Mrs. Charles MacVeagh

“ The bronze and marble tomb of Paul III is in St. Peter's, to the left of the tribune. It contains the dust of as worldly a person, to quote Ranke, as ever Pope had been. Yet if his actions cannot be said to "smell sweet and blossom in the dust," his memory survives in the annals of Rome, fragrant with the love and pride of his people. He was an old, old man when he died in 1549. He had been fifteen years Pope and forty years a cardinal. ”

“ The impression made upon the mind by the Farnese fountains is not pleasing. They are certainly "rare and vast," but as fountains they are not a success. The form overshadows the substance; for the single jet of water thrown upward over the structural part of the fountain is not adequate, and is lost in the effect produced upon the eye by the huge tubs turned black by the deposits of the Acqua Paola; while the water falling back into these receptacles is caught as in a prison, the overflow from the upper to the lower basins being not sufficient to give an idea of a copious stream. ”

“ The combination of the severely classic lines of the baths with the Gothic carving and mediæval emblem of the fleur-de-lis is not good. It is disastrous to the design as a composition and makes these fountains archaeological curiosities rather than artistic creations. Still, the Farnese fountains impose by their qualities of size and strength, and once seen can never be forgotten.
The pleasure derived from the sight of a pair of fountains is not merely double the pleasure that is felt at the sight of one. ”

“ The fountains were erected by the Farnese family to add the final touch of distinction to their new palace. They owe their unique combination of original classic features and seventeenth-century taste to the genius and opportunities of Paul III and his grandson, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese II, and to a still later descendant Cardinal Odoardo Farnese. The Pope and the earlier cardinal, men of wide culture and enormous wealth, were the first to excavate and exploit the Baths of Caracalla. ”

“ The family and the splendor once were, and now are not; and all the sunshine which daily floods the spacious piazza fails to reanimate the majestic vacancy of the facade, or to lift the gloom from the dejected and sombre fountains. ”

“ The young cardinal was nicknamed the Petticoat Cardinal; but he seems to have felt no compunction at the transaction. With the Romans, as with the Parisians, ridicule is the most powerful engine of destruction; and the fact that Alessandro Farnese lived this sobriquet down, proves, as nothing else can prove, the hold he had upon the Roman people.
Any account of Paul III would be incomplete without some reference to his extraordinary belief in astrology. It was quite a recognized fact that he never even considered any scheme, public or private, before consulting the planets. ”

“ Placed thus in the very heart of a movement which freed the individual from all limitations save those of his own personality and opened the world before him, he early made up his mind to become Pope and to raise his own family, as the Medici had done, to the rank of princes. ”

“ They are seventeen feet long and about three feet deep, and are absolutely devoid of decoration except for the lion's head carved in relief, low down in the middle of each side — and this is merely an ornamental outlet for the water, quite as necessary to the original purpose for which these tubs were made as are the handles carved high up on either side under the curved rim, simulating metal rings through which the bronze staves had been inserted whenever it was found necessary to move the tubs. ”