Beyond Is The Famous Foun-Tained Court, And A
Classic Temple To The Right, And Other Structures Responsive To The
Impulses Of The Good Pope Julius III., Who Was Never Tired Of Adding To
This Pleasure Palace Of His.
It was his favorite resort, with all his
court, from the Vatican, and his favorite amusement in it was the
somewhat academic diversion of proverbs, which Ranke says sometimes
"mingled blushes with the smiles of his guests."
Lest the reader should think I have gone direct to Ranke for this
knowledge, I will own that I got it at second-hand out of Hare's _Walks
in Rome,_ where he tells us also that the pope used to come to his villa
every day by water, and that "the richly decorated barge, filled with
venerable ecclesiastics, gliding through the osier-fringed banks of the
Tiber, . . . would make a fine subject for a picture." No doubt, and if
I owned such a picture I would lose no time in public-spiritedly
bestowing it on the first needy gallery. Our author is, as usual,
terribly severe on the Italian government for some wrong done the villa,
I could not well make out what. But it seems to involve the present
disposition of the Etruscan antiquities in the upper rooms of the
casino, where these, the most precious witnesses of that rather
inarticulate civilization, must in any arrangement exhaust the most
instructed interest. Just when the amateur archaeologist, however, is
sinking under his learning, the custodian opens a window and lets him
look out on a beautiful hill beyond certain gardens, where a bird is
singing angelically. I suppose it is the same bird which sings all
through these papers, and I am sorry I do not know its name. But we will
call it a blackcap: blackcap has a sweet, saucy sound like its own note,
and is the pretty translation of _caponero,_ a name which the bird might
gladly know itself by.
Villa Papa Giulio is but a little place compared with something on the
scale of the Villa Pamfili Doria though from its casino it has a charm
far beyond that. What it may once have been as to grounds and gardens
there is little to show now, and the Pam-fili Doria itself had not much
to show in gardens, though it had grounds, and to spare. It is, in fact,
a large park, though whether larger than the Villa Borghese I cannot
say. But it has not been taken by the state, and it is so far off on its
hills that it is safe from the overrunning of city feet. It is safe even
from city wheels, unless they are those of livery carriages, for
numbered cabs are not suffered in its proud precincts. You partake of
this pride when you come in your rubber-tired _remise,_ and have the
consolation of being part of the beautiful exclusiveness. It costs you
fifteen francs, but one must suffer for being patrician, even for a
single afternoon. Outside we had the satisfaction of seeing innumerable
numbered cabs drawn up, and within the villa gates of meeting or passing
the plebeians who had come in them, and were now walking while we were
smoothly rolling in our victoria. 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. Off
on the grass at one side some Ursuline nuns were sitting with their
pupils, laughing and talking, and one nun was playing ball with the
smaller girls, and mingling with their shouts her own gay, innocent
cries of joy as she romped among them. Nothing could have been prettier,
sweeter, or better suited to the place; all was very simple, and
apparently the whole place was hospitably free to the poor women who
ranged over it, digging chiccory for salad out of the meadows. The
daisies were thick as white clover, and the harsh purple of the anemones
showed everywhere.
The casino is plainer than the casino of the Villa Borghese, and is not
public like that; its sculptures have been taken to the Doria palace in
the city; and there is no longer any excuse for curiosity even to try
penetrating it. It stands on the left of the road by which you leave the
villa, and to the right on the grassy incline in full view of the casino
was something that puzzled us at first. It did not seem probable that
the gigantic capital letters grown in box should be spelling the English
name Mary, but it proved that they were, and later it proved that this
was the name of the noble English lady whom the late Prince Pamfill
Doria had married.
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