72 THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



Among those who succeeded the old Cardinal the best remembered personality 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 a Greek profile, her hair done in curls a la Grecque, and 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, is one of the most popular 

 attractions in the gallery. The Duchess d'Abrantes, 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. He was a miserable creature, with a wife of whom the Duchess d'Abrantes 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. Her charity, simplicity, 

 kindness and culture made a deep impression on Rome, where she was worshipped during her 

 short married life. Silvagni gives a charming description of her as fair, with great brown 

 eyes, a delicate profile, smiling mouth and masses of chestnut hair. She helped the poor, 

 befriended and found dowries for orphans, and provided work for able-bodied women. Her courage 

 and charity during a visitation of cholera in Rome 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 fete was held there. Lady Gwendoline, full of life, was there superintending the games, her 

 delightful smile ever ready to greet 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, displaying the utmost resignation. Rome was in consternation, and 

 the mourning for her was universal. Her husband was beside himself with grief, and even 

 then the tragedy was not complete ; for in a few days three of the children had followed their 

 mother and only the last with difficulty was saved. 



In later days the Borghese family ruined themselves by building speculations, and, after three 

 hundred and eighty years of sumptuous splendour, the villa was sold to the State for three million 

 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 Prospettina, 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 entrance from the Piazza del Popolo. Broad, smooth carriage drives now 

 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 originally many little 

 buildings scattered about which have now disappeared. 



The slopes are rich in woods, park-like meadow stretches, groups of oaks and elms, and 

 close, fine turf under the shade of pines and cypresses. It is the union of art and nature which 

 gives to Italian pleasure-grounds their peculiar fascination. ' The ilex trees," says Hawthorne 

 in Transformation, : ' 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 sheltering 

 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, 



