On the right of the Gate is the handsome entrance of the beautiful _Villa Borghese_, most liberally thrown open to the public on every day except Monday, when the Villa Doria is open.

"The entrance to the Villa Borghese is just outside the Porta del Popolo. Passing beneath that not very impressive specimen of Michael Angelo's architecture, a minute's walk will transport the visitor from the small uneasy lava stones of the Roman pavement, into broad, gravelled carriage drives, whence a little further stroll brings him to the soft turf of a beautiful seclusion. A seclusion, but seldom a solitude; for priest, noble, and populace, stranger and native, all who breathe the Roman air, find free admission, and come hither to taste the languid enjoyment of the day-dream which they call life.

"The scenery is such as arrays itself to the imagination when we read the beautiful old myths, and fancy a brighter sky, a softer turf, a more picturesque arrangement of venerable trees, than we find in the rude and untrained landscapes of the western world. The ilex-trees, so ancient and time-honoured are they, seem to have lived for ages undisturbed, and to feel no dread of profanation by the axe anymore than overthrow by the thunder-stroke. It has already passed out of their dreamy old memories that only a few years ago they were grievously imperilled by the Gauls' last assault upon the walls of Rome. As if confident in the long peace of their lifetime, they assume attitudes of evident repose. They lean over the green turf in ponderous grace, throwing abroad their great branches without danger of interfering with other trees, though other majestic trees grow near enough for dignified society, but too distant for constraint. Never was there a more venerable quietude than that which sleeps among their sheltering boughs; never a sweeter sunshine than that which gladdens the gentle bloom which these leafy patriarchs strive to diffuse over the swelling and subsiding lawns.

"In other portions of the grounds the stone pines lift their dense clumps of branches upon a slender length of stem, so high that they look like green islands in the air, flinging down a shadow upon the turf so far off that you scarcely know which tree has made it.

"Again, there are avenues of cypress, resembling dark flames of huge funeral candles, which spread dusk and twilight round about them instead of cheerful radiance. The more open spots are all a-bloom, early in the season, with anemones of wondrous size, both white and rose-coloured, and violets that betray themselves by their rich fragrance, even if their blue eyes fail to meet your own. Daisies, too, are abundant, but larger than the modest little English flower, and therefore of small account.

"These wooded and flowery lawns are more beautiful than the finest English park scenery, more touching, more impressive, through the neglect that leaves nature so much to her own ways and methods.

Since man seldom interferes with her, she sets to work in her quiet way and makes herself at home. There is enough of human care, it is true, bestowed long ago, and still bestowed, to prevent wildness from growing into deformity; and the result is an ideal landscape, a woodland scene that seems to have been projected out of the poet's mind. If the ancient Faun were other than a mere creation of old poetry, and could reappear anywhere, it must be in such a scene as this.

"In the openings of the wood there are fountains plashing into marble basons, the depths of which are shaggy with water-weeds; or they tumble like natural cascades from rock to rock, sending their murmur afar, to make the quiet and silence more appreciable.

Scattered here and there with careless artifice, stand old altars, bearing Roman inscriptions. Statues, grey with the long corrosion of even that soft atmosphere, half hide and half reveal themselves, high on pedestals, or perhaps fallen and broken on the turf.

Terminal figures, columns of marble or granite porticoes and arches, are seen in the vistas of the wood-paths, either veritable relics of antiquity, or with so exquisite a touch of artful ruin on them that they are better than if really antique. At all events, grass grows on the tops of the shattered pillars, and weeds and flowers root themselves in the chinks of the massive arches and fronts of temples, as if this were the thousandth summer since their winged seeds alighted there.

"What a strange idea--what a needless labour--to construct artificial ruins in Rome, the native soil of ruin! But even these sportive imitations, wrought by man in emulation of what time has done to temples and palaces, are perhaps centuries old, and, beginning as illusions, have grown to be venerable in sober earnest. The result of all is a scene, such as is to be found nowhere save in these princely villa-residences in the neighbourhood of Rome; a scene that must have required generations and ages, during which growth, decay, and man's intelligence wrought kindly together, to render it so gently wild as we behold it now.

"The final charm is bestowed by the malaria. There is a piercing, thrilling, delicious kind of regret in the idea of so much beauty being thrown away, or only enjoyable at its half-development, in winter and early spring, and never to be dwelt amongst, as the home scenery of any human being. For if you come hither in summer, and stray through these glades in the golden sunset, fever walks arm-in-arm with you, and death awaits you at the end of the dim vista. Thus the scene is like Eden in its loveliness; like Eden, too, in the fatal spell that removes it beyond the scope of man's actual possessions."--_Transformation_.

"Oswald et Corinne terminerent leur voyage de Rome par la Villa-Borghese, celui de tous les jardins et de tous les palais romains ou les splendeurs de la nature et des arts sont rassemblees avec le plus de gout et d'eclat. On y voit des arbres de toutes les especes et des eaux magnifiques. Une reunion incroyable de statues, de vases, de sarcophages antiques, se melent avec la fraicheur de la jeune nature du sud. La mythologie des anciens y semble ranimee.

Les naades sont placees sur le bord des ondes, les nymphes dans les bois dignes d'elles, les tombeaux sous les ombrages elyseens; la statue d'Esculape est au milieu d'une ile; celle de Venus semble sortir des ondes; Ovide et Virgile pourraient se promener dans ce beau lieu; et se croire encore au siecle d'Auguste. Les chefs-d'uvre de sculpture que renferme le palais, lui donnent une magnificence a jamais nouvelle. On apercoit de loin a travers les arbres, la ville de Rome et Saint-Pierre, et la campagne, et les longues arcades, debris des aqueducs qui transportaient les sources des montagnes dans l'ancienne Rome. Tout est la pour la pensee, pour l'imagination, pour la reverie.

"Les sensations les plus pures se confondent avec les plaisirs de l'ame, et donnent l'idee d'un bonheur parfait; mais quand on demande, pourquoi ce sejour ravissant n'est-il pas habite? l'on vous repond que le mauvais air (_la cattiva aria_) ne permet pas d'y vivre pendant l'ete."--_Madame de Stael._

The _Casino_, at the further end of the villa, built by Cardinal Scipio Borghese, the favourite nephew of Paul V., contains a collection of sculpture. The first room entered is a great hall, with a ceiling painted by _Mario Rossi_, and a floor paved with an ancient mosaic discovered at the Torre Nuova (one of the principal Borghese farms) in 1835.

"Cette mosaque fort curieuse nous offre et les combats des gladiateurs entre eux et leurs luttes avec les animaux feroces.

Cette mosaque est d'un dessin aussi barbare que les scenes representees; tout est en harmonie, le sujet et le tableau. Le sentiment de repulsion qu'inspire la cruaute romaine n'en est que plus complet; celle-ci n'est point adoucie par l'art et parait dans toute sa laideur.

"On voit les gladiateurs poursuivre, s'attaquer, se massacrer, couverts d'armures qui ressemblent a celle des chevaliers: vous diriez une odieuse parodie du moyen age. Dans le corps de l'un des combattants un glaive est enfonce. Des cadavres sont gisant parmi les flaques de sang; a cote d'eux est le T fatal, initiale du mot grec T??at??--a laquelle leur juge impitoyable, le peuple, les a condamnes; du grec partout. Le maitre excite ses eleves on leur montrant le fouet et la palme; les vainqueurs elevent leurs epees, et sans doute la foule applaudit. Ils ont un air de triomphe. Ce sont des acteurs renommes. Aupres de chacun son nom est ecrit; ces noms barbares ou etranges: l'un s'appelle Buccibus, un autre Cupidor, un autre Licentiosus, avis effronte aux dames romaines."--_Ampere_, iv. 31.

The collection in this villa contains no exceedingly important statues.

In the vestibule are some reliefs from the arch of Claudius in the Corso, destroyed in 1527. Leaving the great hall to the left we may notice:

_1st Room._--

IN THE CENTRE:

Juno Pronuba, from Monte Calvi.

_2nd Room._--

IN THE CENTRE:

A Fighting Amazon, on horseback.

_3rd Room._--

4. Daphne changed into a Laurel.

13. Anacreon, seated.

"La statue d'Anacreon est tres-remarquable, elle ressemble a la figure du poete sur une medaille de Teos. Le style est simple et grandiose, l'expression energique plutot que gracieuse, la draperie est rude, la statue respire l'enthousiasme; ce n'est pas le faux Anacreon que nous connaissons et dont les poesies sont posterieures au moins en grande partie a la date du veritable; c'est le vieil et primitif Anacreon; cet Anacreon-la ne vit plus que dans cet energique portrait, seule image de son inspiration veritable, dont les produits authentiques ont presque entierement disparu."--_Ampere, Hist. Rom._ iii. 567.

_4th Room._--

A handsome gallery with paintings by _Marchetti_ and _De Angelis_, adorned with porphyry busts of the twelve Caesars.

32. Bronze statue of a boy.

_6th Room._--

IN THE CENTRE:

A Greek poet, probably Alcaeus.

7. The Hermaphrodite; found near Sta. Maria Vittoria.

_7th Room._--

IN THE CENTRE:

Boy on a Dolphin.

"D'autres statues peuvent deriver de la grande composition maritime de Scopas. Tel est la Palemon, assis sur un dauphin, de la villa Borghese, d'apres lequel a ete evidemment concu le Jonas de l'eglise de Sainte-Marie du Peuple, qu'on attribue a Raphael."--_Ampere, Hist. Rom._ iii. 284.

_8th Room._--

1. Dancing Satyr.

The _Upper Story_, reached by a winding staircase from the Galleria, contains:

_1st Room._--Three fine works by _Bernini_.

David with the sling: executed in his 18th year.

Apollo and Daphne.

aeneas carrying off Anchises: executed when the sculptor was only 15 years old.

_2nd Room._--

Filled with a collection of portraits, for the most part unknown.

Worthy of attention are the portraits of Paul V. by _Caravaggio_, and of his father Marc-Antonio Borghese, attributed to _Guido_; also the busts of Paul V. and of Cardinal Scipio Borghese, who built the villa, by _Bernini_.

_5th Room._--