TIVOLI.
The scenery differs entirely on different sides of Rome. Here there is not a ruin, not a vestige, except a few low heaps of stone-or brickwork hidden by weeds: on the other, toward Tivoli, much of the beauty is due to the work of man—the stately remnants of ancient aqueduct, temple and tomb; the tall square towers of feudal barons, round which cluster low farm-buildings scarcely less old and solid; the vast, gloomy grottoes of Cerbara, which look like the underground palace of a bygone race, but which are the tufa-quarries of classic times; the ruined baths of Zenobia, where the rushing milky waters of the Aquæ Albulæ fill the air with sulphurous fumes; and, as a climax, the Villa of Hadrian, less a country-place than a whole region, a town-in-country, with palace, temples, circus, theatres, baths amidst a tract of garden and pleasure-ground ten miles in circumference. Even when one is familiar with the enormous height and bulk of the Coliseum or the Baths of Caracalla, the extent of the ruins of Hadrian's Villa is overwhelming. Numerous fragments are still standing, graceful and elegant, but a vast many more are buried deep under turf and violets and fern: large cypresses and ilexes have struck root among their stones, and they form artificial hills and vales and great wide plateaus covered with herbage and shrubbery, hardly to be distinguished from the natural accidents of the land. The solitude is as immense as the space. After leaving our carriage we wandered about for hours, sometimes lying in the sunshine at the edge of a great grassy terrace which commands the Campagna and the Agro Romano—beyond whose limits we had come—to where, like a little bell, St. Peter's dome hung faint and blue upon the horizon; sometimes exploring the innumerable porticoes and galleries, and replacing in fancy the Venus de Medici, the Dancing Faun, and all the other shapes of beauty which once occupied these ravished pedestals and niches; sometimes rambling about the flowery fields, and up and down among the hillocks and dells, meeting no one, until at length, when completely bewildered and lost, we fell in with a rustic belonging to the estate, who guided us back. We left the place with the sense of having been in a separate realm, another country, belonging to another age. The whole of that visit to Tivoli was like a dream. The sun was sinking when we left the precincts of the villa, and twilight stole upon us, wrapping all the landscape on which we looked back in softer folds of shade, and resolving its features into large, calm masses, as the horses labored up the narrow, stony road into a mysterious wood of gigantic olives, gnarled, twisted and rent as no other tree could be and live. The scene was wild and weird in the dying light, and it grew almost savage as we wound upward among the robber-haunted hills. Night had fallen before we reached the mountain-town. Our coachman dashed through the dark slits of streets, where it seemed as if our wheels must strike the houses on each side, cracking his whip and jingling the bells of the harness. Under black archways sat groups of peasants, their swart visages lit up from below by the glow of a brazier, while a flaring torch stuck through a ring overhead threw fierce lights and shadows across the scene. Sharp cries and shouts like maledictions rose as we passed, and as we turned into the little square on which the inn stands we wondered in what sort of den we should have to lodge. We followed our host of the little Albergo della Regnia up the steep stone staircase with many misgivings: he flung open a door, and we beheld a carpeted room, all furnished and hung with pink chintz covered with cupids and garlands. There were sofas, low arm-chairs, a writing-table with appurtenances, a tea-table with snowy linen and a hissing brass tea-kettle. Opening from this were two little white nests of bed-rooms, with tin bath-tubs and an abundance of towels. We could not believe our eyes: here were English comfort and French taste. Were we in May Fair or the Rue de Rivoli? Or was it a fairy-tale?
CASTLE AT OSTIA.
The fairy-tale went on next day, when, after wending our way through the dirty, crooked little streets, we crossed a courtyard and descended a long subterranean stairway to emerge on a magnificent terrace with a heavy marble balustrade, whence flights of steps led down to lower grades, amid statues, urns, vases, fountains, reservoirs, camellias in bloom mingled with laurel and myrtle and laurustinums covered with creamy flowers, cypresses tall as cathedral spires, ilex avenues, and broad straight walks between huge walls of box: the whole space was filled with the song of nightingales, the tinkle of falling water, with whiffs of aromatic shrubs and the breath of hidden roses and violets;—a princely garden, a royal pleasaunce, but in exquisite disorder and neglect; the shrubbery too thick and straggling, the flowers straying beyond their rightful boundaries, the statues stained and moss-grown, the balusters entangled in clinging luxuriance, the fountains dripping through fern and maiden-hair—Nature supreme, as one always sees her in this land of Art. It was the Villa d'Este, famous these three hundred years for its fountains and cypresses. Nor did the wonder cease when we forsook this enchanting spot for the mountain-road which overhangs the great ravine. Opposite, backed by mountains, rose the crags topped by the clustering town and all its towers, arches, niches, battlements, bridges, long lines of classic ruins, and on the edge of the abyss the perfect little temple of the Sibyl; rushing down from everywhere the waterfalls, one great column plunging at the head of the gorge, and countless frolic streams, the cascatelle, leaping and dancing from rock to rock through mist and rainbow and extravagance of emerald moss and herbage, down among sea-green, silvery olives, finally sliding away, between softer foliage and verdure, through the valley into the plain—the immense azure plain, with its grand symphonic harmonies of form and color. O land of dreams fulfilled, of satisfied longing! when across these thousands of miles I recall your entrancing charm, your unimaginable beauty, I sometimes wonder if you were not a dream, if you have any place in this real existence, this lower earth: are you still delighting other eyes with the rapture of your loveliness, or were you only an illusion, a vision, which vanishes like the glow of sunset or "golden exhalations of the dawn "?
HEAD OF THE
TRAJAN CANAL,
NEAR OSTIA.
The Campagna has one more aspect, different from all the rest, where the Tiber, weary with his long wanderings, rolls lazily to the sea. It is a dreary waste of swamp and sandhill and scrub growth, but with a forlorn beauty of its own, and the beauty of color, never absent in Italy. The tall, coarse grass and reeds pass through a series of vivid tones, culminating in tawny gold and deep orange, against which the silver-fretted violet blue-green of the Mediterranean assumes a magical splendor. Small, shaggy buffaloes with ferocious eyes, and sometimes a peasant as wild-looking as they, are the only inhabitants of this wilderness. The machicolated towers of Castel Fusano among its grand stone-pines stand up from the marshes, and farther seaward another castle with a single pine; but they only enhance the surrounding loneliness. Ostia, the ancient port, which sea and river have both deserted, is now a city of the dead, a Pompeii above ground, whose avenues of tombs lead to streets of human dwellings more desolate still. It is no longer by Ostia, nor even by the Tiber, that one can reach the sea: the way was choked by sand and silt seventeen centuries ago, and Trajan caused the canal to be made which bears his name; and this is still the outlet from Rome to the Mediterranean, while the river expires among the pestilential marshes.