The two Latin inscriptions upon the steps are worthy of attention.[L] The building of the steps, begun by Alessandro Specchi and completed by Francesco de Sanctis, was not undertaken, as appears from the inscription, till sixty years after the death of De Guéffier and six pontificates later than that of Alexander VII (Chigi), in which De Guéffier died. By that time the Spanish influence had reasserted itself to a marked degree, and as the Spanish embassy had been established in a palace on the western side of the square, the old name of the Piazza della Trinità de’ Monti gradually gave way to the present name, Piazza di Spagna. And so finally the great stone stairway, the gift of a Frenchman in the heyday of French influence at Rome, came to be known as the Spanish Steps. Yet, after all, the paramount association with the fountain of the Barcaccia is neither French nor Spanish, but belongs pre-eminently to the English-speaking race. This fantastic fountain, with its commonplace background and its limited view of the Scalinata, forms the only outlook from the windows of the house in which the poet Keats spent the last three months of his life; so that from the position of this house the fountain of the Barcaccia is connected for all time with the fate of the “young English poet” who lies buried now these many years in the Protestant cemetery outside the walls. From the windows of his narrow death-chamber he watched the plashing waters in the fountain below him, while above his head the bells in the church, which he could not see, remorselessly rang out the quarter-hours or tolled for some fellow creature the “agonia,” or “passing bell.” During his hours of listlessness or fits of sombre rage, this passing of time and of life was always in his ears, as the futile play of the water was always before his eyes. It is not difficult to connect the bells and the fountain with the bitter epitaph written, by his own wish, above his grave: “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” TRITON [Illustration] TRITON “Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, And hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.” The exquisite lines rise involuntarily to the lips as one comes suddenly upon Bernini’s old fountain in the Piazza Tritone, which, standing in the centre of one of the busiest and most prosaic thoroughfares of modern Rome, still keeps its own quality of beauty and seems to weave about itself the enchantment of the world of fable. Roman art has created many Tritons, notably the joyous group surrounding Galatea in the Farnesina Palace, but there is about this water-worn old figure such distinction and such emphasis of life that he becomes the prototype of all his race. He is _Il Tritone_.