o the spot. The garden
rises at the end into broken elevated ground showing the native rock
through its grassy sides. A row of tall old cypresses crowns the
ridge--their fluted trunks gray with lichen-stains, and their deep
green spires of foliage forming harp-strings on which the evening
winds discourse solemn music, as if the spirit of the poet haunted
them still. On one side are the picturesque ruins of a shrine
overarching a fountain, now dry and choked up with weeds, and fringed
with ferns. Cyclamens--called by the Italians _viola pazze_, "mad
violets"--grow on its margin in glowing masses; sweet-scented violets
in profusion perfume all the air; and a few Judas-trees, loaded with
crimson blossoms, without a single leaf to relieve the gorgeous
colour, serve as an admirable background, almost blending with the
clouds on the low horizon. On the other side the hill slopes down in a
series of terraces to the crowded streets of the Trastevere, forming
a spacious out-door amphitheatre, in which the Arcadian Academy of
Rome used to hold its meetings during the summer months, and where St.
Filippo Neri was wont to give those half-dramatic musical
entertainments which, originating in the oratory of the religious
community established by him, are now known throughout the world as
oratorios. Between these two objects still stands the large torso of a
tree which bears the name of "Tasso's oak," because the poet's
favourite seat was under its shadow. It suffered much from the
violence of a thunderstorm in 1842, but numerous branches have since
sprouted from the old trunk, and it now affords a capacious shade from
the noonday heat. It is a variety of the Valonia oak, with delicate,
downy, pale-green leaves, much serrated, and contrasts beautifully
with the dark green spires of the cypresses behind. The leaves at the
time of my visit had but recently unfolded, and exhibited all the
delicacy of tint and perfection of outline so characteristic of young
foliage. The garden was in the first fresh flush of spring--that
idyllic season which, in Italy more than in any other land, realises
the glowing descriptions of the poets. Plucking a leafy twig from the
branches and a gray lichen from the trunk as mementoes of the place, I
sat down on the mossy hole, and tried to bring back in imagination the
haunted past. Nature was renewing her old life; the same flowers still
covered the earth with their divine frescoes; but where was he whose
spi