Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/103

Rh necessary for reasons before advanced, and the second, that the whole may harmonise with the feelings induced by the lofty features of the accompanying scenery in any hill country, and yet more, on the Larian Lake, by the deep memories and everlasting associations which haunt the stillness of its shore. Of the colour required by Italian landscape we have spoken before, and we shall see that, particularly in this case, white or pale tones are agreeable.

We shall now proceed to the situation and form of the villa. As regards situation; the villas of the Lago di Como are built, par préférence, either on jutting promontories of low crag covered with olives, or on those parts of the shore where some mountain stream has carried out a bank of alluvium into the lake. One object proposed in this choice of situation is, to catch the breeze as it comes up the main opening of the hills, and to avoid the reflection of the sun's rays from the rocks of the actual shore; and another is, to obtain a prospect up or down the lake, and of the hills on whose projection the villa is built: but the effect of this choice, when the building is considered the object, is to carry it exactly into the place where it ought to be, far from the precipice and dark mountain, to the border of the bending bay and citron-scented cape, where it stands at once conspicuous and in peace. For instance, in Fig. 27, (Bellaggio, Lago di Como), although the eye falls suddenly from the crags above to the promontory below, yet all the sublime and severe features of the scene are kept in the distance, and the villa itself is