In this fountain he strove to produce the effect of a wild concourse of waters. He wished to reproduce in stone the tumult of the falls of Tivoli. Confusion, rapidity of movement, and noise are the qualities which he attempted to embody in his sculpture. That the effect should be bathos and not grandeur was inevitable. The ideas which Bernini strove to express cannot be portrayed. Music is the only artistic medium by which they can be rendered, and in looking at the Bernini sculpture as well as architecture it is impossible not to wish that this artist of such undeniable genius and immense facility had been a musician. As the composer and interpreter of great _brio_ music Bernini might have given no less pleasure to the men of his time and have secured from posterity a kindlier appreciation.[M] But in the seventeenth century secular music as an art was still in its infancy, and it was inevitable that Bernini should express himself in sculpture, or in the “frozen music” of architecture. As the Borgo holds its memories of the Borgias, and the Via Sistina and its vicinity recall the power of Sixtus V, and the Piazza di Spagna the versatility of Urban VIII, so the Piazza Navona brings back the times of Innocent X. The greatest gift which the Pamphili family has left to Rome is the Villa Pamphili, which was built by the Pope’s nephew, but here in the Piazza Navona stand the Pamphili Palace, the Collegio Innocentium and the Church of St. Agnes, whose new façade dates from his pontificate. It was during his lifetime that the festas of the “Lago of the Piazza Navona” were inaugurated. Every Sunday in July and August the outlets of the great central fountain were stopped and the water was permitted to flood the entire piazza, which was at that time much lower than it is at present. Then the carriages of the nobility and gentry drove around the piazza, the water reaching up as far as the middle of the smaller wheels. The owners of the houses and palaces invited friends to witness the spectacle from their windows, refreshments were served, and bands of music played on stands erected at various parts of the piazza. The fact that only people owning carriages could drive in the procession and that only the inhabitants of the houses and palaces could invite their guests, limited the number and regulated the quality of the participants in these curious pageants. In the earlier days much license was permitted, and the entertainments lasted through the night, but in Clement XIII’s time, or about 1760, the number of hours was curtailed. With the ringing of the Ave Maria the piazza was drained and the waters once more confined to the basin of Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers. These harmless midsummer carnivals which came to an end during the pontificate of Pope Pius IX were as much relished by the Romans as were the _naumachiæ_ held fourteen hundred years earlier in the same place. TREVI [Illustration] TREVI