Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/129

Rh, it is an excellent and easily managed medium of effect.

"With all the praise, however, which we have bestowed upon it, we do not say that the villa of the Larian Lake is perfection; indeed, we cannot say so, until we have compared it with a few other instances, chiefly to be found in Italy, on whose soil we delay, as being the native country of the villa, properly so called, and as even yet being almost the only spot of Europe where any good specimens of it are to be found: for we do not understand by the term "villa," a cubic erection, with one window on each side of a verdant door, and three in the second and uppermost story, such as the word suggests to the fertile imagination of ruralising cheesemongers; neither do we understand the quiet and unpretending country house of a respectable gentleman; neither do we understand such a magnificent mass of hereditary stone as generally forms the autumn retreat of an English noble; but we understand the light but elaborate summer habitation, raised however and wherever it pleases his fancy, by some individual of great wealth and influence, who can enrich it with every attribute of beauty; furnish it with every appurtenance of pleasure; and repose in it with the dignity of a mind trained to exertion or authority. Such a building could not exist in Greece, where every district a mile and a quarter square was quarrelling with all its neighbours. It could exist, and did exist, in Italy, where the Roman power secured tranquillity, and the Roman constitution distributed its