These are such dainty bits of fancy, and so frankly an afterthought, that in their first freshness at least they could not have marred the beauty of the original conception. Rather must they have enhanced it, as the white doves which are perched upon its rim make the charm of the "Pliny's Vase." Giacomo della Porta is the first foun­tain builder of modern Rome, and the fountains which he did for Gregory XIII-all constructed for Trevi Water-are still among the loveliest the city holds. The passion for fountain building began in the second half of the Cinque Cento. Julius III rediscovered the immense aesthetic value of water, the Nymphaeum in his Villa Giulia being, in fact, the apotheosis of the Acqua Vergine. Pius V's enlarged fountain of Trevi was a recognition of the importance of water to the city's welfare. This Pope and his predecessor, Pius IV, as well as his successor, Gregory XIII, all occupied them­selves seriously with the restoration, improvement, and upkeep of the Virgo Aqueduct. The return to the water question is the one healthy and hopeful sign in the city's life during those years which lay between the death of old Paul III and the accession of Sixtus V. Michelangelo died within this period and his great spirit was not more surely departed than was the age of art and learning in which he had moved as king. That outrage to civilization known as the "last sack of Rome" had occurred in 1627, under Clement VII, and Rome, in the person of her pontiff and in that of every citizen, had suffered insult, spoliation, and dis­honor.

The devotion of the Romans to Clement's successor (the Farnese pontiff, Paul III) was in great part due to their recognition of the fact that his pontificate rep­resented a sustained and gallant attempt to restore to his people their lost prestige-that figura so dear to the Roman heart. With the death of the old patrician the deplorable condition of the city once more as­serted itself and men realized more keenly than ever the permanent devastation wrought by the sack. Pos­terity gains some faint idea of its horrors from the au­tobiography of Renvenuto Cellini. It is indebted to him for the dramatic description of the death of the Constable de Rourbon, killed by a chance shot from the ramparts when, in the dense fog which enveloped the beleaguered city, he was planting the scaling lad­ders against the walls.