the people; and are _comfortable_ and consistent as a
well carpeted drawing-room and a warm chimney-corner would be in
England?

"But it is all so artificial and unnatural"--Agreed;--so are our
yellow unsheltered gravel walks, meandering through smooth shaven
lawns, which have no other beauty than that of being dry when every
other place is wet; our shapeless flower-beds so elaborately
irregular, our clumps and dots of trees, and dwarfish shrubberies. I
have seen some over-dressed grounds and gardens in England, the
perpetrations of Capability Brown and his imitators, the landscape
gardeners, quite as bad as any thing I see here, only in a different
style, and certainly more adapted to England and English taste. I must
confess, that in these enchanting gardens of the Villa Pamfili, a
little less "ingenuity and artifice" would be better. I hate _mere_
tricks and gimcrackery, of which there are a few instances, such as
their hydraulic music, jets-d'eau--water-works that play occasionally
to the astonishment of children and the profit of the gardeners--but
how different, after all, are these Italia gardens to the miserable
grandeur, and senseless, tasteless parade of Versailles!

In these gardens an interesting discovery has just been made; an
extensive burial place, or columbarium, in singular preservation. The
skeletons and ashes have not been removed. Some of the tombs are
painted in fresco, others floored with very pretty mosaic. The
disposition of the urns is curious: they are imbedded in the masonry
of the wall with moveable lids. On a tile I found the name of Sextus
Pompeius, in letters beautifully formed, and deeply and distinctly
cut, and an inscription which I was not Latinist enough to translate
accurately, but from which it appears that these columbaria belonged
to a branch of the Pompey family.

27.--To-day, after English chapel, I look a walk to the San Gregorio,
on the other side of the Palatine, which since I first came to Rome
has been to me a favourite and chosen spot. I sat down on the steps of
the church to rest, and enjoy at leisure the fine view of the hill
and ruins opposite. Arches on arches, a wilderness of desolation! and
mingled with massive fragments of the halls and towers of the Caesars,
were young shrubs just putting on their brightest green, and the
almond-trees covered with their gay blossoms, and the cloudless and
resplendent skies bending over all.

I tried to sketch the scene befor