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(Elizbeth Williams) Champney

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Title: Romance of Roman Villas
(The Renaissance)

Author: Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

Release Date: January 10, 2009 [eBook #27766]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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ROMANCE OF ROMAN VILLAS

[Illustration]

[Illustration: Pope Julius II. Viewing the Newly-found Statue of the
Apollo Belvedere

From the painting by Carl Becker. Permission of the Berlin Photographic
Co.]

(The Renaissance)

by

ELIZABETH W. CHAMPNEY

Author of "Romance of the Italian Villas," "Romance of the
Feudal Chateaux," "Romance of the French Abbeys," Etc.

Illustrated

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1908

INTRODUCTION

In came the cardinal, grave and coldly wise,
His scarlet gown and robes of cobweb lace
Trailed on the marble floor; with convex glass
He bent o'er Guido's shoulder.

WALTER THORNBURY.

Still unrivalled, after the lapse of four centuries the villas of the
great cardinals of the Renaissance retain their supremacy over their
Italian sisters, not, as once, by reason of their prodigal magnificence
but in the appealing charm of their picturesque decay.

The centuries have bestowed a certain pathetic beauty, they have also
taken away much, and the sympathy which these ruined pleasure palaces
evoke whets our curiosity to know what they were like in their heyday of
joyous revelling.

If we run down the list of the nobler villas of Rome we will find that,
with few exceptions, they were built by princes of the purple, and th