Edens of Italy (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: him for a god. But while we admire the man, a strange historic scene rises upon the mind. An emperor, an old man, sends a message at midnight to twelve of the most distinguished and venerable Romans, requiring their immediate presence in his palace. Trembling with vague terror, they hasten to obey the summons. Amidst the suppressed whispers of the domestics, they are introduced into a splendid hall, where they sit waiting in painful anxiety to know what is going to happen. At length a sound of music falls upon their ears, and the next moment the door opens, and the emperor enters, playing on a fiddle, and dancing like a North-American savage. Half an hour continues this wild exhibition, and then the senators are dismissed, more mystified than ever, and their apprehensions perhaps but little relieved. Is this the world's master we have just been looking at ? the man endowed " With such high gifts of noble majesty As bow all hearts before him " ? It is the same Tiberius ! Would not a maniac's cell fit him better than the imperial throne ? The Cortile del Belvedere displays an octagonal court, having a fountain in the centre, and teeming with fine sarcophagi, superb vases, and other antiques, disposed in numerous cabinets and porticos. The Sala degli Animali contains a menagerie in marble and alabaster. The Galleria delle Statue shows about five hundred statues and busts. The Gabinetto delle Moschere, named from its mosaic pavements brought from Hadrian's villa, contains a chair of rosso antico used at the installation of the mediaeval popes, with a vast quantity of valuable sculpture. The Hall of the Candelabra is three hundred feet long; that of the Muses is surrounded with sixteen rich Corinthian columns from the villa of Hadrian; and that of the Tapestries is covered w...