Mrs. Charles MacVeagh

“ These were among the projects which he had not the time to carry out, for Sixtus V's pontificate lasted but five years. Seeing what he actually accomplished during that short period and reading what he still intended to do, it seems as if this Pope were not a link in the long chain of St. Peter's successors but one of those " explosions of energy" which occur from time to time in the history of men.
Sixtus V was not a Roman nor even by descent an Italian. His origin was from the humblest condition in life. ”

“ Bracciano died there seven months later; and six weeks afterward Ludovico Orsini murdered both Vittoria and her young brother Flaminio in Padua, whither they had gone to live on the duke's great legacy* Vittoria's possession of Bracciano's fortune, and the outraged pride of the Orsini occasioned by her marriage, for she was of humble origin, prompted Ludovico's crime. But all three of these actors in the tragedy were guests of Venice, and Ludovico Orsim had in very truth reckoned without his host. There was one pride greater than that of a Roman noble, and that was the pride of Venice. ”

“ Sixtus V saw this accomplished in his lifetime, for his devotion to the Pope, who, like himself, had begun life as a friar, and who had made him cardinal and stood his friend in trouble, never wavered nor grew cold. Historians have dwelt much upon Sixtus V's parsimony. Economy was said to be his favorite virtue. ”

“ Sixtus V preferred the Quirinal to any other residence. Perhaps the Villa Montalto may have become distasteful to him by reason of the crime which was immortalized by Webster's tragedy of "Vittoria Accoramboni or the White Devil." Cinque Cento Italy was the Italy of the Elizabethan dramatists, and in this tragedy, the blackest of their Italian productions, many of the chief characters were drawn from actual life. The Cardinal Monticelso of the written tragedy had been the actual Cardinal Montalto, and Vittoria Accoramboni and her husband had been his nephew and his nephew's wife. ”

“ Half-way between this church and the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore he created the Crossing; and for rest and refreshment, as well as for beauty, he placed here these four fountains. This half-way point in the long ascent from the Trinita de* Monti to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore was well known to Sixtus V. Many a time had he, as Friar Felix Peretti, climbed that lonely hillside and felt for himself the solitude and thirst of the desolate vicinity. ”

“ To an ardent temperament, an imperious will, and a strong intellect was added a constructive, even fantastic, imagination of a high order; but his lack of early culture and his exclusively monastic training had kept him in ignorance of all education not immediately connected with religion and had bred in him a hostility toward classic art almost amounting to fanaticism. ”

“ It was by command of this Pope, Sixtus V, that the gardens, hills, wolds, and valleys of the States of the Church were planted with mulberry-trees, so that "where no corn grew the silk industry might flourish." It was Sixtus V who encouraged woollen manufacture so that to quote his own wordsr "the poor might have something." In connection with this, it is interesting to see that he had fully intended to turn the Coliseum into an immense woollen factory. The streets of Rome resounded with the cheerful din of his architects and masons ”

“ Fontana also built in one corner of the Quattro Fontane the Palazzo Mattei, now the Palazzo Albani. The invaluable stimulant of the "master's eye" was always to be felt about the neighborhood, for Sixtus V often took his Sunday walk after mass along these streets, examining, criticising, and commanding everything. He was " always in a hurry/* It was as if he felt the time was short. No modern methods surpass the rush of his undertakings ”