Roman Holidays And Others, By W. D. Howells

























































































 -  Our author is, as usual,
terribly severe on the Italian government for some wrong done the villa,
I could not - Page 91
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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.

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