THE GARDENS OF 
artists, strangers, the Court, the King and Queen, 
were all mortified and inconvenienced. For some 
time it was subject to capricious regulations, and 
it is a matter for congratulation that the largest 
and most splendid garden of Rome, which bounds 
the whole of one side of the city, is at length 
freely thrown open as the property of the nation. 
Among those persons who succeeded the old 
Cardinal, the best remembered Is, perhaps, Pauline, 
the sister of Napoleon I., who married Don 
Camillo Borghese in 1803. Silvagni, in his “ Corte 
Romana,” gives us a vivid description of her, her 
passion for dress, her beauty, white and transparent 
with Greek profile, hair done in curls 3 /a Grecgue, 
her sylph-like form. In spite of her frivolity she 
was full of wit and delicacy, and all smiles and soft 
words, and was universally beloved. Her statue 
by Canova as Venus Vincitrice, almost unclothed, 
is conspicuous in the villa, and at the time was 
declared to be worthy of Phidias. The story is 
well known of her being asked if she had not 
found posing in “the altogether ” very disagreeable, 
and her reply, “ Why should 1? The room was well 
warmed!” The Duchess d’Abrantés, who knew 
her well, declares in her memoirs that she was 
quite as beautiful as the statue. 
Early in the nineteenth century Charles IV., 
the abdicated King of Spain, had rooms in the 
villa, a miserable creature, with a wife of whom 
the Duchess d’Abrantés writes that “she knew not 
how to be wife or guilty woman, or mother or 
sovereign. 
A more sympathetic memory that haunts these 
halls and woods is that of Lady Gwendoline Talbot, 
who in 1835 became the wife of a later Camillo 
Borghese, and whose charity, simplicity, culture, 
and kindness made a deep impression on Rome, 
where she was worshipped during her short mar- 
ried life. Silvagni gives a charming description of 
her. Fair, with great brown eyes, delicate profile, 
smiling mouth, and masses of chestnut hair. She 
helped the poor, befriended and found dowries for 
orphans, work for able-bodied women, and her 
courage and charity during a visitation of cholera 
were long remembered. She was the delight of 
her husband and the admiration of society, which, 
corrupt as it was, was still able to appreciate her 
angelic purity. In October, 1840, the villa was, 
according to custom, thrown open to the people, 
and a féte was held there. Lady Gwendoline was 
full of life, superintending the games, her delightful 
smile ready to greet all her friends. The following 
day she had a sore throat, but after two days’ 
illness was sufficiently recovered to sit up in bed 
and breakfast with her husband, whose anxiety was 
quite reassured. Later in the day the doctor came 
and found mischief hitherto unsuspected, and it 
was broken to her that she had only a few hours 
to live. In the midst of the anguish at parting 
with her husband and her four little children, she 
kept up his courage and her own and showed the 
utmost resignation. Rome was in consternation, 
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63 
PALLY. 
and the mourning for her was universal. Her 
husband was beside himself with grief, and the 
tragedy was not complete; in a few days three 
of the children had followed their mother—the 
last was with difficulty saved. 
In later days the Borghese family was ruined 
by building speculations, and, after three hundred 
and eighty years of sumptuous splendour, the villa 
was sold to the State for 3,000,000 lire. A writer 
in 1700, Montelatici, says that the grounds were 
divided into four parts: The Giardino Boscareccio, 
which embraced the whole piece from the entrance 
at Porta Pinciana to the Fountain of Horses and 
included the palace itself; the piano della Pros- 
pettina, the stretch at the back of the villa, where 
there is a fine view towards Tivoli; the park, or 
middle part, including the Giardino del Lago; and 
the garden of Muro Torto, reaching to the west wall 
and going down to the Piazza del Popolo entrance. 
Broad, smooth carriage-drives make a complete 
circuit of the grounds and traverse them at intervals. 
Casinos, of two Storeys, are placed in various parts 
and serve as park lodges, and there were many little 
buildings scattered about which have disappeared. 
The slopes are rich in woods, here park-like 
meadow stretches, groups of oaks and elms, there 
close, fine turf under pines and cypresses. We 
find all the union of art and nature which gives 
to Italian pleasure-grounds their peculiar fascination. 
“The ilex trees,” says Hawthorne in “ 'Transforma- 
tion,” **so ancient and time-honoured are they, seem 
to have lived for ages undisturbed. It has already 
passed out of their dreamy old memories that only 
a few years ago they were grievously imperilled 
by the Gaul’s last assault upon the walls of 
Rome never was there a more venerable 
quietude than that which sleeps among their shel- 
tering boughs; never a sweeter sunshine than 
that which gladdens the gentle gloom which these 
leafy patriarchs diffuse over the swelling and 
subsiding lawns. 
“In other parts of the grounds the stone 
pines lift their dense clumps upon a_-= slender 
length of stem, so high that they look like green 
islands in the air, flinging down a shadow on the 
turf so far off that you scarcely know which tree 
has made it there is enough of human 
care bestowed long ago and_ still bestowed, to 
prevent wildness growing to deformity, and the 
result is an ideal landscape, a woodland scene that 
seems to have been projected out of the poet’s 
mind. If the ancient Faun could reappear any- 
where, it must surely be in such a scene as this.” 
Imitation classic ruins are constructed here 
and there out of the ancient materials which 
abounded everywhere. The woodland is broken 
up by groups of interest. Mounting up from the 
Piazza del Popolo you reach an open space, guarded 
by two obelisks of red Egyptian granite, stone seats 
are set round against a low wall, a stone lion keeps 
guard above, and one tall cypress stands sentinel. 
Here is the entrance to the ‘Garden of the Lake,” 
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