In this company there are not a few who find themselves in Rome, yet not able to see Rome--to see it, that is, as the historians, artists, archæologists, and their own minds call upon them to see it. Their right to tread the Roman streets depends upon their obedience to some law compelling an existence lived entirely in the open air and in the broad sunshine. To such the gates of Paradise seem closed. To be forbidden the galleries and churches and catacombs and the hidden recesses of the old ruins appears an intolerable fate. Yet even to these, who have made the great acceptance and are living upon the half-loaf of life--even to these, Rome is kind. Little by little, in easy periods, they can get back into the days of the Renaissance, of the Counter-Reformation, of the Napoleonic Era, and of the great Risorgimento. This can be done under the conditions of open air and sunshine; for it is in such surroundings that we find the fountains, and the fountains of Rome are in themselves title-pages to Roman history. ST. PETER’S [Illustration] ST. PETER’S “Fountains are among the most successful monuments of the late Renaissance,” and those which stand on either side of the great Square of St. Peter’s show that Symonds’s statement should be enlarged so as to include the century which followed that period. Mr. John Evelyn, the accomplished English traveller of the seventeenth century, saw the fountain of Paul V soon after its completion and describes it in his diary as the “goodliest I ever saw”. Since his day the twin fountains both of Trafalgar Square and of the Place de la Concorde have been erected, but Evelyn could still give the superlative praise to the great Roman model. Although the two fountains in the Square of St. Peter’s are exactly alike they are not of precisely the same date. The conception of the design belongs to Carlo Maderno, who executed the fountain on the right of the approach to the basilica for Pope Paul V (Borghese, 1605–1621), while the fountain to the left was copied from this for Pope Clement X (Altieri, 1670–1676), some sixty years later. Clement’s courtiers had observed that whenever His Holiness walked in the direction of Paul V’s great fountain his eyes continually turned toward it. At length Clement ordered his architect, Carlo Fontana, nephew of Carlo Maderno, to make an exact copy of Maderno’s work and to erect it on the south side of the obelisk. The double fountain not only enhances the magnificence of the entire scene, but so changes it by introducing the additional element of balance that Clement X’s order for the second fountain was in reality an order for a new composition. The coat of arms cut upon the octagonal support of the upper basins and half hidden and obliterated by the falling water is, on the right-hand fountain, that of the Borghese family (the crowned eagle above the dragon); and on the left-hand fountain, that of the Altieri family, an inverted pyramid of six stars.