We stopped at the Villa Barberini at Castle Gondolfo--such a beautiful garden, but so neglected--great long dark walks, trees like high black walls on each side, and big bushes of white and red camellias almost as tall as the trees, roses just beginning. In every direction broken columns, vases, statues (minus arms and legs) carved benches, all falling to pieces. We went into the Villa which is usually let to strangers, but it was most primitive--brick floors everywhere (except in the salons, where there was always the mosaic pavement), and the simplest description of furniture--ordinary iron bed-steads, and iron trépieds in the master's bed-rooms, but a magnificent view of sea and Campagna from the balcony, and a beautiful cool, bracing air. We drove on through Marino and Frascati. We passed the little chapel on the road where we used to see all the people praying the great cholera year. It was open, and one or two women were kneeling just inside. The atmosphere was so transparent that Rocca di Papa and Monte Cavo seemed quite near. The Piazza of Frascati was just the same, the Palazzo Marconi at one side with the great Aldobrandini Villa overtopping it and the Villa Torlonia opposite. We didn't go into the town, but took the steep road down by the railway station. There everything is changed--it didn't seem at all the Frascati we had once lived in--quantities of new, ugly villas, and an enormous modern Grand Hotel. We got home about 6.30--the Campagna quite beautiful and quiet in the soft evening light. There were very few people on the road, every now and then a shepherd in his long sheepskin cloak, staff and broad-brimmed hat appearing on the top of one of the many little mounds which are dotted all over the Campagna, and occasionally in the distance a dog barking. March 17th. Bessie and I have just come in from the last meet of the season at Cecilia Metella. It is such a favourite rendezvous that there is always a great crowd, almost as many people walking about on the Campagna as riding. It was a very pretty sight. There were quantities of handsome horses, but I don't know that it was quite comfortable walking when the hunt moved off. Some of the young men--principally officers--were taking preliminary gallops in every direction, and jumping backward and forward over a large ditch. One of them knocked down an Englishwoman--at least I don't think he really knocked her, but he alighted so near her that she was frightened, and slipped getting out of his way. We stopped to speak to her, but she said she wasn't at all hurt, and had friends with her. The master of the hounds--Marchese Roccagiovine--didn't look very pleased, and I should think a large, motley field, with a good many women and careless riders, would be most trying to a real sportsman, such as he is. Giovanni Borghese told me there were two hundred people riding, and I can quite believe it.