THE VILLA Al.DOHR. \\DI\I. 169 



suffering from damp, they were carried off to the Borghese palace, that family being at that time 

 proprietors of the villa. The gallery has paintings of the Temptation and Fall, the Expulsion 

 from the Garden of Eden and other Old Testament scenes by Cavaliere d'Arpino, a fashionable 

 and mediocre painter of the day. 



When Goethe was staying at Frascati he was invited to visit Prince Aldobrandini. A 

 German artist named Kaisermann was just then engaged in painting the views of Frascati 

 which are still to be seen on the walls of the grand saloon. Goethe gave the artist a com- 

 mission to paint the town and the panorama beyond from the terrace, and the picture still 

 hangs in the room in which the poet died at Weimar. 



The estates of the Aldobrandini were left to the Borghese on condition that they should 

 belong to the second brother, who was to assume the name. A hundred years ago Don Paolo 

 Borghese, Prince Aldobrandini, being afraid of the damp, fitted up a casino in the town of 

 Frascati which was furnished with every comfort that his taste could devise. Here he 



j 



entertained parties of friends, including many English travellers of the day. He did the 

 honours of Tusculum to the Duke of Gloucester among others, and was very proud of the 

 possession of an English carpet which was the Duke's gift. 



Georges Sand wrote with true insight into the charm of these delicious haunts, with their 

 fascinating combination of art and nature, aided, as it already was in her day, by the hand of 

 Time. The over-artificial air had already vanished. The water no longer moved the musical 

 instruments which roused the ire of De Brosse. " They still bound into marble shells, but 

 the music is that of Nature, the stucco grottoes are hung with a ferny tapestry, the moss has 

 laid its velvet upon staring mosaics, Nature has rebelled, has taken a forsaken look, we hear a 

 note of ruin and a song of solitude." Nothing can adequately convey the charm of the deep 

 woods which lie all around, where the sacred grove of Diana is believed once to have flung its 

 shade. E. M. P. 



