The vast Madama palace, now the residence of the governor of Rome, of the tolerably noble but too ornamental architecture of Marucelli, was built on the site of Nero's famous thermæ, by Catherine of Medicis, from whom the name is derived. It has thus two associations with crime and blood, separated by fifteen centuries.

all my zeal will be to serve your Holiness." The pope gave him his benediction and departed, but he had not reached the gate of the first palisade when the noise of the rushing waters made him return. Transported with joy at the sight, he said to the artist: Bernini, you are always the same; the pleasure of the surprise you have procured me will prolong my life ten years." He sent for a hundred pistoles immediately to distri

The Cicciaporci palace, in the possession of private persons and occupied by shops, is still remarkable for its good architecture by Giulio Romano.

Nearly opposite is the Niccolini palace, by Sansovino, also of excellent archiLecture.

The piazza Navona, the largest market in Rome, will, like all the markets of great cities, enable a person to form an idea of the administration and police of the country. This market has a granite obelisk, colossal statues, four fountains, but no shelter or sheds of any kind to protect the peasants from the sun or the rain. In the midst of magnificence, every thing exhibits disregard of the useful. The piazza Navona occupies the site of the ancient circus, made or restored by Alexander Severus, and retains the same form. The scene of the inauguration of the great fountain, one of the happiest of Bernini's compositions, a scene perfectly Italian, shows the exceeding address of the artist, who was really born to live with princes, as Innocent X. once observed. This pope, having been obliged, in spite of his prejudices, to entrust the works to him after an unexpected view of the plan, came to see them when finished, and passed two hours under a tent in examining them. The waters, however, had not then played, though every thing was ready for that purpose. Just before taking his departure, Innocent asked Bernini when he thought the water would arrive. "Not just at present," answered the artist, we must have time to prepare the road (Strada), but

44

of the fountain, transported to Rome in the reign of Caracalla, had remained buried under the ruins of his circus: the four giants represent the largest rivers of the four quarters of the world, the Ganges. the Nile, the Rio de la Plata, and the Danube. It has been pretended that the veil which covers the head of the Nile, by the sculptor Fancelli, Bernini's pupil, instead of being an allusion to the mysterious source of that river, was only an epigram of Bernini's against his implacable rival Borromini, and that this figure concealed its head that it might not see the front of the church of Saint Agnes, the least capricious, however, of Borromini's works. The Danube, by Antonio Raggi, another pupil of Bernini, is the best of these giants; and the figure of Ethiopia, by his other pupil Francesco Baratta, is not without merit. Bernini entrusted the rivers to his pupils, and undertook himself the arrangement of the rock as most difficult.

On Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays in August, in the afternoon, the piazza Navona is inundated with three feet of water (lago), by closing the pipes that receive the overflowings of the fountains. This manner of watering and cleaning a market is poetical and purely Italian. The flooded piazza is then crossed and recrossed by numbers of carriages, amid the flourishing of trumpets, and the shouts of the people who cover the borders and applaud the dexterous coachmen, while all the windows are crowded with spectators; it is a kind of coach naumachy, a diversion not unsuited to the manners of the new Romans.

The Lancellotti palace is small, but the architecture is by the illustrious Pirro Ligorio. The Philharmonic Academy, founded within these few years and directed by a president and council, occupies it and gives some grand concerts there every year.

The vast Pamfili palace, rather heaped together than built by Geronimo Rainaldi, who was obliged to humour the fancies of Innocent X., an eccentric pope, who excommunicated people for taking snuff in Saint Peter's, would be recommendable for its fine disposition, if the grandeur of the style corresponded with the extent of the mass. This ancient residence of the imperious, dissolute, and grasping niece of Innocent, donna Olimpia Maidalchini Pamfili, whose cupidity more than once exposed the palace to be pillaged by the people of Rome, who were appeased by some few hundred crowns thrown from the windows, was, in 1826, the residence of a sage, the Cav. d'Italinski, Russian minister, then an old man of eighty-three, possessing in the highest degree that superior and true simplicity, so different from that of common life. M. d'Italinski, twice minister at Constantinople, once at Naples, had been fifty years from Russia, which he had so well served. This patriarch of European diplomatists was a man of immense information. He had worked at the continuation of d'Hancarville's grand collection of Etruscan vases, and his numerous library was chiefly rich in oriental books. 4 I still remember the vast gallery painted in fresco by Pietro of Cortona, which he never quitted, but made one end his dining-room, the middle his saloon, and the other extremity his closet: a certain column, which the servants were not to pass, was the limit of the latter, when M. Italinski was studying or at work. There was he wont to read every day for amusement, one while Homer, Xenophon, or Thucydides, at another Terence, Virgil, or Horace, an Arabic grammar, or some scientific journal. This minister of Russia was very unlike his predecessor, the Muscovite ambassador whom Montaigne encountered at Rome : qui ne

'This excommunication was raised by Benedict XIII. Urban VIII, having made precisely the same prohibition for the churches of Seville, Pasquino bappily quoted a passage in Job: Contra folium, quod vento rapitur, ostendis polentiam tuam, et stipulam siccam persequeris.

See post, book XVI. ch. iii.

3 On the 5th of October 1654, as Olimpia was preparing to receive a visit from her uncle, she discovered that a considerable portion of ber pearls, gold, and jewels had been stolen. Not long after sbe received a letter from the thief, who told her the circumstances of the case, pretended that she

"savoit parler nulle langue que la "sienne, et qui pensoit que Venise estoit "de la dition du pape. 115

The Braschi palace, of a good style, though erected at the close of last century, is, with its rich marbles and pompous staircase, a monument of the nepotism that ceased long ago at Rome and has not been revived. Despite the beauty of its colossal Antinous, these huge forms seem incompatible with the young and effeminate favorite of Adrian. Among the paintings may be remarked: the celebrated Marriage in Cana, by Garofolo: another Adulterous Woman, by Titian; Lucretia, by Paolo Veronese, and the Marriage of St. Catherine, by Fra Bartolommeo.

The celebrated mutilated torso called Pasquino, one of the most vigorous and finished Greek works, representing Menelas defending the body of Patroclus, a kind of sculptured fragment of the Iliad, owes its name to the facetious tailor of Rome, near whose shop it was found. The genius of satire is peculiar to the Romans. Pasquino and his satellite Marforio are the opposition of the country, an opposition in which every body dabbles, which is not prosecuted by the government, but is occasionally its mouthpiece to divert public opinion, which no longer, as heretofore, placards the foot of the statue, but still exercises the same violence on individuals, and retains but too much of the pleasantries of Pasquino and his workmen, its first orators. The profession of a tailor must, moreover, have been very distinguished in Italy, if we may judge by the following title of a work in quarto by Giovanni Pennachino: Nobiltà ed antichità de' Sartori cavata da molti autori approvati (Venice, 1650).

The Massini palace, whose masters pretended to be descended from the Fabii of ancient Rome, built by Baltassare

ought to be much obliged to him for not taking the whole, and advised ber to take greater care of what remained; the letter was accompanied by a sum of 2000 crowns. The pope, to console his niece a little, had the weakness to grant ber 30,000 crowns in addition.

4 M. d'Italinski was a native of Kief, and died on the 27th of June 1827; be bequeathed his library to the emperor of Russia, who remitted to his heirs the sum of 45,000 rubles, as the amount of its worth.

5 Voyage, t. II, p. 143.

Peruzzi, in a narrow irregular space, passes for the artist's masterpiece and was his last work; it is considered in the first rank of modern palaces. With its court and pretty fountain, it still gives an idea of the habitations of ancient Rome. The superb Greek Discobolus, one of the finest and best preserved statues in Rome, seems a copy of the celebrated bronze statue of Myron. The paintings in clare-obscure of the front towards the piazza Navona are by Daniello da Volterra.

It was in the house near the Massini palace, smaller and rebuilt in good style, by Baltassare Peruzzi, that the second printing-office in Italy was established in 1467 (in domo Petri de Maximis), when the German printers Sweynheim and Pannartz, not agreeing, as it appears, with their countrymen the monks of Subiaco, came to settle at Rome, and printed there Cicero's Orator, without date, and the City of God, in the same year 1467, which were even then very well executed. Printing at Rome seems very limited now, and of an inferior kind; it was honoured by some good editions there in the sixteenth century, such as the Homer of Eustathius, by Bladus (1562-50), the Latin Bible by Aldus Manutius (1590), then manager of the Vatican printing-office, now closed for want of funds; and even in the seventeenth century, the epoch of typographic decline, by the establishment of the celebrated printing-office of the Propaganda, by Pope Urban VIII., which is rich in oriental characters.

The Vidoni palace, unfinished, is the best authenticated and most considerable work of Raphael, as an architect, at Rome. The front and basement serving for ground floor are of superior effect, and combine variety, harmony, and strength. The attic superadded is not by Raphael, and impairs the simplicity of his plan. In this palace are preserved the fragments of the calendar of Verrius Flaccus, found at Preneste, in the last century, and ingeniously supplied by M. Nibby.

The vast Mattei palace, a noble and pure work of Carlo Maderno, who after

Tirabosch and those who have followed him are mistaken in supposing that the Donatus pro puerulis, not a copy of which is extant, bad been printed at Subiaco, on the faith of the request presented to Sixtus IV. in 4472, which does not men

wards began the decline of the art (a singularity which the history of letters also presents), is ornamented with fine statues, antique basso-relievos, and paintings by good masters. On the stairs, seats, a kind of antique stools, are attentively placed. A basso-relievo represents a Consul having a criminal punished; a head of Alexander is remarkable; ceiling has been painted by Domenichino.

On the piazza, the fountain delle Tartarughe, from the design of Jacopo della Porta, has four young figures in bronze, very elegant, by Taddeo Landino, a Florentine sculptor of the end of the last century.

The ceilings of the Costaguti palace are justly celebrated: Time discovering Truth, by Domenichino, is worthy of that grand master; there is strong expression in the Armida on a car drawn by two dragons, in Guercino's first style. The gallery has some works which deserve notice, a grand painting by Poussin, two Heads by Domenichino.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Monte Testaccio.-Fète.-People of Rome.-Minenti.

-View.

The month of October is the most agreeable time at Rome. The soil, refreshed by the September rains, is verdant and flowery; merry troops, clothed in showy colours, wearing hats bedecked with flowers, plumes, and ribands, dancing the tender, graceful, lively Salterello to the tabor and mandoline, singing the popular ballad Viva ottobre che spasso ci dà, ramble over the fields; light carrettelle, hackney caleches, carry the populace to Monte Testaccio, while the equipages of the citizens and nobility defile by the Porta Pia. The carrettelle are loaded with two stages of men, and especially women and girls, called Minenti (for eminenti), who all retain their popular costume, instead of sporting the lady or gentleman. Some of these girls are a species of Roman grisettes, but robust, energetic, impassioned grisettes, who will drink to intoxication, and are

tion it; it was more probably printed at Rome about 1468. See p. 44 of the Letter from the abbé de Rozan to the librarian of Naples, already cited, book XIV. ch. vi.

even capable of the coltellata. The Osterie (inns and wineshops) of Testaccio are filled with people; all these physiognomies and costumes are characteristic, picturesque: if the Roman people have passed away, we still have the people of Rome. Monte Testaccio, where the cellars are noted for extraordinary coolness (the thermometer sometimes reaches as high as 28 degrees (Réaumur) outside, but falls to 8 or 9 there), is composed, as every one is aware, of the wrecks of ancient jars (testa) which were deposited there. When we consider the population of Rome, it appears surprising that so many fragments have not produced a larger mass: the shape of these pots exposed them to frequent breakage, and, as Courier remarks, we must also understand by the Latin our barrels which were unknown to the ancients, and the celebrated tub of Diogenes was' perhaps a large earthen jar. We may add that the use of these was very general; that besides wine, they were used to hold water, oil, the ashes of the dead, and for a multitude of other usages. The barrels and bottles of a Swiss or German town would, I believe, form a higher mound than the Monte Testaccio in a little time. This hill, too, seems no bad emblem of modern Rome, if we consider all the fallen great that take refuge there; and itself is but a kind of Testaccio, where all the broken pots of the universe are thrown into a heap.

From this height, the view of the setting sun was admirable. Poussin is said to have frequently drawn inspiration there, and it was impossible, in contemplating it, not to experience the dreamy charms of his paintings.

peopled in proportion, there would not be less that five hundred thousand souls instead of a hundred and fifty-one thousand nine hundred and fifty-seven, its population in 1852. Such, however, is the effect of populousness as a means of salubrity, that this filthy, confined, infected quarter, near the Tiber, is not in the least unhealthy, while the mal' aria prevails in the desert parts of Rome and in the bosom of the finest villas. The barbarous exclusion of the Jews, so opposed to the charitable spirit of christianity, has not even the specious merit of antiquity, for it began in the pontificate of Paul IV., about the middle of the sixteenth century. He also compelled them to wear a yellow badge in front, called lo Sciamanno, which still distinguishes them in the Roman states. At his death a Jew covered the head of the broken statue of that pope with the same Sciamanno.

The Ghetto forms a kind of commonalty, called Università, whose rectors take the title of cacam; a sum of 7,000 crowns, an expense borne by the nine hundred trading families in more easy circumstances, is devoted to the maintenance of public worship, schools, physicians, and chiefly to relieve the poor, in obedience to the precept of Deuteronomy, which forbids mendicity; et mendicus non erit inter vos.

The bridge of the Quattro Capi, so called from its four hermes of Janus, which leads to the island of Tiberina, was built by L. Fabricius, surveyor of the highways, in the year of Rome 690, and it is now the oldest bridge in the city.

The Tiber, lined with palaces, and covered with vessels in ancient times, is now without even a quay; it runs obscurely through a corner of Rome, and nothing of its olden aspect survives except its yellow hue (flavus Tiberinus). A miserable steamboat, which, without its engine, might not be unlike the ship of Eneas, navigates the stream as far as Fiumicino; and so much has the river declined that the modern machine can hardly find water enough to make this voyage in five hours, and would often be in danger of remaining aground without the help of oxen to tow it along. The Tiber, the sacred river of ancient Rome, which a magistrate instituted by Augustus was charged to preserve from

all impurities, is the common sewer of new Rome, and receives all the filth of the city. Clelia and her companions, who passed it at the port of Ripa grande, would now require more courage for a repetition of their noble feat, if they had a taste for cleanliness. Its water, which is not used as a beverage except in some few religious houses in the quarter, long preserved its reputation of being sweet and wholesome: Paul III. had a quantity of it carried with him in his longest journeys; Clement VII., by his physician's order, took a supply of it to Marseilles when he went to marry his niece, Catherine of Medicis, to the Dauphin's brother, afterwards Henry II.; and Gregory XIII., who lived to the age of eighty-four, constantly drank this water, now so dirty and decried. Ariosto celebrates it in verse; but it was then customary to let it settle for some days, as among the articles that the poet recommends his brother to prepare for his arrival at Rome, he says:

Fa ch' io trovi dell' acqua, e non di fonte
Di fiume sì, che già sei di veduto
Non abbla Sisto, nè alcun altro ponte.'

It appears, according to the analysis in July 1830 by S. Chimenti, professor of chemistry at the Sapienza, of two quantities of water each weighing a hundred pounds, the first taken at Ponte Molle above the city, the second below the port of Ripa grande, that the water of the Tiber is not only potable, but of a better quality than that of the Seine and the Thames. In summer the mineral virtues and warm temperature of the river made it an excellent bath, which satisfied the Romans of the republic. The temperature rises from eighteen to twentyfour degrees (Réaumur), and rarely differs more than from two to six degrees from the temperature of the air. The project of excavating the Tiber to obtain the antique statues and pretended treasures concealed in its bed, riches spoken of by Montfaucon, who has in some instances clothed the tales of the ciceroni with his grave Latin,-this had been previously conceived by Cardinal de Polignac. The experiment made in 1823 has proved how chimerical it was. As to the other scheme of turning the Tiber,

for the same object, without much considering where it might pass, it is still more ridiculous.

The Fontana Paolina, on mount Janiculum, in a superior situation, the most abundant in Rome, appears in the distance like a triumphal arch with water jets. The noise of its five mouths is quite deafening. But the water, which is brought by an aqueduct constructed under Trajan and restored by Paul V., is tartareous and of little use but as a moving power for the manufactories and mills situated on its course to the Tiber. It was made of the marble taken from a temple of Pallas, built by Nerva and demolished by Paul V., another deplorable instance of the destruction of antique monuments at an epoch of civilisation.

On the summit of the Janiculum one is most struck with the discrepancy between the monuments of Roman grandeur and the most admired modern edifices: the former are less distinguished for their ruins than their majesty; and beside the gigantic masses of the temple of Peace, the Coliseum, and the dome of the Pantheon, the Barberini and Farnese palaces, and even Saint Peter's look diminutive.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Corsini palace.-Christina.-Guercino's Ecce Homo. -Library.-The Farnesina.-History of PsycheGalatea,-Head, by Michael Angelo.-Lante Villa.

The Corsini palace, formerly belonging to the Riario family, was inhabited by Christina, and the chamber where she died is still shown. There are some curious details respecting her death in a letter by Menzini, an eye-witness and friend of Christina, to Redi, published at the end of the Lettere di Lorenzo il Magnifico e d'altri illustri Toscani (Florence, 1830, in 8vo). These historical details might have supplied the French author of the trilogy of Christine with some new effects. The reading of ber will immediately after the scene of despair caused by the queen's last moments, and the disappointment of her dependants, is depicted with a degree of truth scarcely to be expected from a courtier poet such as Menzini: Dopo

* See post, ch. xliii.