ISLAND OF THE TIBER.
From the bridge of St. Angelo the river is lost again for a long distance, although one can make one's way to it at various points—where at low water the submerged piers of the Pons Triumphalis are to be seen, where the Ponte Sisto leads to the foot of the Janiculum Hill, and on the opposite bank the orange-groves of the Farnesina palace hang their golden fruit and dusky foliage over the long garden-wall upon the river—until we come to the Ponte Quatro Capi (Bridge of the Four Heads) and the island of the Tiber.This is said to have been formed in the kingly period by the accumulation of a harvest cast into the stream a little way above, which the current could not sweep away: it made a nucleus for alluvial deposit, and the island gradually arose. Several hundred years afterward it was built into the form of a ship, as bridges and wharves are built, with a temple in the midst, and a tall obelisk set up in guise of its mast. In mediæval days a church replaced the heathen fane, and now it stands between its two bridges, a huddle of houses, terraces and gardens, whence one looks down on the fine mass of the Ponte Rotto (Broken Bridge), whose shattered arches pause in mid-stream, and across to the low arch of the Cloaca Maxima and the exquisite little circular temple of Vesta. From here down, the river is in full view from either side until it passes beyond the walls near the Monte Testaccio—on one side the Ripa Grande (Great Bank or Wharf), a long series of quays, on the other the Marmorata or marble landing, where the ships from the quarries unload. Here, on each side, all sorts of small craft lie moored, not betokening a very extensive commerce from their size and shape, but quaint and oddly rigged, making a very good fore-or back-ground, according as one looks at the picture. The Marmorata is at the foot of the Aventine, the most lonely and unvisited of the Seven Hills. From among the vegetable-gardens and cypress-groves which clothe its long flank rise large, formless piles, whose foundations are as old as the Eternal City, and whose superstructures are the wreck of temples of the kingly and republican periods, and palaces and villas of imperial times, and haughty feudal abodes, only to be distinguished from one another by the antiquary amid their indiscriminate ruin and the tangle of wild-briers and fern, ivy and trailers with which they are overgrown. On the summit no trace of ancient Rome is to be seen. There are no dwellings of men on this deserted ground: a few small and very early Christian churches have replaced the temples which once stood here, to be in their turn neglected and forsaken: they stand forlornly apart, separated by vineyards and high blank walls. On the brow of the hill is the esplanade of a modern fort, and within its quiet precincts are the church and priory of the Knights of Malta—nothing but a chapel and small villa as abandoned as the rest. After toiling up a steep and narrow lane between two walls, our carriage stopped at a solid wooden gateway, and the coachman told us to get out and look through the keyhole. We were aghast, but he insisted, laughing and nodding; so we pocketed our pride and peeped.
CUPOLA OF ST. PETER'S.
Through an overarching vista of dark foliage was seen, white and golden in a blaze of sunshine, the cupola of St. Peter's, which is at the farthest end of the city, two miles at the least as the crow flies. When the gate was opened we entered a sweet little garden full of violets, traversed by an alley of old ilex trees, through which appeared the noble dome, and which led from the gate to a terrace overhanging the Tiber—I will not venture to guess how far below—more like two than one hundred feet; perhaps still farther. On the edge of the terrace was an arbor, and here we sank down enchanted, to drink in the view of the city, which spread out under our eyes as we had never seen it from any other point. But the custodino's wife urged us to come into the Priorato and see the view from the upper story. We followed her, reluctant to leave the sunshine and soft air, up a stiff winding staircase, through large, dark, chilly, long-closed apartments, until we reached the top, where there was a great square room occupying the whole floor. She flung open the windows, and never did such a panorama meet my eyes. There were windows on every side: to the north, one looked across the city to St. Peter's, the Vatican, the Castle of St. Angelo, the Tiber with its great bends and many bridges, and to lonely, far-away Soracte; westward, on the other side of the river, rose the Janiculum with its close-wedged houses, grade on grade, and on its summit the church of San Pietro in Montorio and the flashing cataract of the Acqua Paola fountain, the stone-pines of the Villa Dolia cresting the ridge above; eastward, the Palatine, a world of ruins in a world of gardens, lay between us and the Coliseum, and over them and the wall, the aqueducts, the plain, the eye ranged to the snow-capped Sabine Hills, on whose many-colored declivities tiny white towns were dotted like browsing sheep; southward, we gazed down upon the Pyramid of Cestius, upon the beautiful Protestant cemetery with its white monuments and dark cypresses where lie Shelley and Keats, upon the stately Porta San Paolo, a great mediæval gateway flanked with towers, and beyond, the Campagna, purple, violet, ultramarine, oceanic, rolling out toward the Alban Hills, which glittered with snow, rising sharply like island-peaks and sloping down like promontories into the plain; and over all the sun and sky and shadows of Italy.
THE PINCIO, FROM THE VILLA BORGHESE.
The prospect from the Priorato surpasses anything in Rome—even the wonderful view from the Janiculum, even the enchanting outlook from the Pincian Hill. But the last was at our very doors: we could go thither in the morning to watch the white mist curl up from the valleys and hang about the mountain-brows, and at noon, when even in January the cool avenues and splashing fountains were grateful, and at sunset, when the city lay before us steeped in splendor. That was the view of our daily walks—the beloved view of which one thinks most often and fondly in remembering Rome.