88 



THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



Cardinal Scipione, the stately, genial art patron, lived and died here, and 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, who died 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 it up the hill. A great cortege 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 

 but to make its vast 

 dreariness the vaster and 

 more dreary. 



Long before the ori- 

 ginal stronghold of the 

 Colonnas was built, 

 almost on the site of 

 their present palace, the 

 " Little Senate " was 

 established here. It was 

 a woman's senate, insti- 

 tuted by Elagabalus, an 

 assembly of the fashion- 

 able Roman matrons of 

 the day, presided over 

 by the mother of the 

 Emperor. They met to 

 determine how every 

 matron in Rome might 

 dress, to whom she was 

 to yield precedence, by 



whom she might be kissed ; deciding which ladies might drive in chariots and which must content 

 themselves with carts, whether horses, mules or oxen were permitted, which ladies might wear 

 shoes adorned with gold or set with precious stones. We can imagine the shrill discussions, the 

 gossip, the jealousies of the " Little Senate." Aurelian swept it away fifty years later, when 

 he built his Temple of the Sun on this spot to record his triumph over Zenobia, the fallen 

 Queen of Palmyra. The temple was enriched with gems and with fifteen thousand pounds 

 in weight of gold. Much of it was still standing in the seventeenth century, and it is still 

 doubtful whether the pieces of gigantic cornice which lie on the upper terrace formed part 



98. VIEW IN THE ENCLOSED GARDEN OF THE PALAZZO BORGHESE, 

 ROME, SHOWING TWO OF THE FOUNTAINS. 



