THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
the latter is said to have loved best his villa at 
Castel Gandolfo, numerous inscriptions, lead labels, 
and pieces of sculpture show the care he took in 
adorning this at Frascati. 
In the fourth century came the terrible blow 
of the transportation of the Court to Constantinople. 
The old capital was left in fallen grandeur, and those 
who still clung to their well-loved country homes, 
came to realise the awful fate that awaited a small 
civilisation in the midst of an uncivilised world. 
All that refinement, those choice collections, 
that love of scholarship and learned leisure were 
shattered and dissipated by the invasions of the 
peoples of the North or the Saracens; and those 
who could not fly were forced into the narrow 
space protected by the city’s cyclopean walls. 
Numerous signs of great devastations have been 
found among the ruins, but nothing that points 
to restoration or to any after attempt to inhabit 
them. The city of Tusculum was still of consider- 
able size, saved by its tremendous walls, which 
enabled it to resist even the terrible onslaughts of 
the barbarian  devastators. Notwithstanding the 
visitations of these barbarous hordes, a little group 
of farmers gathered among the ruined gardens of 
Lucullus; they were probably retainers of the 
great house, and, united by their Christian faith, 
a church and monastery found place among them, 
and so Frascati came into being. 
It was in the Middle Ages that there rose 
into importance the great race of the Counts of 
Tusculum, under which in the ninth and three 
following centuries Tusculum became again a 
place of power and importance, They were a 
race whose whole history is full of deeds of 
cruelty and treachery ; but they figure as consuls 
and senators, and gave to Rome no less than 
seven popes. The ruined castle of Borghetto, 
lying below, was one of their fastnesses, and the 
history of Tusculum is a record of perpetual combats 
with rival popes and with the Roman people. 
Gradually the haughty town and_ its Counts 
degenerated, and in 1170, the last, Count Ranio, 
made over the possession to Pope Alexander III., 
who made a_ triumphal entry into the town and 
resided there for more than two years. It was 
during this time that there came to Tusculum the 
Ambassadors of Henry II. of England, bringing 
the news of the murder of Thomas a Beckett, 
Archbishop of Canterbury, and charged with the 
task of clearing the King from the accusation of 
having conspired to bring it about. 
As one of the conditions of accepting Alexander 
as their sovereign, the Tusculans were required to 
level their impregnable walls. The work of 
destruction was carried out in 1172, and the ancient 
city was left in an absolutely defenceless condition. 
In 1191, Pope Celestin III., and the Emperor 
Henry VI., betrayed the unhappy city into the 
hands of its enemies, the ever-jealous Romans. On 
an April night they surprised and stormed the place; 
the inhabitants defended themselves desperately, but 
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a terrible massacre took place, and afterwards every 
building and temple and the prehistoric walls of 
Telegonus were razed to the ground, and salt strewn 
over the ruins, so that they should never be restored. 
The Colonna claim descent from the Conti, 
one of the oldest families in Italy, and a branch is 
said to have founded the Royal Family of Germany. 
The last of the race, Fulvia Conti, married a Sforza 
in 1650, and by an alliance with the Sforza-Cesarini 
and the Torlonia, the Villa Conti belongs to-day to 
Duke Torlonia. 
In 1607, Cardinal Tolomeo de Come, Bishop 
of Tusculum, sold the villa to Cardinal Scipione 
Borghese, and it afterwards belonged to Cardinals 
Altemps and Ludovisi. It was only in 1632 that it 
was bought by the Conti. This family has given 
to Rome twenty-three popes, three anti-popes, four 
saints, twenty-two cardinals, and a whole bevy of 
martyrs, bishops, abbots, and senators. 
The villa itself is an unpretending white 
house, with broad eaves, and is of no particular 
interest. The whole beauty of the place lies in 
the grounds, which are approached by a fine 
avenue of plane trees. The great stairway offers 
an imposing cowp d’wil, spread out against the 
slope in magnificent amplitude, its timeworn grey- 
stone relieved against the dark woods above, and 
the intervening spaces filled with pink monthly 
roses, which in spring and summer are very gay 
and sweet. At the top of this easy ascent a wide 
terrace runs the length of the grounds, from which 
we may wander into the dense ilex woods, studded 
with open spaces, in which are set graceful 
fountains. Suddenly the wood clears away and a 
wide stretch of green leads to the cascade, a 
terraced erection where the water falls from a 
considerable height and loses itself in a large, 
shallow basin, surrounded by stone arches and 
parapets, and a fountain rises high in the midst. 
Climbing the mossy, shallow steps which mount 
on either side of the curving waterway, another 
plateau is reached, on which _ is placed the 
fountain, with its splendid framework of — balus- 
trading, here illustrated, and which, shut in on 
three sides by the ilex wood, and on the 
other commanding peeps and vistas of distant 
plain and mountain, is one of the most beautiful 
objects of this or, indeed, of any Italian garden. 
The water here is dark and deep, and there is 
not lacking a story of a guilty monk finding his 
grave here. He is said to walk on moonlight 
nights, and to disappear in the spray of the 
fountain. 
Among those who lived here in other days 
was Henry, Cardinal of York, who, on the death 
of his brother, Charles Edward, caused himself 
to be proclaimed King of England, by the title 
of Henry IX. He lived forty-two years at 
Frascati, of which he was the bishop; there is 
a monument erected by him to his brother in 
the cathedral, and a bust of himself in the 
hibrary which he founded, 
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