THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



It is thought that in classic times a fountain must have stood near where the famous one is 

 now placed, for an inscription was found in the immediate neighbourhood which evidently 

 belonged to such a structure : 



Nymph of this place, guardian (if the sacred stream, 

 I sleep, watch o'er me, while its murmur fills my dream. 

 O, you \vlio approach this fount and tread its marbles, 

 Disturb me not, if you bathe or drink, be silent. 



Nicholas V had already begun a fountain to a design in which, by three aqueducts, through 

 three masks, the water was arranged to flow into a marble shell. This was the work of Leon 

 Battista Alberta, and we cannot help giving a sigh over one of the beautiful lost works of the 

 Renaissance. At that time, as Vasari tells us, the fountain faced towards Piazza Poli, but 

 Urban VIII turned it round, as it is at present. In Via Nazzareno may be seen the low 

 door which gives access to the aqueduct. It is large enough for a boat with two men to 

 ascend it for some distance. The archives relate that on July 8th, 1643, Pope Urban, leaving 





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i RRIM1SJ FON lll'A s; OLLI 



MIS 

 KXXi 



94. THE ACQUA PAULA ON THE JANICULUM. 



the Vatican, went to stay at Monte Cavallo, and stopped on his way to see the Fountain of 

 Trevi, which had just been turned about. Above it were raised the arms of Nicholas V, who 

 had restored it. Pope Urban threw down the houses that had stood behind the fountain 

 and made a piazza, so that it could be seen from Monte Cavallo, and, the pressure of the water 

 being increased, it rose much higher than before. This Pope proposed to erect a grand 

 fountain, and, with Bernini's co-operation, planned to adorn it with statues taken from the 

 tomb of Cecilia Metella ; but the popular outcry against the dismantling of this splendid 

 relic of antiquity was so strong that the Pope thought it prudent to abandon his project. As he 

 had also laid a very unpopular tax upon wine, Pasquino wrote the following couplet upon him : 



Urban having raised the tax upon wine, 

 Regaled the people of the Ouirinal with water. 



It was reserved for Clement XIII, in the eighteenth century, to inaugurate the fountain as we 

 now see it ; an edifice which throws all other fountains of Rome almost into the shade. The 



