any apparently inaccessible
other villages incredibly high up--Cantalupo, Castel Madama, S. Vito,
&c., each with its distinguishing _palazzone_--makes one understand
_what Rome is made of_--the feudal, savage mountains whence, even like
its drinking water which splashes in Bernini fountains, this sixteenth
and seventeenth century Rome has descended. _For Rome is not an Urban
City_; and underneath all the Bernini palaces, we must imagine things
like Palazzo Capranica, with the few mullioned and Gothic windows
picked in its fortress-like walls. How I seem to feel what Rome is
made of--its strange living components in the past!

At Subiaco the streets were strewn, as for a procession, with shredded
petals of violets. All kinds of violets grow on those hills, some
reddish and as big as pansies; and as we swished past, instead of the
dry scent of myrrh and mint of our Tuscan hills, there came a moist
smell of violets from the hedgerows.

ROME, _March_ 31.

IX.

TOR PIGNATTARA.

Drove to-day with Maria outside Porta Maggiore, little changed since
my childhood. Stormy sunshine, the mountains blue, with patches of
violet, like dark rainbow splendours, flashing out with white towns;
cherry blossoms among the reeds, vague gardens with statues and bits
of relief stuck about. Finally the circular domed tomb of Empress
Helena, with a tiny church, a bit of orphanage built into it, and all
round the priest's well-kept garden and orphans' vegetable garden. A
sound of harmonium and girls' hymn issuing out of the ruin, on which
grow against the sky great tufts of fennel, of stuff like London pride
and of budding lentisk. This _is_ Rome!

_March_ 31.

X.

VILLA ADRIANA.

We crossed the Anio twice--first at Ponte Mammolo, where it is
Tiber-coloured, and it tugs at the willows; then before it has been
polluted by the sulphur water of the Acque Albule (though the sulphur
blue water is itself lovely) at a magnificent tower under Tivoli, like
Cecilia Metella. An Anio green, rushing flush as at Subiaco, among
poplars and willows, fields of sprouting reeds.

Villa Adriana: you see it from a distance at the foot of the Tivoli
hills--sloping olive woods and domes of pines. What a place! The
Armida gardens for a Faust-Rinaldo. Antiquity like a _belle au bois
dormant_ in the groves of colossal ilexes, the rows of immense
cypresses, above all, enclosed in the magic of those thick old
silver-coloured huge unpruned olives