no less than that which
separates the conqueror from the conquered, and the fruits of conquest
from the consequences of subjection. But thinking men do not forget that
they look at the past in one way and at the present in another; and that
while the actions of a nation are dictated by the impulses of contagious
sentiment, the judgments of history are too often based upon an all but
commercial reckoning and balancing of profit and loss.

When Sixtus the Fifth was building the Quirinal palace, he was not
working in a wilderness resembling the deserted fields of the outlying
Monti. The hill was covered with gardens and villas. Ippolito d'Este,
the son of Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, and of Lucrezia Borgia, had built
himself a residence on the west side of the hill, surrounded by gardens.
It was in the manner of his magnificent palace at Tivoli, that Villa
d'Este of which the melancholy charm had such a mysterious attraction
for Liszt, where the dark cypresses reflect their solemn beauty in the
stagnant water, and a weed-grown terrace mourns the dead artist in the
silence of decay.

[Illustration: PALAZZO DEL QUIRINALE]

Further on, along the Via Venti Settembre, stretched the pleasure
grounds of Oliviero, Cardinal Carafa, who is remembered as the man who
first recognized the merits of the beautiful mutilated group
subsequently known as 'Pasquino,' and set it upon the pedestal which
made it famous, and gave its name a place in all languages, by the witty
lampoons and stinging satires almost daily affixed to the block of
stone. Many other villas followed in the same direction, and in those
insecure days not a few Romans, when the summer days grew hot, were
content to move up from their palaces in the lower parts of the city to
breathe the somewhat better air of the Quirinal and the Esquiline,
instead of risking a journey to the country.

Sixtus the Fifth died in the Quirinal palace, and twenty-one other Popes
have died there since, all following the curious custom of bequeathing
their hearts and viscera to the parish Church of the Saints Vincent and
Anastasius, which is known as the Church of Cardinal Mazarin, because
the tasteless front was built by him, though the rest existed much
earlier. It stands opposite the fountain of Trevi, at one corner of the
little square; the vault in which the urns were placed is just behind
and below the high altar; but Benedict the Fourteenth built a special
monument for them on the left