Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/288

298 given, in that country, a new impulse to scientific life. In Rome, also, she distinguished herself for her interest in the sciences. In this respect, she retained a sort of grandeur, and a sort of estimation, but of friends she had none, and the scanty, or rather miserable way, in which she rewarded, by her will, her faithful servants, “speedily dried their tears for her death,”—as says one of them in her naïve narrative. She departed to the other life without having communicated to any one that which existed in her own soul,—silent and incomprehensible even to herself. She resembled those meteors, brilliant but unproductive, which now and then astonish our gaze, as they speed through their eccentric career, giving us little light, and a great deal of puzzling of brains.

The garden which belongs to the palace is large and beautiful, laid out in the old French style. The roses bloomed luxuriantly, the fountains played in clear jets, and the nightingales sang deliciously in the groves. So was it when Queen Christina walked there. But could the cruel murderess of Monaldeschi ever enjoy this beauty and this peace?

Amongst my more extensive excursions, I was most interested by that to Ostia. The excavations of the old, long-buried city, are now actively going forward. Whole stretches of tombs, beautiful mosaic floors in bath-rooms and private dwelling-houses, are laid open; they also have found statues. A remarkably lovely female statue of white marble, was found lately in a bath-room; she now stood there, beautifully draped, but without the head. All excavations must cease with the end of this month, for then comes