Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-07-02
Beauty Of the vatican Gardens In Rome.

Beauty Of the Vatican Gardens In Rome.
The last number Of the New York Inde-
pendent has this description by Harriet
Beecher Stowe:
This afternoon we went to the Gardens Of
the Vatican. The artificial parks are not
much different from any formally arranged
French or Italian garden, but there Is q deli
cious little wilderness, hedged in by tall,
clipped box-hedges, and overshadowed by
thick old ilex-trees, which is q perfect fairy
land of delight.
The air was filed with the murmur Of
mossy fountains which cooled almost every
nook and corner, and the ground beneath the
trees was all ablow with the most delicious
wild flowers. The cyclamen, with its green
engraven leaves, and its deep rosy ruff Of
blossoms, was growing In perfect banks, filling
the air with faint musky fragrance. No
flower can be imagined more quaint and per-
feet than this cyclamen. Its color is that
pure damask rose that almost deepens 10
crimson, and each fower-stalk bears on its
bent head sort of crown like tiara.
We were wild with seeing so many-rising
in armies between us and the slant afternoon
sunlight and we gathered until our hands
could scarcelyhold another. II grew in such
beautiful wildness enwreathed with running
green ivy and myrtle, with great pale blue
stars and delicate feathers of fern and maid
en- s hair.
We agreed that if we should meet the Pope
| then and there we should be in humor TO
think well of him for keeping such lovely
| gardens. What pity, we thought, that there
were not really benignant father inhabiting
that palace and walking in these enchanted
bowers. How lovely fiction is that of o
mother church-a sort of palace beautiful
the resort of all Christian graces, whose en-
chanting gardens should be open to pilgrims
of all nations TO wander, solacing themselves
with picking flowers, as we were doing.
And the fountainsl Certainly the Italian
mind succeeds better than any other in the
poetry of water, and here in Rome most o
4 .a1L c.Neyer'do you wander out of the soothing
sound of falling water, and the devices offoun
tains are each one an nidyl1ic poem. Here tn
little cascade breaks over rocks formed 0
broken sculptures of antiquity, half grow
with moss. There, again, IL is in basin
rudely chipped from natural rock. Some
times tho wator is made to dash down slope
1 perfectly green with moss, or trickle throngl
fringes of ferns and maiden's hair. Grotto
fringy with water-plants surround the foun
tains. We were much amused at the aspec
of two huge old griffns who were industri
ously spouting water out Of jaws bewhiskere
with ferns and bearded with moses. Th
silent afternoon stiffness of this lovely will
derness, in close proximity to the great brood
ing dome of st. Peter and the proud halls 0
the Vatican, seemed to us like alovely dream
OF peace and stiffness in the hot glare of
tripmphal procession. The bells, beginning
to toll for vespers, mingled dreamily with tn,
fountains plashing and shut in as we wer
by high green hedges, and overarched b,
trees all resonant with bird-singiDgs, on
longed to lie down there and be at peace, o
| souls do that have entered Paradise