It Is Now A Good Three Centuries And A Half Since The Cardinal
Ippolito D'.Este Had These Gardens Laid Out And His Pleasure-House Built
Overlooking Them; And His Gardener Did Not Plan So Substantially As His
Architect.
In fact, you might suppose that the landscapist wrought with
an eye to the loveliness of the ruin it all would soon fall into, and,
where he used stone, used it fragilely, so that it would ultimately
suggest old frayed and broken lace.
Clearly he meant some of the
cataracts to face one another, and to have a centre from which they
could all be seen - say the still, dull-green basin which occupies a
large space in the grounds between them. But he must have meant this for
a surprise to the spectator, who easily misses it under the trees
overleaning the moss-grown walks which hardly kept themselves from
running wild. There is a sense of crumbling decorations of statues,
broken in their rococo caverns; of cypresses carelessly grouped and
fallen out of their proper straightness and slimness; of unkempt bushes
crowding the space beneath; of fragmentary gods or giants half hid in
the tangling grasses. It all has the air of something impatiently done
for eager luxury, and its greatest charm is such as might have been
expected to be won from eventual waste and wreck. If there was design in
the treatment of the propitious ground, self-shaped to an irregular
amphitheatre, it is now obscured, and the cultiavted tourist of our day
may reasonably please himself with the belief that he is having a better
time there than the academic Roman of the sixteenth century.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 247 of 353
Words from 67751 to 68029
of 97259
