrian’s Villa. From below, tower aloft the rich, dark velvet 116 columns of the cypresses ; on all sides even now, though their supply is much diminished, is heard the splash and tinkle of the fountains. ‘There are said to be 360 in the grounds, divided into great groups. Below the main terrace stretches the g : z ' ate ; Gallery of a Hundred Fountains ; it is 3oo/t. long, and on the upper side is a wall of waterworks, headed with a long range of armorial bearings— “‘the eagle white, the lily of gold” of Este. ; The base was adorned with stucco reliefs of the metamorphoses of Ovid. In summer the whole is clothed in a luxuriant curtain of maidenhair fern. On a raised plateau at the end of the gallery, looking towards Rome, can still be distinguished models of the Pantheon, Temple of Vesta, and other buildings, which went by the name of Roma Vecchia, and sent out a thousand jets of water. At the other end is the Ovato, which Michael Angelo, when he visited here, called the Queen of Fountains. Through an archway a green enclosure is reached, where river gods and goddesses of heroic size still recline above the foaming cascade. Some fragments mark where Pegasus once rode as on Mount Helicon, above these cool arcades, where a few of the naiads who poured water from urns and played with dolphins are still lingering. The deep green shade, the cool air, damp with spray, the sound of falling water, make this an ideal spot on a hot Southern afternoon. Below the gallery, enclosed in a graceful, curving stairway, down the balustrades of which cascades once dashed to the basin below, are the remains of the Fountain of the Dragon. This was designed to celebrate the visit of Pope Gregory XIII., whose crest was a dragon. It burst forth by torchlight on the closing evening of his stay, and we are told that he was “ surprised and delighted” at the compliment. At the foot of the steep descent the garden spreads out broad and level, and is crossed by a succession of deep fish-ponds set in massive stonework, on which stand huge vases. The rush of water from the upper end comes from the elaborate wall-fountain of the Organ, a splendid construction which played “madrigals and other music.’ Round one were trees made of brass and stucco, in which were perched mechanical birds, which sang “each in his natural voice”? till a c/vetta or owl appeared, when they became silent; the owl withdrew, and they sang again. In the cypress groves are traces of other grand fountains, a beautiful triumphal arch, the Girandola, from which water escaped by such fine channels that it resembled dust, and traces of a group dedicated to the Goddess of Nature. The Cardinal employed Ligorio to excavate in Hadrian’s Villa, and in Tivoli itself, and the gardens were adorned with numbers of statues, many of them superb works of antiquity. In 1664, Archbishop Fabio Croce gives a list of over sixty groups, figures, and busts ‘still remaining ” ; and > VILLA on every side may still be seen remnants of the pedestals upon which Mars and Venus, Helen and Paris, Pan crowned with flowers, and the Roman emperors, once shone in gleaming marble. The laying out of the grounds was largely completed in the lifetime of Cardinal Ippolito, and Mureto and Bulgarini, poet and historian, have left a pleasant picture of his life there. He died in 1572, and is buried in the cathedral of San Francesco in Tivoli. Mureto’s funeral oration gives us a very full impression of a great Churchman of the Renaissance. ‘ Who,” he says, “was ever more splendid and magnificent in every relation in life? What sumptuous edifices he raised, what works of antiquity he unearthed, which, but for him, might never have been discovered. What illustrious artists he inspired to make fresh experiments. What princes, what lawyers, what great and powerful men he gathered round him, receiving them like a splendid Cardinal, almost a King. How liberal and magnificent he was to the poor, you know, oh Tiburtines, who remember his continuous and daily almsgiving, and how, when sickness came, he sent every day to visit every person who was sick, so that none should be left out, or lack what was necessary for the recovery of their health, or to keep their families during their sickness. No one more loved doctors and men of letters, no one had a greater number at his court, and no one treated them with more generosity. They would converse familiarly with him while he sat at his suppers, and talk of public business, and towards them and _ his dependents he behaved with such familiar and homely kindness, like an equal, joking and talking, correcting faults with paternal love rather than with anger or pride. No one forgot injuries or ingratitude more easily, and was so ready to accord fresh benevolence. He proved his piety and religion in every hour of his life, and, in the last moments of his mortal career, he called upon God’s sacred minister, he confessed his sins, and expressed his deep penitence for all in which he had come short, and then cast himself on the Divine mercy.” We can picture him pacing these wide terraces, surrounded by his court, or sitting on summer evenings at the old stone tables, which, with the seats round them, are still standing in the same places. His nephew, Cardinal Luigi, who succeeded him, leaves a less pleasant impression. He was as magnificent, and_ entertained lavishly, but was always in debt, and obliged at length to sell many of the priceless treasures which his uncle had collected. After his death, the villa fell into disuse as a residence, and the finest statues were sold to the Capitol or carried to Modena. It now belongs to the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria, whose grandfather received it in marriage with the last heiress of the house of Este. Watteau was one of those who often visited the garden during his stay in Rome. He delighted in it, and has left numerous drawings made there, D’ESTE. 117 and we feel as if we can trace its solemn influence in the deepening of his art. In our own time it was rented for many years by Cardinal Hohenlohe, a kind and courtly ecclesiastic, not unfit to dwell in the halls of the great Cardinal of Ferrara. Liszt, the famous musician, was his guest for several summers, and we are told how he spent the hours composing and playing, mimicking the Angelus from the bells of the town, or in his playing of Chopin vying with the liquid sounds of the silvery spray without. Fit successors these of all the poets, painters, and philosophers who have wandered here. Needless to say, it is a haunt beloved of artists, and several well-known Roman painters have studios in Tivoli. The frescoes that adorn the long range of rooms are wonderfully well preserved, and give an excellent idea of the villa decorations of the late Renaissance. They are by the brothers Zuccari, Tempesta, Muziano, and Georgio Vasari. The eagle and the lily are introduced at every possible point. The scenes are chiefly symbolical. The white eagle looms large among the animals saved from the flood, Moses strikes the rock in allusion to the streams that flowed at the will of the Cardinal, the gods banquet overhead in the great dining-hall. The labours of Hercules upon one ceiling are a compliment to the reigning Duke Ercole, the Cardinal’s brother. — His own cipher, “Hyp . est . Card . Ferrar.,” runs across the wall, and above, Liberality, Generosity, and Immortality suggest his virtues. Servants are painted coming in at simulated doors, and on the walls of what was evidently the Cardinal’s bedroom, with a closet off it for a secretary or attendant, are shelves painted with a Cardinal’s hat and a Bishop’s mitre. Over the entrance to the dining-hall the artist Zuccaro, painted as Mercury, follows us every- where with his eyes. Above the doorway two charming puffs support the arms of the Cardinal. The end room, the Hall of Sports, is decorated with delightfully painted birds and hunting scenes. Here tradition says that Tasso wrote his ‘ Aminta,” and read it aloud to a chosen circle by the fountain to the Goddess of Nature at the bottom of the garden. Though there is no positive record of Tasso’s presence here, we know that he was secretary to Cardinal Luigi d’Este in 1572, the year before the « Aminta’’ was represented in Ferrara, and would, naturally, have attended his master when he came to Tivoli to escape the heat of Rome. When Pope Gregory visited Cardinal Luigi, these bare walls were brave with green and crimson velvet, and the Pope’s bed was hung with velvet curtains, embroidered with seed pearls which had belonged to Henry II. of France. © What brilliant companies have met here! How the thrum of music, wit, and joyous hospitality has sounded through these silent chambers, how the rose-red silken robes of the princes of the Church have rustled on these terraces, what intrigues have been discussed, and what destinies decided ! THE GARDENS OF ITALY. To-day it is deserted. Year in, year out, the sunsets gild the tall cypresses, silent seatinels upon the ramparts; the wind sweeps the forsaken alleys, the roses scatter their scented showers, the fountains 118 splash in their moss-grown basins : from out of the busy world we enter one of long ago, and we go back and leave it to its solemn peace—a garden which Time itself seems to have forgotten. VILLA I’ESTE. Hidsan Sears THE CENTRAL WALK. ( ug } VILLA D’ESTE. THE FOUNTAIN OF THE ORGAN. II Or SEEN 9 CASCADE OF THE LOUNTAIN OF THE ORGAN. ‘ALSAd WTA VILLA D’ESTE, 1h rh tee — pee LE ssxijnteet eee Le sa THE QUEEN'S CASCADE. ( 122 ) WESTERN ASCENT, THE FOUNTAIN OF THE DRAGONS. ‘ALSHd VITA er in ire Se (SS aE LOGGIA, FROM UPPER TERRACE. ‘ALSH.C WITA VILLA D’ESTE. A RENAISSANCE FOUNTAIN, EAST TERRACE. ( +38 j GALLERY OF THE HUNDRED FOUNTAINS. VITIA “ALSH. [les 5 fangs EASTERN STAIRWAY. ALSECn VTA ) Sz ( FOUNTAINS ON EASTERN TERRACE. VITA “ALS. VILLA D’ESTE, fo (129 ) LOOKING OVER TIVOLI. A DESTE, VILL POOLS. LAT GRE THE BY nak Ans AT 2 NEES) ANCIL AN (130. ) THE HUNDRED FOUNTAIN LOWELL 2, VILLA FALCONIERIT, FRASCATI. HIS is the oldest of the villas of Frascati, and was erected for Alessandro Rufini, Bishop of Melfi, in 1548. In_ the seventeenth century it passed to the Falconieri family, who confided its restoration and redecoration to Francesco Borromini, the most florid of all the baroque artists. The grounds are small, but there are several very picturesque gateways, and the loggia and interior are frescoed by Ciro Ferri, the artist who, in company with Pietro di Cortona, decorated the Pitti Palace in’ Florence. The ceiling of the great hall represents Aurora in her car, beyond is a room with a fountain in the middle, and the farthest room is painted like a grove, with little cupids flying among the branches and holding garlands of flowers; round three sides of this room is an open gallery, from which there is a beautiful view over the campagna, “that palimpsest which all the world comes to read.” In some of the rooms are caricatures painted by desire of Orazio Fal- conieri, a former proprietor, representing prelates and nobles of his acquaintance, with his own portrait in the midst. The villa, which for a long time was occupied by the German novelist Count Voss, is now the property of the monks of Tre Fontane, who migrate there in June to escape the heat and malaria of the plain. Earlier in the year their abbot 1s extremely kind and courteous in granting permission to visit and sketch the grounds. The Trappist Fathers have made a new entrance, but the old gateway, which is farther down the hill, is very fine, and 1s the work of Vignola. It is still surmounted by the Falcon of the extinct Falconieri family. A large branch of an immense old oak has grown th:ough the gate, forming a curious and picturesque arch. The oldest gateway has fine pillars with the dogs of the Rufini on either side, and an imposing baroque structure is illustrated. The most conspicuous feature of the grounds is the Hall of Cypresses—‘t A stupendous sylvan hall, walled in by cypresses standing as close as they could grow in a long parallelogram overarched by the sky. Behind the cypresses the forest shut densely, but no bough or twig of lighter foliage introduced itself into that solemn company, ranged 13 in solid files on all four sides. A broad walk of dark gravel surrounded the hall, within which stood a second parallelogram the same shape as the first. In its centre was a low border of black rocks encircling a pond or fountain basin of water equally black. Above a heap of rocks in the centre of the basin danced the tiniest imp of a jet. : At the head of this long hall a dark stone was placed like a seat, and there were two others to right and left of either side of the basin. Every- thing was regular in design if irregular in finish. The whole seemed to be a more intelligent growth of rock and tree, as if self-arranged for some secret design. It was a judgment hall, one would have said, and those stern, swathed cypresses were the judges, met to pronounce a doom from which there could be no appeal.” Antiquarians are divided as to whether Cicero’s villa stood on the present site of Villa Falconieri or of the adjoining Villa Ruffinella. This last was at one time the residence of Lucien Bonaparte. the only one of the Emperor’s brothers who never wore a crown. During his residence here, in 1818, it was the scene of one of the most audacious acts of brigandage ever committed in the Papal States. A party of robbers, who had long haunted Tusculum, seized the old priest of the family while out walking, and, having plundered and stripped him, bound him hand and foot. When the dinner-hour arrived, and the priest was missing, the household came out to look for him, and the robbers entered, and, attacking all the servants left, forced them to silence by threats. One maid-servant, however, contrived to evade notice, and carried warning to the family, who were at dinner, and who all had time to hide except the Prince’s secre- tary, the butler, and a facchino. In the meantime the old priest had contrived to escape. The next day the facchino was sent back to treat with the Prince, and to say that unless he sent a ransom of 4,000 crowns the prisoners would all be put to death. He sent 2,000, and an order on his banker for the remainder. This, however, enraged the brigands, who regarded it as a trap, and they returned the order, torn up, with a demand for 4,000 crowns more; and with this the Prince was forced to comply in order to save the lives of his attendants. The brigands were never caught. MIRRORED GYPRESSES. TYHINOOTVA WTTIA VILLA FALCONIERL 87 mo tomaann setenenny ) sangneneny ss a i MONDRAGONE, FRASCATI. HEN the western sun sets the 374 windows of the Mondragone facade ablaze, they can be seen even from Rome. Not one of all the villas of Fras- cati stands so boldly as this one. None other has such a noble fountain, with basins tossed aloft, four, one above another, though, alas, the jets of water, which once rose high into the air, are reduced to a mere trickle. The villa was erected by Cardinal Marco d’Altemps in honour of Gregory XIIL., and called after the dragon which was the Pope’s crest. At Este, another Cardinal was causing a dragon fountain to burst out, to gratify the Pope, and a Cardinal of Frascati must not be outdone. They had grand ideas of giving in those days, for the Villa Borghese, which lies at the foot of the Mondragone grounds, to which it descends through a whole army of black cypresses, was given to Paul V. by its owner, Count Ferdinand Taverna, Governor of Rome. The Pontiff intended to throw the two villas into one, and proposed to make a new road, leading straight from St. John Lateran to the door, and so lightly did they reckon of vast undertakings, that we are surprised that these modest projects were abandoned. Giovanni Fiammingo and a Lombard, Flaminio Ponzio, were the architects. So stately is the garden loggia that the credit for it has been given to the great Vignola; it is true that he died in 1573, one year after the building was commenced, but it is very possible that he may have furnished designs, for he died at the height of his fame, when they were eagerly sought for. Another celebrated artist, Giovanni Fontana, is the architect of the superb fountain and of the ample balustrade from which we lean and look over the dense cypresses towards Rome on the far horizon, At the end of the balustrade stand the two giant columns, known as “the Pope’s Chimneys.” These two, shown on the north end of the great terrace, 135 correspend to other two, on the south end. The huge kitchens and domestic offices of the villa are built underneath this vast artificial terrace, and those on the north-east are chimneys proper. The others are dummies, and merely intended to secure a balanced effect. Between these two pairs of columns on the great terrace, is placed the fountain, “My Dragon.” The glories of Mondragone have passed away. Tt was laid waste in 1821 by the Austrian occupa- tion, when marching towards Naples. The beautiful English princess, Gwendoline Borghese, had made plans for its restoration, but her sudden death put a stop to them. The huge old house is now a religious college, the principal of which shows the kindest hospitality in allowing sightseers and artists to wander over the grounds. Lean and look in the evening sunlight, drinking in the sweet mountain air, and, as Gregorovius says, ‘Think of it all—these plains, these mountains, on which are set towns and villages, most of them rich in memories and associations of the past—of the Middle Ages, of the Empire. Call it all up before your imagina- tion. Think of Umbria—of Sabrina—of Latinum— of the land of the Etruscans—the Volscians’ (* Latian Summers,” by F. Gregorovius). To our right, on a sudden hill, is lifted up the town of Colonna, which in the Middle Ages was the cradle of that great race. Beyond it Tivoli gleams against the blue hillside, and at our feet are the shim- mering olive groves, the maize fields, the rich vineyards, where so often desolation has passed. > “We travelled in the print of ancient wars, Yet all the land was green, And love we found and peace Where fire and war had been. They pass and smile, the children of the sword, No more the sword they wield, And oh, how deep the corn, Along the battlefield!” MONDRAGONE, RR ESIESS | TOPEKA PUBL POPE’S GARDEN. Of THE LOGGIA LO Taes) ( ASCENT TO THE FOUNTAIN TERRACE. “ANOODVUCGCNOW \i/ MONDRAGONE, RRACE, Les: FOUNTAIN eee O Nox LPs, DRTIV. MONDRAGONE. THE POPE’S CHIMNEVS—NORTH END OF THE GREAT TERRACE. ( 139 ) MONDRAGONE. ( 140 ) THE DRAGON FOUNTAIN. MONDRAGONE. VILLA TORLONIA, FRASCATI. N some hot spring morning one wearies of the bustle and clatter of Rome, one looks longingly at the bunches of blue anemones and crimson cyclamens on the flower-stalls, and pictures how they are growing in the April woods. beyond the city; and there is keen pleasure in leaving behind the street-cries, the press and throng of the Corso, and the crowd of tourists, and in finding one’s self drawing out into the silent campagna, where the giant aqueducts stride across the plain, and the shepherd with his brown sheep and white dogs are the only living beings to be seen. The train winds higher and higher among grey olives and pink-flushed almond trees, and the air feels fresh and pure, as in the evening sunset we look back to Rome over that wondrous plain and see only the shadowy dome rising above the purple patch which is the city. So Tusculum of old for long centuries looked down upon Rome, for Rome was the most recent rather than the most ancient among the Latin cities. This “Fatica di gloria e di sventure, Terra Latina” (This Latin land, Tired out with glory and mis-fortune”’) goes back so far that its origin is lost in fabulous legends. It was said to have been founded by Telegonus, the son of Ulysses and Circe, and Mauritius, Prince of Tusculum, claimed to be descended from them. It is strange indeed, as one wanders up the lonely paths and_ slopes that lie behind Frascati, to think that all over this wild ground, where the goats crop and the gorse and wild thyme scent the air, rose “The white streets of Tusculum, The proudest town of all.” A great, well-ordered city, with its own laws and civil dignatories, and all around it a rich and cultivated country-side, with vines and olives, corn lands and pasture. On the neighbouring hills the white walls of other cities glimmered in the sunshine, Palestrina, Preneste, the ancient towns of Gabii and Labicum, and on_ the shores of the Alban lake that Alba Longa from which, five hundred years after the founding of Tusculum, a little band of outlaws was to descend into the 142 plain, and there, where a hill rose beside the river, was to found Roma Immortalis. Tusculum saw Rome rise gradually to great- ness. It intermarried with her, it made treaties with her, it fought her in the wide plain below. Probably it is over by Monte Porzio, in what looks like an extinct crater, that Lake Regillus lay, where that battle was fought when out of 40,000 Latins only 1t0,o00 came home, when Rome was only saved by her cavalry, and her generals voted a Temple to the Great Twin Brethren, who, in the moment when all seemed lost, men had seen riding in their van. In the decline of the Republic, and the rise of the Empire, men began to enjoy leisure. They had the wish to escape from the bustle of towns, and, peace reigning between Rome and prosperous Tusculum, the delightful slopes which lay below the city were singled out, and villas rose in every part, from the smallest to the most sumptuous. The country-side was white with them; the names of great numbers have been recovered, and the sites of many determined. There was the villa of the Octavii, where Villa Aldobrandini now stands; Cato’s was at Monte Porzio, that of Pliny the younger at Centrone. The Javoleni built where the ruins of Borghetto now stand, Cicero’s stately school and __ halls stretched away to Grotta Ferrata, and on the site of Villa Torlonia glowed the gardens of Lucullus, most famous of all. Archzologists believe that the ancient villas were laid out on much the same plan as those of a later time, with a succession of terraces and marble balustrades, and arranged so that the descending water could be utilised to the greatest possible advantage. Besides all that taste and love of luxury could do, Lucullus had here his celebrated library, to which Cicero often had recourse. Here he gave magnificent banquets, with delicacies brought irom all parts of the known world; here, perhaps, he planted those cherry trees, which he was the first to intro- duce into Europe, bringing them from Cerasus in Pontus. At his death his superb villa came into the hands of the Flavii. In the first century it was part of the Imperial domains, and was restored and embellished by Domitian, and though THE GARDENS OF ITALY. the latter is said to have loved best his villa at Castel Gandolfo, numerous inscriptions, lead labels, and pieces of sculpture show the care he took in adorning this at Frascati. In the fourth century came the terrible blow of the transportation of the Court to Constantinople. The old capital was left in fallen grandeur, and those who still clung to their well-loved country homes, came to realise the awful fate that awaited a small civilisation in the midst of an uncivilised world. All that refinement, those choice collections, that love of scholarship and learned leisure were shattered and dissipated by the invasions of the peoples of the North or the Saracens; and those who could not fly were forced into the narrow space protected by the city’s cyclopean walls. Numerous signs of great devastations have been found among the ruins, but nothing that points to restoration or to any after attempt to inhabit them. The city of Tusculum was still of consider- able size, saved by its tremendous walls, which enabled it to resist even the terrible onslaughts of the barbarian devastators. Notwithstanding the visitations of these barbarous hordes, a little group of farmers gathered among the ruined gardens of Lucullus; they were probably retainers of the great house, and, united by their Christian faith, a church and monastery found place among them, and so Frascati came into being. It was in the Middle Ages that there rose into importance the great race of the Counts of Tusculum, under which in the ninth and three following centuries Tusculum became again a place of power and importance, They were a race whose whole history is full of deeds of cruelty and treachery ; but they figure as consuls and senators, and gave to Rome no less than seven popes. The ruined castle of Borghetto, lying below, was one of their fastnesses, and the history of Tusculum is a record of perpetual combats with rival popes and with the Roman people. Gradually the haughty town and_ its Counts degenerated, and in 1170, the last, Count Ranio, made over the possession to Pope Alexander III., who made a_ triumphal entry into the town and resided there for more than two years. It was during this time that there came to Tusculum the Ambassadors of Henry II. of England, bringing the news of the murder of Thomas a Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, and charged with the task of clearing the King from the accusation of having conspired to bring it about. As one of the conditions of accepting Alexander as their sovereign, the Tusculans were required to level their impregnable walls. The work of destruction was carried out in 1172, and the ancient city was left in an absolutely defenceless condition. In 1191, Pope Celestin III., and the Emperor Henry VI., betrayed the unhappy city into the hands of its enemies, the ever-jealous Romans. On an April night they surprised and stormed the place; the inhabitants defended themselves desperately, but ( 143 a terrible massacre took place, and afterwards every building and temple and the prehistoric walls of Telegonus were razed to the ground, and salt strewn over the ruins, so that they should never be restored. The Colonna claim descent from the Conti, one of the oldest families in Italy, and a branch is said to have founded the Royal Family of Germany. The last of the race, Fulvia Conti, married a Sforza in 1650, and by an alliance with the Sforza-Cesarini and the Torlonia, the Villa Conti belongs to-day to Duke Torlonia. In 1607, Cardinal Tolomeo de Come, Bishop of Tusculum, sold the villa to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, and it afterwards belonged to Cardinals Altemps and Ludovisi. It was only in 1632 that it was bought by the Conti. This family has given to Rome twenty-three popes, three anti-popes, four saints, twenty-two cardinals, and a whole bevy of martyrs, bishops, abbots, and senators. The villa itself is an unpretending white house, with broad eaves, and is of no particular interest. The whole beauty of the place lies in the grounds, which are approached by a fine avenue of plane trees. The great stairway offers an imposing cowp d’wil, spread out against the slope in magnificent amplitude, its timeworn grey- stone relieved against the dark woods above, and the intervening spaces filled with pink monthly roses, which in spring and summer are very gay and sweet. At the top of this easy ascent a wide terrace runs the length of the grounds, from which we may wander into the dense ilex woods, studded with open spaces, in which are set graceful fountains. Suddenly the wood clears away and a wide stretch of green leads to the cascade, a terraced erection where the water falls from a considerable height and loses itself in a large, shallow basin, surrounded by stone arches and parapets, and a fountain rises high in the midst. Climbing the mossy, shallow steps which mount on either side of the curving waterway, another plateau is reached, on which _ is placed the fountain, with its splendid framework of — balus- trading, here illustrated, and which, shut in on three sides by the ilex wood, and on the other commanding peeps and vistas of distant plain and mountain, is one of the most beautiful objects of this or, indeed, of any Italian garden. The water here is dark and deep, and there is not lacking a story of a guilty monk finding his grave here. He is said to walk on moonlight nights, and to disappear in the spray of the fountain. Among those who lived here in other days was Henry, Cardinal of York, who, on the death of his brother, Charles Edward, caused himself to be proclaimed King of England, by the title of Henry IX. He lived forty-two years at Frascati, of which he was the bishop; there is a monument erected by him to his brother in the cathedral, and a bust of himself in the hibrary which he founded, ) VILLA 'TORLONIA. vs eI A en f FALLING WATER, THE UPPER CASCADE. ( 144 ) VILLA ( TORLONIA., 145 ) PELE. VEEL A: AND STAIRWAY WEES TLR, LTE gh LAST STAIRWAY. VTIIA “VINO'TYO.L Lb CASCADE AND BASIN. 7 VIA ‘VINO‘TYOL VILLA TORLONIA. PERRAGE. GREAT END OF Byes WE 6b1 +) ( LED ORERELK. HOUNEAIN:., ON THE SUMMIT—AN ARCHITECTURAL TRIUMPH. VITA “VINOTYOL VILLA TORLONIA. CENTRE OF TERRACE. CENTRAL ASCENT TO TERRACE. VILLA TORLONIA. CARRIAGE DRIVE, FROM THE VILLA. ‘al ae t 6 PaO rere omar i se THE DOUBLE STAIRWAY, EAST OF GREAT TERRACE. VILLA TORLONIA., LAST END OF GREAT TERRACE. THE APPROACH. (152) VILLA ALDOBRANDINI, FRASCATI. HAT strikes us most as we examine the sites or read descriptions of the old classic villas, is the lavish way. in which their size and arrangements are planned. ‘“* Bring a few more carriages,” says Sir Gorgius Midas to his flunkies. ‘Build a few more dining-rooms, another half-a-dozen foun- tains,’ seems to have been the order of a Lucullus or a Pliny. “ One loses one’s self,” says M. Gaston Boissier, writing of Pliny, “in the enumeration which he makes of his apartments. He has dining-rooms of various sizes for all occasions. He dines in this one when he is alone; the other serves him to receive his friends in; the third is the largest, and can contain the crowd of his invited guests. The one faces the sea, and while taking one’s meal one beholds the waves breaking against the walls ; another is buried in the grounds, and in it one enjoys on all sides the view of the fields and of the scenes of rustic lite. Nowadays one bed-chamber usually satisfies the most exacting ; it would be difficult to say how many Pliny’s villa contained. There are not only bedrooms for every want, but for every caprice. In some one can behold the sea from all the windows, in others one hears without seeing it. This room is in the form of an abside, and, by large openings, receives the sun at every hour of the day; the other is obscure and cool, and only lets in just so much light that one may not be in darkness. If the master desires to enliven himself, he remains in this open room, whence he can see all that passes outside; if he desires to meditate he has a room just suited for the purpose, where he can shut himself up, and which is so arranged that no noise ever reaches his ears. Let us add that these rooms are adorned with fine mosaics, are often covered with graceful pictures, and that they nearly all contain marble fountains. To com- plete the whole, we must imagine baths, piscenie, tennis courts, porticoes extending in every direction for the enjoyment of all the views, alleys sanded for walks, and for those who chose to ride on horseback, a large hippodrome, formed of a long alley, straight and sombre, shaded by plane trees and laurels, while on all sides curved alleys wind, which cross and cut each other so as to render ( the space greater and the programme more varied.” The pictures of gardens in the old houses of Rome and Pompeii have these alleys shut in by walls of hornbeam, with a round’ space in the middle where swans swim in a basin, and little arbours here and there with a marble statue or a column, and seats placed at intervals. The delight in extent, the large ideas, the lavish conceptions of the ancients, awoke again in their prototype, the villa-builders of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The quoted description might serve for that queen of villas, the Aldobran- dini at Frascati. It is true that the power to extend in directions almost unlimited had declined, but the halls opening in all directions, the cool porticoes, the covered ways, the wealth of falling water, leave us with the feeling of splendid expenditure in plan and execution. The villa, which stands grandly on a succession of ample terraces falling to a long slope, was designed by the Lombard, Giacomo della Porta, and was begun in 1603, for Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, nephew of Clement VIII. Its chiet entrance is intended to be from the piazza of the town below, from which it is divided by a wrought- iron balustrade of remarkably bold and fine design, and the artist evidently planned that the visitor should mount up with the coup d’eil of the great house always before his eyes, meeting with one surprise after another as the landscape unfolded. Nowadays the great gates are never opened, and a little side door up a lane forms the very inadequate substitute. The Cardinal had just received the substantial addition to his income of the revenues of Ferrara, which, as a Latin inscription on the facade of the palace commemorates, at this time submitted to the pontifical dominion, and for his new country seat he certainly secured the master- piece of the great follower of Vignola. It was his last work, too, for, driving back to Rome with the Cardinal one summer’s evening, after having eaten too plentifully of melons and ices, Giaccmo was taken so ill that he had to be left at the convent at San Giovanni Laterano, where he died that night. The work was completed by Fontana, but we see in it all the majestic yet exuberant feeling for decoration peculiar to the Lombard 153) THE GARDENS OF -ITALY. school. It is difficult to say which facade of the palace is the more imposing. Passing behind it, we find that it confronts a sort of theatre of waterworks, where nymphs and water-gods recline in grottoes, and fountains rush from above, though with some- thing less than the volume of other times. A good many of the fountains have, indeed, disap- peared, but what has been lost is more than retrieved by the beauties which three centuries of time have added—the mellow tints given to the stonework of palace and balustrade, the luxuriance of the ilex wocds, and the stately plane trees, which are worthy descendants of those described by Pliny when he ascribes their size to their being nourished with wine. President de Brosse, in the delightful and witty letters which describe Rome in the middle of the eighteenth century, gives an entertaining account of the rather puerile forms of amusement then in vogue. After an enthusiastic description of the Belvedere, as Villa Aldobrandini was then called, he describes groups of statues, some of which have now disappeared, a faun and centaur, the nine Muses, and Apollo, all joining in a concert on musical instruments played by water. He calls it ‘deplorable music.” ‘ What can be more chilling than to see these stone creatures, daubed with colour, making melancholy music without piping or moving?” He and his friends spent an afternoon at Frascati in getting thoroughly drenched. The fun began at Mondragone, round the “basin of the polypus,” so called from leather pipes set round it, which looked dry and innocent, but on a secret tap being turned the water swelled into them, and_ they gradually turned their showers upon all within reach. De Brosse and his grave companions abandoned themselves to the sport of turning them against one another, with such gusto that they were soon soaked from head to foot. Having changed their wet clothes at the inn, they were presently, after sitting quietly at Villa Aldobrandini, listening to the doleful strains of the centaur, without having suspected a hundred little jets of water concealed in the stonework, which suddenly spurted upon them. Being thoroughly wet through again, he says, they gave themselves up to these games for the rest of the evening, and he particularly commends ‘‘ one excellent little staircase, which as soon as you go up it, sends out jets of water which cross from right to left and from top to bottom, so that there is no escape.” At the top of the stairs they were revenged on the mischievous comrade who had turned the tap. He tried to turn a fresh one, but this was constructed expressly pour tromper les trompeurs, Tt turned upon the farceur, by name Legouz, with astonishing force, a torrent as thick as his arm, which caught him full in the middle. ‘He fled with his breeches full of water, running out into his shoes.” After this they had to eat their supper in dressing- gowns, having no more dry clothes; and having eaten two or three pounds of nougat, in addition ( to a bad supper, it is not surprising to hear that they had a violent nightmare, and we only marvel that apparently no one died of rheumatism or inflammation of the lungs. The fine rooms of the palace were at one time hung with paintings by Domenichino, executed at the time he was painting the famous frescoes at Grotta Ferrata, but as they were suffering from damp, they were carried off to the Borghese palace, the Borghese being at that time proprietors of the villa. The gallery has paintings of the temptation and fall, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and other Old Testament scenes, by Cavaliere d’Arpino, a fashionable and mediocre painter of the day. When Goethe was staying at Frascati, he was invited to see Prince Aldobrandini. A German artist named Kaisermann was just then engaged in painting the views of Frascati which are still to be seen on the walls of the grand saloon. Goethe gave the artist a commission to paint the town and the panorama beyond, from the terrace, and the picture still hangs in the room in which the poet died, at Weimar. The estates of the Aldobrandini were left to the Borghese on condition that they should belong to the second brother, who was to assume the name. A hundred years ago Don Paolo Borghese, Prince Aldobrandini, being afraid of the damp, fitted up a casino in the town of Frascati, which was furnished with every comfort that his taste could devise, and here he entertained parties of friends, including many English travellers of the day. He did the honours of Tusculum to the Duke of Gloucester among others, and was very proud of an English carpet which was the Duke’s gift. Georges Sand wrote with true insight into the charm of these delicious haunts, with their fascinating combination of art and nature, aided, as it already was in her day, by the hand of Time. The over-artificial air had already vanished. The water no longer moved the musical instruments which roused the ire of De Brosse. ‘They still bound into marble shells, but the music is that of Nature, the stucco grottoes are hung with a ferny tapestry, the moss has laid its velvet upon staring mosaics, Nature has rebelled, has taken a forsaken look, we hear a note of ruin and a song of solitude.’ Nothing can adequately convey the charm of the deep woods which le all around, where the sacred grove of Diana is believed once to have flung its shade. Here we come upon a tiny antique altar, there in the green dusk is a moss- grown stone seat, the lizards bask in the shafts of sunlight, the never-ceasing plash of fountains fills the air, and beyond is the wide sunny terrace, with its rows of huge vases and one or two giant pines standing out against the far campagna, which changes in beauty all through the day, till the sun sinks in rose and gold into that shining line of sea beyond Ostia, and a wonderful luminous pink haze bathes the whole vast plain. 154) aie ern VILLA ALDOBRANDINI. he pals i H i Is J VITTIA INIGNVUdOd TV OND TLE = SOMA LT:: VILLA ALDOBRANDINI, TERRACE. DETAIL —CASCADE gS1 SEMI-CIRCULAR COURT OF LAE CAS CADE: VIIA INIGNVULOC TV VILLA ALDOBRANDINI. | mamemcomerer SOUTH-WEST ASCENT, OAKS IN THE PLEASAUNCE. ( 159 )