work, and to this day the galleries and palaces of northern Europe cherish the pictures planned or sketched about the Fountain of the Brimming Bowl. Pope Urban VIII, who died in 1644, was himself half French, not only by virtue of his temperament and genius, but also by the trend of his sympathies and his foreign policy. Under his enlightened patronage, the artists of France found a congenial home in the Eternal City. This was the beginning of the French Academy of Painting in Rome, which was formally founded in 1666 by Colbert, the great minister of Louis XIV. For the first seven years of its existence this institution had no permanent abode; but in 1673 the Capronica Palace was placed at its disposal, and later on--in Louis XV’s time--it moved to the Mancini Palace near the Corso. The slope leading from the Piazza of the Trinità de’ Monti (now the Piazza di Spagna) to the terraces above had all this time been a natural hillside, whereon grew trees, grass, and wild flowers familiar to Rome. The footpaths leading upward must have been a rather steep climb; but five years before the founding of the Academy an event occurred which was to make the ascent of the hillside not only easy but delightful. In 1661 Rome came into the possession of a large sum of money left to the city by the learned French gentleman, Etienne de Guéffier, for the express purpose of constructing a magnificent stone stairway which should cover this slope of the Pincian Hill, and unite for all time the Campus Martius with the terraces above. The stairway was long in building, and during its construction the connection between the Academy in the Mancini Palace and the old terraces of the Trinità de’ Monti may have been slender; but in 1725 the Scalinata was opened with great pomp, and once again French artists could spend long hours on their beloved terraces. Seventy-six years later Napoleon, with his supreme instinct for effect (a possession he shared with Julius Cæsar),[J] and not unmindful of the French association with this quarter of the city, removed the French Academy from the old Mancini Palace and lodged it permanently and most impressively where it now is, in the Villa Medici, the villa built by that family which had given two queens to France. So the fountain of the Trinità de’ Monti is still a feature in the life of the French artists at Rome; and it is perhaps a pardonable fancy that, in this particular fountain, the Acqua Felice plays in French! VILLA BORGHESE NOW VILLA UMBERTO PRIMO [Illustration] VILLA BORGHESE NOW VILLA UMBERTO PRIMO A garden where the centuries Of men have come and none did care Save for the green grass and the breeze And shelter from the noontide glare. But that which makes the garden fair-- The sense of life’s futility, Is deathless beauty. Born of Death, It blossoms under cloudless skies-- One’s very dream of Italy. --_From an unpublished MS._