ving slightly with the movement of the water, and fish out
tiny-spired water-shells; or dip in them the bits of ancient marbles
we had collected on our walk, to see the hues revive to their former
splendor. Many-fountained Rome ought to be a cure for wine-bibbers; yet
I never saw an Italian drink at these springs; they would rather quaff
the thin red and white wines that are sold for a few baiocchi at the
inns.

The Pincian Hill and the adjoining grounds of the Borghese Palace came
at length to be our favorite haunts. The Borghese is a delectable spot,
as my father remarks in one of those passages in his diary which
was afterwards expanded into the art-picture of his romance. "Broad
carriageways," he says, "and wood-paths wander beneath long vistas of
sheltering boughs; there are ilex-trees, ancient and sombre, which, in
the long peace of their lifetime, have assumed attitudes of indolent
repose; and stone-pines that look like green islands in the air, so high
above earth are they, and connected with it by such a slender length of
stem; and cypresses, resembling dark flames of huge, funereal candles.
These wooded lawns are more beautiful than English park scenery; all the
more beautiful for the air of neglect about them, as if not much care of
men were bestowed upon them, though enough to keep wildness from growing
into deformity, and to make the whole scene like nature idealized--the
woodland scenes the poet dreamed of--a forest of Ardennes, for instance.
These lawns and gentle valleys are beautiful, moreover, with fountains
flashing into marble basins, or gushing like natural cascades from rough
rocks; with bits of architecture, as pillared porticos, arches, columns,
of marble or granite, with a touch of artful ruin on them; and, indeed,
the pillars and fragments seem to be remnants of antiquity, though put
together anew, hundreds of years old, perhaps, even in their present
form, for weeds and flowers grow out of the chinks and cluster on the
tops of arches and porticos. There are altars, too, with old Roman
inscriptions on them. Statues stand here and there among the trees, in
solitude, or in a long range, lifted high on pedestals, moss-grown, some
of them shattered, all grown gray with the corrosion of the atmosphere.
In the midst of these sunny and shadowy tracts rises the stately front
of the villa, adorned with statues in niches, with busts, and ornamented
architecture blossoming in stone-work. Take away the mala