BOEGHESE VASE. 



HOME OP A. J. DOWNING. 



have been speaking, you may see, by following the plan, that the path we took at 

 first, carries us round a large and open lawn. Near the center stands the large bronze 

 cast of the Borghese Vase, sent to Mr. Dowxinq 

 from France early in last spring, and which forms 

 a very marked feature in the northern part of the 

 garden. This vase, which is a cast of one in the 

 gardens of the Villa Borghese, near Florence, is 

 of bronze, and is covered with bacchanalian figures 

 in very high relief. The artist Craxch has paint- 

 ed a lovely view of the garden from a spot on the 

 opposite side of this lawn, toward the Hermitage ; 

 where the mountains on the opposite shore, with 

 the sail-covered river flowing between, and this 

 vase in the foreground, combine to form a land- 

 scape more beautiful than is often seen, and of 

 which the vignette placed at the head of our arti- 

 cle can give but a faint idea. 



It will be remembered that before Mr. Down- 

 ing took this place, by far the greater part of it 

 was planted as a nursery ; and in altering it to its 

 present shape, a large proportion of the fruit trees had to be entirely given up or 

 transplanted. Such as remained were placed where they would be most useful as 

 screfens and yet not intrude upon the sight, since a tree cultivated for its fruit alone is 

 seldom an ornamental object ; — beautiful of its kind it may be, but seldom as seen 

 side by side with other trees. Wherever the nursery trees could be left without inter- 

 fering with the proposed arrangement of the grounds, they were so ; and thus we find 

 the path at the northern end of the garden, in which we are now walking, walled on 

 one side with fruit trees mingled with flowering shrubs. The lawn, around which 

 this path runs, is studded with those circular beds of flowers to which I have before 



alluded, — beds of verbenas and roses, but 

 chiefly of petunias — piled blooms of pur- 

 ple and white, — flowering far into the 

 autumn months. Beside these, there is a 

 pretty conceit — a guilloche bed of ver- 

 benas shaded from the richest scarlet up 

 to pure white, and two hanging tents of 

 wire covered with the beautiful cypress 

 vine. On this walk, too, is a little Rustic 

 Arbor, sitting in which on summer days, 

 one saw the freighted river and flowing 

 mountain line, which, clear against the 

 sky, divided its paler blue from their 

 deep azure ; and the village on the roll- 



