Page:The Poetry of Architecture.djvu/131

Rh  few, and of great power, inhabit palaces, not villas; and the rest of the population is chiefly crowded into cities, in the activity of commerce, or dispersed over estates in that of agriculture; leaving only one grade of gentry, who have neither the taste to desire, nor the power to erect, the villa, properly so called.

We must not, therefore, be surprised, if, on leaving Italy, where the crowd of provertypoverty [sic]-stricken nobility can still repose their pride in the true villa, we find no farther examples of it worthy of consideration, though we hope to have far greater pleasure in contemplating its substitutes, the château and the fortress. We must be excused, therefore, for devoting one paper more to the state of villa architecture in Italy; after which we shall endeavour to apply the principles we shall have deduced to the correction of some abuses in the erection of English country houses, in cases where scenery would demand beauty of design, and wealth permit finish of decoration.

 I. The Italian Villa. do not think there is any truth in the aphorism, now so frequently advanced in England, that the adaptation of shelter to the corporal comfort of the human race is the original and true end of the art of architecture, properly so called: for, were such the case, he would be the most 