ggiore, so lies Platina,--he,
at least, the better for no epitaph,--and Beatrice Cenci and many
others, rest unforgotten in nameless graves.

From the church to the railway station stretch the ruins, continuous,
massive, almost useless, yet dear to all who love old Rome. On the south
side, there used to be a long row of buildings, ending in a tall old
mansion of good architecture, which was the 'Casino' of the great old
Villa Negroni. In that house, but recently gone, Thomas Crawford,
sculptor, lived for many years, and in the long, low studio that stood
before what is now the station, but was then a field, he modelled the
great statue of Liberty that crowns the Capitol in Washington, and
Washington's own monument which stands in Richmond, and many of his
other works. My own early childhood was spent there, among the old-time
gardens, and avenues of lordly cypresses and of bitter orange trees, and
the moss-grown fountains, and long walks fragrant with half-wild roses
and sweet flowers that no one thinks of planting now. Beyond, a wild
waste of field and broken land led up to Santa Maria Maggiore; and the
grand old bells sent their far voices ringing in deep harmony to our
windows; and on the Eve of Saint Peter's day, when Saint Peter's was a
dream of stars in the distance and the gorgeous fireworks gleamed in the
dark sky above the Pincio, we used to climb the high tower above the
house and watch the still illumination and the soaring rockets through a
grated window, till the last one had burst and spent itself, and we
crept down the steep stone steps, half frightened at the sound of our
own voices in the ghostly place.

And in that same villa once lived Vittoria Accoramboni, married to
Francesco Peretti, nephew of Cardinal Montalto, who built the house, and
was afterwards Sixtus the Fifth, and filled Rome with his works in the
five years of his stirring reign. Hers also is a story worth telling,
for few know it, even among Romans, and it is a tale of bloodshed, and
of murder, and of all crimes against God and man, and of the fall of the
great house of Orsini. But it may better be told in another place, when
we reach the Region where they lived and fought and ruled, by terror and
the sword.

Near the Baths of Diocletian, and most probably on the site of that same
Villa Negroni, too, was that vineyard, or 'villa' as we should say,
where Caesar Borgia and his elder brother, the Duke of Gandia, supped
together for the l