PALAZZO BORGHESE, 
ROME. 
T is impossible for modern ideas of grandeur to 
compete with those of the Renaissance and the 
seventeenth century in Italy. The Borghese, 
during the years of their power, acquired 
eighty estates in the Campagna of Rome. Cardinal 
Scipione, having a villa at the gates of Rome as 
magnificent as the chief palace of most great nobles, 
kept it as a summer-house and lived chiefly in the 
immense palace in the town. It was begun in 
1590 by Cardinal Deza from the designs of Martino 
Lunghi, and finished by order of the great Borghese 
Pope, Paul V., by Flaminio Ponzio. The archi- 
tecture still has something of Renaissance beauty. 
The courtyard is surrounded by a colonnade, and 
an airy loggia arches across the garden entrance, 
such as one might see in a fresco by Pintoricchio. 
Under the cloistered granite columns, against which 
are set several ancient colossal statues, we pass into 
the little garden. It is screened from the court- 
yard by pedestals set in pairs, on which stand small 
Roman statues; we can fancy the connoisseur 
Cardinal deciding that they were poor works, not 
worthy of gracing his choice collection, but that 
they would do well enough for the garden. Two 
low fountains play on either side of the wide iron 
gate through which you enter the garden. It is 
locked now and no one passes down the shallow 
steps, and the garden is the emporium of a dealer 
in antiquities. In the old times it must have been 
the ideal of a little town garden, shut in with high 
walls, into which are built three huge fantastic 
fountain pieces in the baroque  style—tasteless 
things, yet not without a certain barbaric grace. 
The canopies supported by young men, crowned 
with baskets of flowers, cupids rioting with ropes 
100 
of flowers, goddesses holding out alluring arms, 
are florid but effective. The banksias fling their 
careless foliage over the walls, and the arums grow 
thick and tall in the old sarcophagi; but inside 
the palace the rooms still retain their painted 
mirrors, their cupids by Ciro Ferri, and their 
wreaths by Mario di Fiori, though the celebrated 
pictures and statues have been taken away. 
Cardinal Scipione, the stately, genial art patron, 
lived and died here, and how many others of his 
house ;- but, perhaps, the vision that comes most 
clearly before English eyes is of the lovely and 
beloved Princess Gwendoline, a daughter of the 
noble house of Talbot, wedded in 1835 to Prince 
Camillo Borghese, and dying five years later, after 
three days’ illness, of diphtheria. She was buried 
in the Borghese Chapel in S$. Maria Maggiore, and 
half Rome followed her to her grave. The piazza 
outside the palace could hardly contain the crowd 
assembled, when at midnight the great gates were 
thrown open and the funeral procession issued. 
Forty young Romans in deep mourning took the 
horses from the funeral car and, yoking themselves 
to it, drew her up the hill. A great cortége of 
rich and poor followed, ‘‘so that it seemed as 
though a whole people were bearing her to her 
last resting-place,’ and from all the windows, as 
she passed, flowers were showered down upon her. 
The mourning was universal, but the horror and 
pity redoubled when, within a few days, three of 
her children were laid beside their mother, leaving 
only one little girl. Poor husband, poor father, 
poor motherless babe, left alone in the splendour 
of the palace. The recollection seems to make 
its vast dreariness seem vaster and more dreary. 
