pe since the
overthrowing of the temporal power in 1870. It has a beautiful and
commanding view toward Rome. It was built by Urban VIII.

All the magic of Italy is in this picturesque excursion. In the vast
grounds of the Villa Barberini are the ruins of the ancient palace and
gardens of Domitian. On one hillside is a broken wall; a long avenue of
ilex trees reveals here and there fragments of mosaic pavement.
Crumbling niches hold fragments of statues. The hill itself is still
pierced with the long tunnels driven through it by Domitian that he
might pass unseen,--presumably safe from his enemies,--from the palace
to the gardens. From the parapet, Rome is seen across the shining
Campagna and the dome of Michael Angelo gleams against the blue Italian
sky.

"The wreck is beautiful," writes Mrs. Humphry Ward, in "Eleanor," of
this romantic spot; "for it is masked in the gloom of the overhanging
trees; or hidden behind dropping veils of ivy; or lit up by straggling
patches of broom and cytisus that thrust themselves through the gaps in
the Roman brickwork and shine golden in the dark. At the foot of the
wall, along its whole length, runs a low marble conduit that held the
sweetest, liveliest water. Lilies of the valley grow beside it,
breathing scent into the shadowed air; while on the outer or garden side
of the path the grass is purple with long-stalked violets, or pink with
the sharp heads of the cyclamen. And a little farther, from the same
grass, there shoots up, in happy neglect, tall camellia trees, ragged
and laden, strewing the ground red and white beneath them. And above the
camellias again the famous stone-pines of the villa climb into the high
air, overlooking the plain and the sea, peering at Rome and Soracte."

One could wander all day in the strange ruins of the old Barberini
grounds, and in the vast spaces of the gardens and through the Villa
Doria.

The beauty of the avenue of ilex trees through which we flew from Castel
Gandolfo to Lago di Nemi surpasses description. This lake, some four
miles in circumference, lies in a crater hollow, with precipitous hills
surrounding it, the water so clear that the ancients called it the
"Mirror of Diana." In it was constructed an artificial island in the
design of a Roman state barge.

Over the long viaduct at Ariccia we flew; everywhere in the little town
people, donkeys--an almost indistinguishable mass--filled the narrow
streets; and thus on to Genzano and the