PLINY THE YOUNGER 15 



JUIY villa 1 is so advantageously situated, that it commands a PLINY 

 ^^^ full view of all the country round ; yet you approach it by yoUNGER 



so insensible a rise that you find yourself upon an eminence, with- —Nephe'^i of ■ 

 out perceiving you ascended. Behind, but at a great distance), Z'^^'^^' ^{^J^^' 

 stand the Apennine Mountains. In the calmest days we are^— *' ^ ^' 

 refreshed by the winds that blow from thence, but so spent, as 

 it were, by the long tract of land they travel over, that they are 

 entirely divested of all their strength and violence before they 

 reach us. The exposition of the principal front of the house is 

 full south, and seems to invite the afternoon sun in summer (but 

 somewhat earlier in winter) into a spacious and well-proportioned 

 portico, consisting of several members, particularly a porch built 

 in the ancient manner. In the front of the portico is a sort of 

 terrace, embellished with various figures and bounded with a 

 box-hedge, from whence you descend by an easy slope, adorned 

 with the representation of divers animals in box, answering alter- 

 nately to each other, into a lawn overspread with the soft — I had 

 almost said the liquid — Acanthus : ^ this is surrounded by a walk 

 enclosed with tonsile evergreens, shaped into a variety of forms. 

 Beyond it is the Gestatio,^ laid out in the form of a circus,"^ 

 ornamented in the middle with box cut in numberless different 

 figures, together with a plantation of shrubs, prevented by the 

 shears from shooting up too high; the whole is fenced in by a 

 wall covered by box, rising by different ranges to the top. On 

 the outside of the wall lies a meadow that owes as many beauties 

 to nature, as all I have been describing wi'f/im does to art ; at 

 the end of which are several other meadows and fields inter- 

 spersed with thickets. At the extremity of this portico stands a 



^ Pliny's favourite villa in Tuscany, knovi^n as the Tusculan, about 150 

 miles from Rome ; his Laurentine Villa is also described in his letters. Both 

 have been the subject of learned disquisition and restoration by Scamozzi, 

 Felibien, Schinkel and R. Castell in 'Villas of the Ancients.' 



"^ Sir William Temple supposes the ' Acanthus ' of the ancients to be what 

 we call ' Pericanthe ' ; Mr Castell imagines it resembles moss. 



^ Gestatio, a place for exercises in vehicles : ' the Row.* 



"* Circus, set apart for public games. 



