The Day Was Everything We Could Ask,
Very Warm And Bright Below The Janiculum, On Which We Had Mounted, And
Here On The Summit Delicious With Cool Currents Of Air.
There had been
beggars, on the way up, at every point where our horses must be walked,
and we
Had paid our way handsomely, so that when we went back they bowed
without asking again; this is a convention at Rome which no
self-respecting beggar will violate; they all touch their hats in
recognition of it.
The beautiful prospect from a certain curve of the drive after yon have
passed the formal sunken garden, at which you pause, is the greatest
beauty of the Villa Pamfili Doria. You stop to look at it by the impulse
of your coachman, and then you keep on driving round, in the long
ellipse which the road describes, through grassy and woody slopes and
levels, watered by a pleasant stream, and through long aisles of pine
and ilex. We thought twice round was enough, and told the driver so, to
his evident surprise and to our own regret, so far as the long aisle of
ilex was concerned, for I do not suppose there is a more perfect thing
of its kind in the world. The shade under the thick sun-proof roofing of
horizontal boughs was practically as old as night, and on our second
passage of its dim length it had some Capuchin monks walking down it,
who formed the fittest possible human interest in the perspective.
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