The reader, if he has nothing better than a
post-card (which I could have bought him on the spot for fifty a franc),
knows how the successive stairways part and flow downward to right and
left, like the parted waters of a cascade, and lose themselves at the
bottom in banks of flowers. No lovelier architectural effect was ever
realized from a happy fancy; but, of course, the pictorial effect is
richer from below, especially from the Via dei Condotti, where it opens
into the Piazza di Spagna. I suppose there must be hours of the day, and
certainly there are hours of the night, when in this prospect the Steps
have not the sunset on them. But most of the time they have the sunset
on them, warm, tender; a sunset that begins with the banks of daffodils
and lilies and anemones and carnations and roses and almond blossoms,
keeping the downpour of the marble cascades from flooding the piazza,
and mounts, mellowing and yellowing, up their gray stone, until it
reaches the Church of Trinita de' Monti at the top.
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