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Donatello, while it was still a doubtful question betwixt
afternoon and morning, set forth to keep the appointment
which Miriam had carelessly tendered him in the
grounds of the Villa Borghese.

The entrance to these grounds (as all my readers know,
for everybody now-a-days has been in Rome) is just outside
of the Porta del Popolo. Passing beneath that not
very impressive specimen of Michael Angelo's architecture,
a minute's walk will transport the visitor from the
small, uneasy lava stones of the Roman pavement into
broad, gravelled carriage-drives, whence a little farther
stroll brings him to the soft turf of a beautiful seclusion.
A seclusion, but seldom a solitude; for priest, noble, and
populace, stranger and native, all who breathe Roman
air, find free admission, and come hither to taste the languid
enjoyment of the daydream that they call life.

But Donatello's enjoyment was of a liverlier kind. He
soon began to draw long and delightful breaths among
those shadowy walks. Judging by the pleasure which
the sylvan character of the scene excited in him, it might

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be no merely fanciful theory to set him down as the kinsman,
not far remote, of that wild, sweet, playful, rustic
creature, to whose marble image he bore so striking a resemblance.
How mirthful a discovery would it be (and
yet with a touch of pathos in it), if the breeze which
sported fondly with his clustering locks were to waft them
suddenly aside, and show a pair of leaf-shaped, furry ears!
What an honest strain of wildness would it indicate! and
into what regions of rich mystery would it extend Donatello's
sympathies, to be thus linked (and by no monstrous
chain) with what we call the inferior tribes of being,
whose simplicity, mingled with his human intelligence,
might partly restore what man has lost of the divine!

The scenery amid which the youth now strayed was
such as arrays itself in the imagination when we read the
beautiful old myths, and fancy a brighter sky, a softer
turf, a more picturesque arrangement of venerable trees,
than we find in the rude and untrained landscapes of the
Western world. The ilex-trees, so ancient and time-honored
were they, seemed to have lived for ages undisturbed,
and to feel no dread of profanation by the axe
any more than overthrow by the thunder-stroke. It had
already passed out of their dreamy old memories that
only a few years ago they were grievously imperilled by
the Gaul's last assault upon the walls of Rome. As if
confident in the long peace of their lifetime, they assumed
attitudes of indolent repose. They leaned over the green
turf in ponderous grace, throwing abroad their great
branches without danger of interfering with other trees,
though other majestic trees grew near enough for dignified

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society, but too distant for constraint. Never was there
a more venerable quietude than that which slept among
their sheltering boughs; never a sweeter sunshine than
that now gladdening the gentle gloom which these leafy
patriarchs strove to diffuse over the swelling and subsiding
lawns.

In other portions of the grounds the stone-pines lifted
their dense clump of branches upon a slender length of
stem, so high that they looked like green islands in the
air, flinging down a shadow upon the turf so far off that
you hardly knew which tree had made it. Again, there
were avenues of cypress, resembling dark flames of huge
funeral candles, which spread dusk and twilight round
about them instead of cheerful radiance. The more open
spots were all a-bloom, even so early in the season, with
anemones of wondrous size, both white and rose-colored,
and violets that betrayed themselves by their rich fragrance,
even if their blue eyes failed to meet your own.
Daisies, too, were abundant, but larger than the modest
little English flower, and therefore of small account.

These wooded and flowery lawns are more beautiful
than the finest of English park-scenery, more touching,
more impressive, through the neglect that leaves nature
so much to her own ways and methods. Since man seldom
interferes with her, she sets to work in her quiet way
and makes herself at home. There is enough of human
care, it is true, bestowed long ago and still bestowed, to
prevent wildness from growing into deformity; and the
result is an ideal landscape, a woodland scene that seems
to have been projected out of the poet's mind. If the

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ancient Faun were other than a mere creation of old poetry,
and could have reappeared anywhere, it must have
been in such a scene as this.

In the openings of the wood there are fountains plashing
into marble basins, the depths of which are shaggy
with water-weeds; or they tumble like natural cascades
from rock to rock, sending their murmur afar, to make
the quiet and silence more appreciable. Scattered here
and there with careless artifice, stand old altars bearing
Roman inscriptions. Statues, gray with the long corrosion
of even that soft atmosphere, half hide and half reveal
themselves, high on pedestals, or perhaps fallen and
broken on the turf. Terminal figures, columns of marble
or granite porticoes, arches, are seen in the vistas of the
wood-paths, either veritable relics of antiquity, or with so
exquisite a touch of artful ruin on them that they are
better than if really antique. At all events, grass grows
on the tops of the shattered pillars, and weeds and flowers
root themselves in the chinks of the massive arches and
fronts of temples, and clamber at large over their pediments,
as if this were the thousandth summer since their
winged seeds alighted there.

What a strange idea — what a needless labor — to construct
artificial ruins in Rome, the native soil of ruin!
But even these sportive imitations, wrought by man in
emulation of what time has done to temples and palaces,
are perhaps centuries old, and, beginning as illusions,
have grown to be venerable in sober earnest. The result
of all is a scene, pensive, lovely, dream-like, enjoyable
and sad, such as is to be found nowhere save in these

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princely villa-residences in the neighborhood of Rome; a
scene that must have required generations and ages, during
which growth, decay, and man's intelligence wrought
kindly together, to render it so gently wild as we behold
it now.

The final charm is bestowed by the malaria. There is
a piercing, thrilling, delicious kind of regret in the idea of
so much beauty thrown away, or only enjoyable at its
half-development, in winter and early spring, and never
to be dwelt amongst, as the home-scenery of any human
being. For if you come hither in summer, and stray
through these glades in the golden sunset, fever walks
arm in arm with you, and death awaits you at the end of
the dim vista. Thus the scene is like Eden in its loveliness;
like Eden, too, in the fatal spell that removes it
beyond the scope of man's actual possessions. But Donatello
felt nothing of this dream-like melancholy that haunts
the spot. As he passed among the sunny shadows, his
spirit seemed to acquire new elasticity. The flicker of
the sunshine, the sparkle of the fountain's gush, the dance
of the leaf upon the bough, the woodland fragrance, the
green freshness, the old sylvan peace and freedom, were
all intermingled in those long breaths which he drew.

The ancient dust, the mouldiness of Rome, the dead
atmosphere in which he had wasted so many months, the
hard pavements, the smell of ruin and decaying generations,
the chill palaces, the convent-bells, the heavy incense
of altars, the life that he had led in those dark, narrow
streets, among priests, soldiers, nobles, artists, and women—
all the sense of these things rose from the young

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man's consciousness like a cloud which had darkened over
him without his knowing how densely.

He drank in the natural influences of the scene, and
was intoxicated as by an exhilarating wine. He ran
races with himself along the gleam and shadow of the
wood-paths. He leapt up to catch the overhanging bough
of an ilex, and swinging himself by it alighted far onward,
as if he had flown thither through the air. In a
sudden rapture he embraced the trunk of a sturdy tree,
and seemed to imagine it a creature worthy of affection
and capable of a tender response; he clasped it closely in
his arms, as a Faun might have clasped the warm, feminine
grace of the nymph, whom antiquity supposed to
dwell within that rough, encircling rind. Then, in order
to bring himself closer to the genial earth, with which his
kindred instincts linked him so strongly, he threw himself
at full length on the turf, and pressed down his lips, kissing
the violets and daisies, which kissed him back again,
though shyly, in their maiden fashion.

While he lay there, it was pleasant to see how the
green and blue lizards, who had been basking on some
rock or on a fallen pillar that absorbed the warmth of the
sun, scrupled not to scramble over him with their small
feet; and how the birds alighted on the nearest twigs and
sang their little roundelays unbroken by any chirrup of
alarm; they recognized him, it may be, as something
akin to themselves, or else they fancied that he was
rooted and grew there; for these wild pets of nature
dreaded him no more in his buoyant life than if a mound
of soil and grass and flowers had long since covered his

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dead body, converting it back to the sympathies from
which human existence had estranged it.

All of us, after long abode in cities, have felt the blood
gush more joyously through our veins with the first breath
of rural air; few could feel it so much as Donatello, a
creature of simple elements, bred in the sweet sylvan life
of Tuscany, and for months back dwelling amid the
mouldy gloom and dim splendor of old Rome. Nature
has been shut out for numberless centuries from those
stony-hearted streets, to which he had latterly grown
accustomed; there is no trace of her, except for what
blades of grass spring out of the pavements of the less
trodden piazzas, or what weeds cluster and tuft themselves
on the cornices of ruins. Therefore his joy was like
that of a child that had gone astray from home, and finds
him suddenly in his mother's arms again.

At last, deeming it full time for Miriam to keep her
tryst, he climbed to the tiptop of the tallest tree, and
thence looked about him, swaying to and fro in the gentle
breeze, which was like the respiration of that great leafy,
living thing. Donatello saw beneath him the whole circuit
of the enchanted ground; the statues and columns
pointing upward from among the shrubbery, the fountains
flashing in the sunlight, the paths winding hither and
thither, and continually finding out some nook of new
and ancient pleasantness. He saw the villa, too, with its
marble front incrusted all over with bas-reliefs, and statues
in its many niches. It was as beautiful as a fairy
palace, and seemed an abode in which the lord and lady
of this fair domain might fitly dwell, and come forth each

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morning to enjoy as sweet a life as their happiest dreams
of the past night could have depicted. All this he saw,
but his first glance had taken in too wide a sweep, and it
was not till his eyes fell almost directly beneath him, that
Donatello beheld Miriam just turning into the path that
led across the roots of his very tree.

He descended among the foliage, waiting for her to
come close to the trunk, and then suddenly dropped from
an impending bough, and alighted at her side. It was as
if the swaying of the branches had let a ray of sunlight
through. The same ray likewise glimmered among the
gloomy meditations that encompassed Miriam, and lit up
the pale, dark beauty of her face, while it responded
pleasantly to Donatello's glance.

“I hardly know,” said she, smiling, “whether you have
sprouted out of the earth, or fallen from the clouds. In
either case, you are welcome.”

And they walked onward together.

p576-105

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