THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
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beauty that it is difficult to match them, even in Rome. On the outside of the villa fronting 
he city are granite columns, and the great door has a easing of beaten iron, fastened with a 
thousand round-headed nails. In this sturdy envelope may be descried three deep holes 
which It IS said were made by bullets fired from the Castle of St. Angelo. Not in time of war’ 
the viir 'b “ / ° c"' promised to awake the master of 
the villa by knocking at his door to bid him make one of a hunting party 
In the villa, above all, once stood the famous Venus de INIedici. She was exiled to Florence 
in I. ,6,. It was the one memorable act in a reign of one montli of Innocent XI who was 
persuaded that the statue was mimical to morality, and ought to be removed from the eyes of 
Rome. To imagine m some degree what the villa was like in its great davs let us remember 
hat V, hat we now see are only the remains of one hundred and twenty-eight statues fifty-four 
busts eight urns or sarcophagi, twenty-eight bas-reliefs and thirty-one columns of marble. 
ne little chapel ot St. Gaetano, which to-day is occupied as a studio, in the north-west 
corner received its name from the founder of the Order of Oratorians, who, in the fifteenth 
century, took refuge here with his disciples during the sack of Rome. Discovered by the Spanish 
soldiers, vvho vv^re hunting for treasure, the saint was terribly tortured at their hands. ’They 
len seized the Father Paoletto, and hung him by the hair from a tree in the garden. Escaping, 
lie attributed his preservation to a vow which he made to St. Francois de Paul. 
In 1633-34 t'le palace served as an asylum to the immortal Galileo, at the time when he had 
to give an account of his system before the Inquisition. On discovering the satellites of 
Jupiter he had luckily given to them the name of “ Stars of the Medici,” and so doing earned 
Henr^Jlv" Protection of that House. Marie de Medici, afterwards Queen of 
Henry I\ passed here a part ot her youth. Her room was on the second stomy with 
windows looking south over the city. In 1770 the Emperor Joseph II and his brother, the 
.rand Duke Leopold of the House of Lorraine, sojourned here for a time, but it was then no 
onger owned by the Medici, and Lorraine and Austria were masters of Tuscanv while the 
great House of Medici dickered out in 1737. 
Long before this the splendours of the villa had diminished. All had depended on one 
family and followed its fortunes. Towards the end of tiie seventeenth century the splendour 
of the .Medici was concentrated at Florence, and as one Grand Duke succeeded another he thought 
ess and less of the villa, or only remembered to despoil it. Niobe and her children were taken 
o hlorence ; the two lions went to the Loggia dei Lanzi ; the Mercury, the Cleopatra, the vase 
all the most precious treasures vanished. In 179S the Neapolitans pillaged its halls, and the 
TV I' ' became still less. In iSoi the property passed by negotiation to the Grand 
Duke of Parma, and two years later it became the property of the French Academy, the 
iJirectors ot which have done much to restore its beauty. 
At every step you come across some beauty of nature or of art. The whole garden 
IS set m marvellous hedges of clipped box, above which towers the dark velvet of stone pines. 
. arcophagi serve as basins for the fountains, and crumbling statues gleam from niches cut in 
the thick greenery. Huge ancient receptacles for oil or wine stand on pedestals, and vases 
and tubs of lemon trees are placed on the richly carved capitals of broken columns. In front 
ot the gartkm entrance is a broad gravelled court, in the midst of which is a fountain over- 
grown with arum lilies ; beyond it lies a formal garden, where oleanders bloom and magnolias 
make the air heavy with perfume. A charming statue of a dreaming Eros is to be seen reposing 
upon an o c tomb. .M ffie entrance to a long alley, between two columns united by 
an architrave beneath which once stood a famous statue of Cleopatra, is now placed an 
antique statue of Apollo. It has been restored by the addition of a most beautiful head said 
to be of Meleager, and attributed to the hand of Scopas himself. Standing in such a graceful 
setting columns, with roses rioting all round and dark ilexes as a background, this statue 
IS one ot the most striking features of the garden. Velazquez has left two interesting sketches 
which are now in Madrid, of the long gallery in the garden, and of a fountain with ile,xes. 
vVithin the villa it is possible to descend a stair to the depth of eighty feet, to where, beneath 
a '’ault, flow the crystal waters of the .-Vcqua Virga, which rises eight miles from Rome 
and reeds many of the fountains of the city. ’ 
