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. Whether they marked her grave or merely commemorated
her, it was easy to impute a pathos to the fancy of having them there,
which it might not have been so easy to verify. You cannot attempt to
pass over any ground in Rome without danger of sinking into historical
depths from which it will be hard to extricate yourself, and it is best
to heed one's steps and keep them to the day's activities. But one
could not well visit the Villa Pamfili Doria without at least wishing to
remember that in 1849 Garibaldi held it for weeks against the whole
French army, in his defence of republican Rome. A votive temple within
the villa grounds commemorates the invaders who fell in this struggle;
on a neighboring height the Italian leader triumphs in the monument his
adoring country has raised to him.
If we are to believe the censorious Hare, the love of the hero's
countrymen went rather far when the Roman municipality, to please him,
tried to change the course of the Tiber in conformity with a scheme of
his, and so spoiled the beauty of the Farnesina garden Avithout
effecting a too-difficult piece of engineering.
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