Mrs. Charles MacVeagh

“ Bernini's extravaganzas, in which the Egyptian symbol of the mystery of life becomes the meaningless centrepiece for a banal fountain, have long ceased to give pleasure. It is doubtful whether the obelisk was altogether pleasing to the ancient Romans. They could not fail to admire its austere dignity and strength, and they regarded it as the insignia of supreme power, human or divine. Roman Emperors from Augustus onward constantly imported them to Rome to celebrate a victory, to adorn a circus, or to place in pairs, one on either side of the entrance to a tomb. ”

“ Down this road, which is but a continuation of the still greater Via Emilia, have come all the northern friends and all the northern foes of Rome. Other eyes than Valadier's can see that procession. Barbarian invaders and imperial armies have covered all the countryside like swarms of locusts the progress of most of them marked by burning farms and plundered villages. In quieter times there have come pilgrim hosts and companies of merchants; and travelling scholars, and artists "withhearts on fire" for Rome ”

“ THE fountains in the Piazza del Popolo should not be considered as individual creations; they must be regarded as parts of an architectural composition which includes the piazza as a whole—its shape, dimensions, and location, and the buildings which surround it. This composition is the work of the distinguished Roman architect Giuseppe Valadier, whose life lay within the last thirty-eight years of the eighteenth century and the first three decades of the nineteenth. ”