VILLA BORGHESE. 
the most popular corner of the grounds. The 
enclosure is gay with flowers, brilliant in the spring 
with purple Judas trees. The lake itself is very 
pretty, with its swans and its pseudo-Greek temple 
reflected in the water. Fine sarcophagi and tombs 
are placed under the old trees, and in spring the 
glades are blue with ground ivy and bluebells. 
From the side of the lake a bridge crosses 
the road, far below, to a wild bit of the garden 
where there is a beautiful grove of stone pines, 
and where once was the “seraglio of the lions,” 
and there the keeper’s cottage is still in use. 
Opposite the entrance to the garden, a long 
avenue leads to a beautiful little TTempietto, its 
slender columns and cupola gleaming silver grey 
against the dark foliage. The valley below is 
filled by the circus, a model of a Roman race- 
course, set round with rows of stone seats rising 
one above another. Here, under the shadow of 
immemorial pines, the Roman populace gathers to 
watch races and contests. Many thousands are easily 
accommodated, and on a lovely spring day there 
are few pleasanter ways of enjoying an open-air 
show. Usually, however, it is quiet enough, 
nurses and children, or quiet walkers stray under 
the trees, or a group of young priests play football 
in the arena. 
Delightful fountains are scattered through the 
woods; one of the most conspicuous is ‘the 
Horses,” placed where several broad roads converge. 
The tiers of trickling basins are supported on the 
heads of horses tossed backwards, with flowing, 
curly manes and dolphins’ tails, and the water 
spouts in bold curves from between their moss- 
grown fore feet and falls into a broad basin. This 
is the fashionable drive, and motor-cars gather 
here, and the smart carriages of the Roman ladies 
roll past through the long spring afternoons. 
Only a stone’s throw off, down below, under giant 
ilex avenues like cathedral aisles, is a tall, slender 
fountain, set in a dim, religious light, where, 
even on a bright day, the sunlight can only strike 
through in shafts. The banks around are blue 
with sweet violets when March begins, and the 
nightingales sing under the rich, green velvet 
branches of the old trees. 
In this part of the doscareccio and in the 
adjoining “park”? were formerly situated the 
“seraglio of the tortoises,” the “seraglio of the 
gazelles,” the ‘“ wood for hunting thrushes,” and 
the “ Ragnaia,” or enclosure for coursing hares. 
Numbers of animals were kept in the park: 
deer, goats, Indian pigs, ostriches, peacocks, swans, 
and ducks, and small birds were as legitimate an 
object of the chase as they are to-day in Italy. 
And so we mount up to the nucleus of it 
all, the casino or pleasure-house which the princely 
Cardinal built to entertain his guests in, but which 
was yet only a summer-house and never a home, 
for the dread malaria forbade its being dwelt in, 
save very occasionally.  “ If you come hither in 
summer and stray through these glades in the 
( 
64 
) 
golden sunset, fever walks arm-in-arm with you, 
and death awaits you at the end of the dim vista.” 
The gay house of the courtly prelate is some- 
thing of a fairy palace. It is set in a courtyard, 
with flights of steps, balustrades of travertine and 
fountains, and everywhere we see the dragon and 
the crowned eagle, the arms of the “ most excellent 
House of Borghese.” We must try to forget the 
act of vulgar vandalism, by which the original 
balustrade was torn away to adorn a millionaire’s 
villa on the Thames and an imitation substituted. 
The villa, built from designs by Giovanni 
Vasanzio, or Fiamingo, the Fleming, is a stucco 
edifice with two small square towers and a facade 
enriched with moulded garlands, niches with busts 
and statues, projecting eaves and a fine wrought- 
iron grille. Passing to the left you reach a gateway 
where tall iron gates admit to the garden front. 
On either side of the entrance are two long 
enclosures which were called “the secret gardens.” 
Each has an aviary at one end, now falling into 
ruin, silent fountains and moss-grown fruit trees, 
and nowhere do the violets cluster so thickly. It 
is painful to record that this year the old walls 
are torn down, the secret gardens thrown open, 
and modern iron railings placed round them. 
The stretch behind the villa was that called the 
Prospettina, and through old ilexes scattered on 
the grass you come to a quaint pleasaunce which 
it is easy to believe was a favourite resort of the 
Cardinal and his guests. A semi-circular space is 
bounded on the north by a long ornamental wall, 
built with pillars, niches, vases, and bas-reliefs from 
old sarcophagi, and reached by flights of steps are 
windows through which to view the distant ‘* pros- 
pect,” where Soracte shows blue against the horizon. 
This spot is approached by an ilex avenue guarded 
by stately terminal figures, and raised seats are placed 
round, for the place was a sort of open-air theatre. 
We can well imagine the courtly gallants, the laughing 
ladies in be-ribboned brocades, the purple and rose- 
red of ecclesiastical robes against this background 
of rich grey-green. So, too, on the wide greensward 
under the garden front of the villa, we can picture 
that old-world life. Here the grass is still fresh, 
and signs of care remain. A fountain, guarded by a 
dejected nymph, plays languidly into an immense 
shallow basin, on the edge of which cactuses grow 
in stone vases. Round about, against a circle of 
ilexes, are placed some forty or fifty pedestals, 
bearing ancient wine-vases, statues, antiques or 
copies, and terminal figures. Many of the fountains 
have disappeared. Gone is the great fountain of 
Narcissus, with a life-size figure of the youth in 
bronze, copied from an antique marble. Clumps 
of oleanders make a rosy gleam in summer, other- 
wise the effect of the crumbling grey stone against 
the dark foliage is soft and solemn. What groups 
have gathered here in the hot summer days ! 
Ladies, such as Bronzino shows us, with their 
cavaliers, beaux in powder and patches, of Goldoni’s 
and Pietro Longhi’s day, Pauline and her triends in 
