THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
they studied the Gospels and they wrote poetry.” 
The gifted Pico della Mirandola had a retreat 
near Fiesole, and the learned Poliziano was _ his 
near neighbour. A letter of Poliziano to the 
celebrated scholar, Marsilio Ficino, gives an attrac- 
tive picture of their life. ‘* Wandering beyond the 
limits of his own plantation, Pico sometimes steals 
unexpectedly on my retirement and draws me 
from my shades to partake of his supper. What 
kind of supper that is, you well know ; sparing, 
but neat, and rendered grateful by the charms 
of his conversation. Be you, however, my 
guest ; your supper shall be as 
wine perhaps better ; for in the quality of my 
wine I shall contend for superiority with Pico 
good, your 
himself.” 
A most complete and delightful picture of the 
country life of the fifteenth century comes to us in 
connection with the lite of the old aristocrat, Agnolo 
Pandolfini, who looked on the Medici as an 
upstart, and retired to his villa at Signa when 
Cosimo came back to power in 1434. This villa 
seems to have been a model of hospitality and 
comfort. Within eight miles of Florence, on rising 
slopes, it overlooks the city, and is surrounded by the 
most fertile olive orchards and vineyards. Pandol- 
fini had lost his wife while still young, but his 
two sons and their wives, his ‘two loving 
daughters-in-law,” did the honours for him. He 
was an ardent devotee of literature, and enjoyed 
the society of learned guests whom he delighted to 
He had stables well stocked with 
horses, and often mounted a company of eighteen or 
gather round him. 
twenty friends. Falcons he possessed in numbers, 
as hawking was one of the principal sports; and 
there was also hunting of deer and hares, and 
plenty of fishing. 
on Sundays and bringing guests with 
them. He lived to be eighty-five, and remained 
hale and vigorous to the last. 
His sons came from the city 
holidays, 
The revival of villa-building in Rome came 
later, and was owed to the wealth and profusion 
Almost all the Roman 
villas were built by cardinals, beginning with those 
of the great papal houses. 
of the houses of Este and Farnese in the sixteenth 
century, and their magnificent entertaining vied 
with the traditions of the days of old Rome. 
The result of all this varied love of gardens 
has been to leave us a marvellous variety of pleasure 
houses and grounds throughout Italy in more or 
less excellent preservation. 
Turn where you will, you meet with places 
which merit Cicero’s term, “ my delights.” All 
are rich in memories, there are few of which we 
cannot gather some story which enriches some 
special moment of that far-reaching past, or awakes 
some personality which once made its impression 
here ; and so the impression of these beautiful 
gardens to all thinking beings must be enhanced 
tenfold, when something is realised of the his- 
torical associations with which they are bound up 
and vivified. 
Everyn Marcu Puittiipps. 
