PLATE I.

TASSO'S OAK.

An ancient tree proclaiming in its gigantic limbs the growth of age after age, whilst its shooting and luxuriant foliage still attests its vigour, is at all times one of the noblest and most attractive objects in Nature; but how much is its interest heightened, when the ground upon which it stands is connected with events of historical importance, or with names hallowed alike by genius and by virtue. In these respects, few of the forest tribe can boast more advantages than the OAK OF TASSO, for many centuries safely enclosed within the garden walls of the Convent of St. Onofrio, below which on one side the melancholy grandeur of ancient Rome spreads out in broad panoramic sweep, crowned by the long Alban Hill; on the other, the magnificent dome of St. Peter's conducts the eye towards Monte Mario, with its dark pines and cypresses, and still beyond, "lofty Soracte" terminates the view.

The Convent of St. Onofrio was founded in the year 1419; the legend of its Patron Saint, his adventures in the deserts of Egypt, and the miracles he is reputed to have performed, yet glow in fresco on the walls of its peaceful cloisters; and in its garden are the remains of an amphitheatre, where St. Philip Neri preached to the youth of the surrounding colleges, and where an eulogium is still annually pronounced upon his truly Christian virtues. In the library is preserved a bust of Tasso, of mild and spiritual expression, moulded from a cast of his features taken after his decease, and a mural monument in the church marks the spot where his ashes repose.

Under the shade of the spreading oak rendered famous by his name, this most illustrious, and alas!
most unfortunate of Italian poets, was wont to pass hour after hour of the last sad moments of a life
embittered by injustice and persecution; here wrapped in the lofty musings which the seclusion of the
place, and the noble scenes it commands are fitted to inspire, he held high converse with himself.
To what passionate aspirations may not the branches that waved gently over his head have listened! we
may fancy the very leaves checking their soft rustling to the balmy air, that they might not interrupt the
current of his thoughts. The quietness of the spot, and the tranquil aspect of the venerable figures that
glide around it, are well calculated to recal to mind the wish expressed by our own great poet, himself
no stranger to these classic haunts :—

"And may at last my weary age
Find out the peaceful hermitage,
The hairy gown, the mossy cell,
Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that Heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew,
Till old experience shall attain
To something of prophetic strain."

Il Pensiero.

It is an unwelcome task to record the destruction of an object associated with so many interesting
recollections; the hand, however, on which that task now devolves, had been fortunate enough to complete
an elaborate portrait of this well-known tree, painted on the spot, during many a silent, sultry, solitary day,
in the stillness of a Roman summer, just before a violent gale of wind laid its leafy honours in the dust,
to the great grief of the venerable monks, who were accustomed to regard it as their choicest treasure, and
to the regret of the Romans, to whom it had been a favourite landmark from one generation to another.

B

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numerous crystal fountains threw their sparkling treasures into the air, and various ruins were copied in miniature to amuse the gay company that thronged the rich abode.

Cardinal Hippolito died in 1572, and in 1576 Cardinal Luigi, his nephew and successor, entertained for three days, within the same walls which his uncle had rendered renowned by his hospitality, Pope Gregory XIII., and the numerous suite that accompanied him, with the most sumptuous magnificence, and every variety of recreation. A hundred noble youths on horseback met his Holiness at Ponte Lucano, and accompanied him to the Roman gate at Tivoli, where the Bishop and his clergy were waiting to receive him; and the magistrates presented the keys to him and conducted him into the town. In the Piazza dell' Olmo the eyes of his Holiness and those of his followers were attracted by the spectacle of a magnificent triumphal arch, crowned with a tower which concealed a band of musicians, and was surrounded by a number of small statues of angels, put into motion by machinery, so that when the strains "Ecco sacerdos magnus" burst from the hidden orchestra, they seemed as if they proceeded from the half-opened lips of the mimic angelic host. Greatly also was his Holiness delighted with another device in machinery, in which the Cyclops appeared, working in the caves of Mount Etna, and bringing forth streams of water and sheets of fire at every stroke of their hammers. The superb furniture of the interior of the villa was in keeping with the dignity of the guest, who had a costly bed assigned him for his repose, which had formerly belonged to Henry II. of France, and was valued at twenty thousand crowns. The banquet presented every dainty and delicacy that Lucullus himself might have desired, and wit and beauty vied with each other in the enlivening of them. What scenes for the pencil of Watteau, or the more romantic Stodhardt, with his tales of Boccaccio! The glittering palace, the solemn cypresses, the falling waters, the richly-attired pageantry that moved along the flowery precincts! All now is changed; a solitary and gloomy grandeur has usurped the place of former festivities; the villa is going fast to ruin, the fountains are silent, and neglect and desolation mark the scene. The cypresses, however, still remain in undiminished beauty. Unquestionably they existed long before the building itself rose "like an exhalation," and as they witnessed its elevation, so also are they the mute spectators of its decay.

The largest of these trees measures sixteen feet eight inches in circumference, at five feet from the ground, and is about one hundred and ten feet in height.

PLATE III.

THE COLONNA PINE.

FROM an elevated terrace in the gardens of the Colonna Palace, this stately and majestic pine for several centuries overlooked the numberless domes and lofty palaces of Rome; but the same year that proved fatal to the Oak of Tasso also occasioned considerable devastation to this venerable tree. Two thirds of its enormous limbs, that had already withstood the tempests of five hundred years, were rent in a violent storm of wind from

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the massive trunk, levelling in their fall the subject trees that grew below, and strewing the ground far and near with their innumerable boughs.

This tree was planted by the Colonna family in the year 1332, as a lasting memorial of their vengeance, by the death of Cola di Rienzi, for the slaughter of three of their kinsmen at the gate of San Lorenzo, during the contests that existed between the Tribune and the haughty nobles of Rome. The huge marble masses lying under the tree are remains of the entablature and pediment of the Temple of Sol Serapis, and on one of them, in evidence of the above transaction, we find rudely traced the following inscription, now almost effaced, but of which the original still exists among the archives of the House of Colonna.

Allora quando correvano l'otto di Ottobre del 1332 dopo essere scavalcati e senza misericordia uccisi Giovanni Stefano e Pietro d'Agapito.... l'ordine della Vittoria istituito fuori di Porta San Lorenzo fra le madonne nel valeroso sangue Colonese, Giurgurta e Sciarretta vendicati li loro uniti a Corte Savella colla morte di Cola di Renzo nel Pontificato del V. Clemente in Campidoglio erettosi tribuno del Popolo Romano, qui piantarono questo albero a perenne memoria di si fatale questione.

The sense of these lines is obscure, but their general import may be given as follows: — On the eighth of October, 1332, after Giovanni, Stefano and Pietro d'Agapito were dragged from their horses and slain without mercy, and the order of Victory instituted outside the gate of San Lorenzo in the valorous Colonese blood, Jugurtha and Sciaretta, together with Corte Savella, having revenged their own relations by the death of Cola di Renzo, who during the pontificate of the fifth Clement had established himself in the Capitol as Tribune of the Roman people, here planted this tree as a lasting memorial of so fatal an event.

The height of this noble tree is about one hundred and twenty feet, and at five feet from the ground its circumference is twenty-one feet four inches.

PLATE IV.

MICHAEL ANGELO'S CYPRESSES.

THESE magnificent trees stand in the large court of the Carthusian Convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which together with the noble church adjoining were constructed by Michael Angelo, on the site of the ruins of the Baths of Dioclesian. They are said to have been planted by the hand of the immortal architect, whose name they bear, and were originally four in number, but a few years ago one of them was destroyed by lightning. The cloisters that surround this court are exceedingly beautiful and elegant, and are decorated with an hundred columns. The most perfect silence reigns in this sequestered spot, broken only by the murmuring of the fountain, or the occasional whispering of the breeze among the lofty foliage.

The circumference of the largest of these trees at five feet from the ground is thirteen feet eight inches, and the height of the tallest is ninety-five feet.

## INTRODUCTION.

THERE is in the human mind an inherent principle that inclines it to look with reverence on the past. Hence the interest which the mouldering tower, the dilapidated tablet, or the prostrate column invariably inspires. It cannot be that imperfection is more pleasing than perfection, that beauty is more beautiful in fragments than entire, but that objects in a state of decadence lead the imagination back to the period when they were fresh and uninjured, and invite it to fill up the intervening years with theories of its own.

The pride of conquest, however, and the vanity of self-love, have continually, in the vicissitudes of nations, swept away the most interesting remains of historical events, without leaving them to the slow defacement of the gradual touch of time. Nevertheless there is one species of record, which not being the work of man, excites not his jealousy, and is therefore suffered to continue age after age, increasing in its claims upon our veneration, although the names or events with which it may be connected come to be regarded in altogether different points of view, according to the varying judgment of succeeding generations. Such records are the noble trees which tell of the centuries they have stood, the deeds they have beheld, the mutations that have taken place around them, only themselves unchanged. Witness that noble cypress at Somma, near Milan, which flourished long ere

“The mighty Julius fell,”

which saw the first battle between Hannibal and Scipio, and to whose “leafy honours,”
Napoleon, a second Hannibal, paid the tribute of a noble deference, by deviating from the
projected line of his magnificent road across the Simplon, rather than expose them to the

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possibility of injury. Witness the gnarled oak at St. Vincent, under which St. Louis was pleased to hold his courts of justice; the Sycamore at Trons, beneath whose spreading branches the deputies of the Grisons swore, four hundred years ago, to rescue their countrymen from the oppressions of their lords; the Linden tree at Fribourg, under the fragrant shade of which the old and young still delight themselves to assemble, planted in commemoration, the same day that it was obtained, of the triumphant victory of the Swiss over Charles the Bold. But, indeed, these living monuments, these temples not built with hands, though consecrated to many an illustrious name, continually present themselves in all countries as gracious landmarks to the admiration of the traveller and the lover of nature, inviting them to repose themselves under the same boughs that have waved over the heads of the brave, the wise, the good of other days, and to forget their fatigues, haply their cares, in some of the delightful reveries which suspend the toils of existence.

It is the purport of the following pages to point out such of those interesting objects in Italy as have come within the notice of the author, during a lengthened sojourn in that land of poetry and beauty, and to endeavour to preserve their forms and histories from oblivion. In the pleasing office of delineating their graceful ramifications and venerable sinuosities, he has felt a renewal of the delight with which, some years ago, he studied the most celebrated trees of his native country in the hope of perpetuating them in his *SYLVA BRITANNICA*. To that work he wishes the *SYLVA ITALICA* to be regarded as a companion, and conscious of having bestowed upon it the same zeal and attention as upon its predecessor, he trusts it may be equally fortunate in being honoured with the same approbation from the public.