n told us to get out and look through the keyhole. We were
aghast, but he insisted, laughing and nodding; so we pocketed our pride
and peeped. Through an overarching vista of dark foliage was seen, white
and golden in a blaze of sunshine, the cupola of St. Peter's, which is
at the farthest end of the city, two miles at the least as the crow
flies. When the gate was opened we entered a sweet little garden full of
violets, traversed by an alley of old ilex trees, through which appeared
the noble dome, and which led from the gate to a terrace overhanging the
Tiber--I will not venture to guess how far below--more like two than one
hundred feet; perhaps still farther. On the edge of the terrace was an
arbor, and here we sank down enchanted, to drink in the view of the
city, which spread out under our eyes as we had never seen it from any
other point. But the custodino's wife urged us to come into the Priorato
and see the view from the upper story. We followed her, reluctant to
leave the sunshine and soft air, up a stiff winding staircase, through
large, dark, chilly, long-closed apartments, until we reached the top,
where there was a great square room occupying the whole floor. She flung
open the windows, and never did such a panorama meet my eyes. There were
windows on every side: to the north, one looked across the city to St.
Peter's, the Vatican, the Castle of St. Angelo, the Tiber with its great
bends and many bridges, and to lonely, far-away Soracte; westward, on
the other side of the river, rose the Janiculum with its close-wedged
houses, grade on grade, and on its summit the church of San Pietro in
Montorio and the flashing cataract of the Acqua Paola fountain, the
stone-pines of the Villa Dolia cresting the ridge above; eastward, the
Palatine, a world of ruins in a world of gardens, lay between us and the
Coliseum, and over them and the wall, the aqueducts, the plain, the eye
ranged to the snow-capped Sabine Hills, on whose many-colored
declivities tiny white towns were dotted like browsing sheep; southward,
we gazed down upon the Pyramid of Cestius, upon the beautiful Protestant
cemetery with its white monuments and dark cypresses where lie Shelley
and Keats, upon the stately Porta San Paolo, a great mediaeval gateway
flanked with towers, and beyond, the Campagna, purple, violet,
ultramarine, oceanic, rolling out toward the Alban Hills, which
glittered with snow, rising sharply like island-peaks and sloping down
like