Piranesi’s engravings give some idea of the savage wildness of the uninhabited parts of Rome; and the ragged and uncouth figures with which he peoples his ruins are, no doubt, a faithful representation of the squalor of the wretched tribe of outlaws who dwelt among them. This state of things had resulted from one cause--lack of water. The aqueducts which supplied these hills had been the first to perish at the hands of the barbarians, and desolation had followed inevitably upon their destruction. Pius IV had dreamed of restoring this great portion of the city; but Pius IV, like his immediate predecessors, had lacked the means of doing this. Sixtus V brought to the task the required money, public tranquillity, and imagination. He found in the erstwhile mason’s apprentice from Como, Domenico Fontana, the engineer and architect for such undertakings. The old Marcian Aqueduct furnished the materials for the Acquedotto Felice, and the water was brought all the way from Zagarolla in the Agra Colonna, near Frascati, twenty miles distant from Rome, to the Pope’s vineyard outside the Porta Maggiore, and thence to the Church of Santa Susanna. The splendid stream carried over these arches was thus distributed throughout the desolation and sterility of the Viminal, Esquiline, and Quirinal Hills. With this water at his command, Sixtus V began laying out what might be called to-day Sixtine Rome--the Rome which lies between the terraces of the Trinità de’ Monti and that portion of the Aurelian wall pierced by the six gates--Porta Pinciana, Porta Salaria, Porta Pia, Porta San Lorenzo, Porta Maggiore, and Porta San Giovanni. It was an enormous space to cover, and the frescoes in the Vatican Library show how desolate and how wild it was. The two great basilicas of the Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore, the Coliseum, and the Septizonium (for very good reasons not included in the picture), the Baths of Diocletian, the Neronian arches, the Villa Montalto with its rows of famous cypresses, and in one panel the Moses fountain and the Porta Pia--these constitute the main features of the wild landscape with its hilly background and its foreground of rough, bare earth and shaggy vegetation. The Pope offered special privileges to all who would build on these hills, and he himself began the work by levelling the ground about the Church of the Trinità de’ Monti and building the fine flights of steps which lead up on both sides to the church. Half-way between this church and the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore he created the Crossing; and for rest and refreshment, as well as for beauty, he placed here these four fountains. This half-way point in the long ascent from the Trinità de’ Monti to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore was well known to Sixtus V. Many a time had he, as Friar Felix Peretti, climbed that lonely hillside and felt for himself the solitude and thirst of the desolate vicinity. Later on, when he had become Cardinal Montalto, he