THE GARDENS OF 
Being therefore unable on that day to fully carry 
out our established order of life, | think it would 
be well done to refrain from reciting tales on that 
day. And as we shall then have been here 
four days, if we are desirous to avoid being 
joined by others, I conceive it would be more 
opportune to quit this place and go elsewhere, 
and I have already thought of a_ place, and 
arranged everything.” 
“So when Sunday came, the queen, with slow 
steps and accompanied and followed by her ladies 
and by the three youths, and led by the song of 
maybe twenty nightingales and other birds, took 
her way towards the west by an_unfrequented 
lane. Gossiping, joking, and laughing 
with her company, she led them, to a beautiful 
and splendid palace.” 
The “untrequented lane” may still be followed, 
and passing by it from Majano to San Dominico, 
we reach the Villa Palmieri, which then bore the 
name of Schifanoja, or ‘banish care,” where 
Boccaccio’s fancy pictured the remainder of the 
tales being told. ‘The palace was seated on an 
eminence in the middle of a large plain. When 
they had entered and seen the great hall and the 
chambers most elegantly fitted up, they greatly 
extolled it, judging its lord to be truly a magni- 
ficent person. Going afterwards below stairs and 
observing the spacious and pleasant court, the 
cellars stored with the richest wines, and delicate 
springs of water everywhere running, they extolled 
it yet more. Thence they went to rest in an 
open gallery which overlooked the court, set out 
with all the flowers of the season, whither the 
master of the household brought wine and sweet- 
meats for their refreshment. 
“They were now shown into the garden, 
which was on one side of the palace, and walked 
about. All round and through the midst of it 
were broad, straight walks flanked with vines. 
The sides of these walks were closed with white 
and red roses and jasmine in such a manner as to 
exclude the morning and even the midday sun. 
In the midst, what seemed more delightful 
than anything else was a plot of ground like a 
meadow, the grass of deep green, spangled with 
a thousand different flowers, and set round with 
orange and cedar trees. In the centre 
of this meadow was a fountain of white marble, 
beautifully carved a jet of water spurted 
up which made a most agreeable sound in its fall; 
the water which came thence, ran through the 
meadow by a secret passage, and was carried to 
every part of the garden, uniting in one stream 
at its going out, and falling with such force into 
the plain as to turn two mills.” Boccaccio is 
evidently painting the villa as he knew it. The 
two mills still exist, but were rebuilt after being 
e) 
destroyed in a flood of the Mugnone in 1409. 
The life his youths and ladies lived, walking about, 
discoursing, and wearing chaplets of flowers, feast- 
ing by the side of a fountain, singing and dancing, 
ITALY. 
reading and playing chess, and after supper going 
to the meadow by the fountain-side to tell 
stories, was the way in which much of that society 
was carried on, when the need of noble forms of 
social intercourse was as strongly felt as it was in 
the early Renaissance ; and we have a real and 
charming picture of a highly-cultured, if pagan, 
company, which carried the art of getting the 
best out of life to its highest point, and 
“Wandering in idleness, but not in folly, 
Sate down in the high grass and in the shade 
Of many a tree, sun-proof—day after day, 
When all was still and nothing to be heard 
But the cicala’s voice among the olives, 
Relating in a ring, to banish care, 
Their hundred tales.” 
The villa belonged at that time to Cioni de’ Fini; 
the Tolomei bought it soon after, and sold it in the 
fitteenth century to Matteo Palmieri, and by a 
descendant of his, in 1670, it was rebuilt, and called 
by his own name. The high read to Fiesole at 
that time ran across where the grand terrace now 
stretches, and was only cleared away when the Earl 
of Crawford bought the villa in 1874. 
Villa Palmieri during the last two centuries 
was a great favourite with English people. In 
1766, Lord Cowper came here, and, with his 
wife, who had been the beautiful Miss Gore, 
found it so enchanting that they made it their 
home ; and Sir Horace Mann, in his letters, gives 
an account of their brilliant entertainments, and of 
the admiration of the Italian people, high and low, 
for the young and lovely Countess. From 1824, an 
eccentric lady, Miss Mary Farhill, lived in it for 
thirty years. She left it to the Grand Duchess 
Marie Antoinette de Bourbon, and in 1874 it passed 
into the hands of Lord Crawford. In 1888, and 
again in 1893, Lady Crawford lent her beautiful 
villa to Queen Victoria. Many people recall the 
interest that was aroused by the sight of the 
English Queen, driving about the country near, 
and expressing the greatest pleasure at her stay. 
In the National Gallery is an interesting 
picture of the Assumption of Our Lady, attributed 
by Vasari to Botticelli, but now considered to be 
a school painting. It has “an infinite number 
of figures, with the zones of the heavens, the 
Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles, the Evan- 
gelists, the Martyrs, the Confessors, the Doctors, 
the Virgins, and the Hierarchies.’ On either side, 
at the foot, kneel the donor, Matteo Palmieri, 
and his wife, Cosa Serragli. The picture was 
painted for the Palmieri Chapel in San Pietro 
Maggiore, but the owner of Villa Palmieri, who 
Was a very learned man, an accomplished scholar, 
and a friend of Cosimo de Medici, had offended 
the Church by writing a poem, ‘* Citta della Vita,” 
which was pronounced to contain heretical opinions 
on the subject of angels. The poem was not even 
published, but its contents being made known after 
its author’s death, the tribunal of the Inquisition 
wanted to disinter the corpse and burn it together 
