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THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



Popular, magnificent, beloved and admired, the Cardinal, according to the fashion of the 

 day, was accompanied by a splendid cortege of more than two hundred and fifty nobles and 

 distinguished litter ati as on a beautiful spring day he rode across that historic plain to take 

 possession of his appointment. The Tiburtines mustered all their resources to give him a 

 welcome : a band of horsemen and footmen met him outside the gates (he entered just where 

 the tram-line now ends), the elders and magistrates proffered the keys of the city, a hundred children 

 in white waved palm branches, trumpets pealed and salvoes of artillery were fired. " He was 

 so gratified and pleased that his eyes were full of tears." Almost at once he must have formed 

 the plan of living here and have decided to pull down the old Castello in which he was lodged. 

 For a large sum of money the land was acquired from the municipality ; there were not wanting 

 irreconcilables who protested against the destruction entailed of the humble homes which 



211. THE CANAL OR GREAT POOLS BELOW THE ORGAN FOUNTAIN. 



clustered down the mountain-side, but any individual hardship must have been counterbalanced 

 by the employment and prosperity which the Cardinal brought with him. 



" A view," writes Fulvio Testi to the Duke of Modena in 1620, " which perhaps has not 

 its equal in the world." It is not only the exquisite beauty of which Tivoli boasts, but the 

 whole plain teems with memories " half as old as Time." Here have marched the Roman 

 legions, here Brutus and Cassius have fled, red with Caesar's blood, here Zenobia passed to 

 her long captivity. Yonder stood the villa of Maecenas, and blue Soracte watches unchanged 

 as in the days when it saw the revels of the Antonines and the delights of Hadrian's Villa. 



Below the alley of the hundred fountains, enclosed in a graceful, curving stairway, down 

 the balustrades of which cascades once dashed to the basin below, are the remains of the 

 Fountain of the Dragon. This was designed to celebrate the visit of Pope Gregory XIII, whose 

 crest was a dragon. It burst forth by torchlight on the closing evening of his stay, and we 

 are told that he was " surprised and delighted " at the compliment. The rush of water from 

 the upper end comes from the elaborate wall-fountain of the Organ, a splendid construction 

 which played " madrigals and other music." Round one of the fountains were trees made of 



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