g plants: a very unexpected and
(to me) inexplicable sight among those mountains which are more arid
than any Tuscan ones, and from which very few tributary streams seem
to descend. (I can remember crossing only one, full and with waving
weeds also.)

The Anio swirls round a beautiful wooded promontory, ilexes and even a
few cypresses, between Spiagge and Vicovaro, making a little church
into a miniature Tivoli Sibilla. One becomes very fond of such a
stream, and it is a great delight to see it in its triumph at Tivoli
racing headlong into the abyss of the big fall, only a spray cloud
revealing it among the thick green; or breaking out into tiny delicate
fountains--garden fountains, you would think--among the ilexes and
grottoes under the little round Temple; a wonderful mixture of
wildness and art, a place, with its high air, its leaping waters and
glimpses of distant plain, such as one would really wish for a sibyl,
and might imagine for Delphi. An enchanted place with its flight and
twitter of birds above the water. I should like to follow the Anio
into the Tiber.

At sunset, had there been one, we went into the Villa d'Este, entering
through the huge deserted courts and grottoed halls of the colossal
palace, surprised to find the enchanted gardens, the terraces and
cypresses descending on the other side, the grey vague plain and
distant mountains--and always the sound of waters. What a solemn
magnificent place! How strange a contrast from the Benedictine
monastery on its arid rocks, to this huge, solemn, pompous palace,
with its plumed gardens and statued hedges, hanging on a hillside too,
but what a different one!

ROME, _March_ 30.

VIII.

VICOVARO.

There was cultivation all down the valley of the Anio, lots of
blossoming cherry-trees; and the peasant-women in stays, and some men
in knee breeches, looked prosperous. Subiaco seeming a sort of S.
Marcello.

Vicovaro is a delightful village above the Anio, with a fine palace of
the Bolognettis, a good many houses with handsome carved windows and
lintels as in Umbria, a nice circular church with fourteenth-century
elaborate statued porch, and a very charming temple portico. Here
also the people looked well-to-do and civilised, on the whole like
Umbrians; whereas on the Olevano side, even on Sunday, they were in
rags and miserably stolid. The little caffe where we eat was lined
with political caricatures.

Places like Vicovaro and still more the m