villas. Their work was one largely of research and 

 restoration, the result of studying the history of the 

 gardens and the existing designs of their various ar- 

 chitects. The outcome of such treatment is that their 

 work fails to give a fair idea of the existing state of 

 the villas. The views from different points of the gar- 

 dens are so freely treated as to leave one familiar with 

 them in much doubt as to their ever having looked 

 as they are represented, and they are misleading, to 

 say the least, to one who has never seen the gardens. 

 The art of photography has been perfected since their 

 treatment of the subject, and the object of the present 

 writer has been by its means to illustrate, as far as 

 possible, the existing state of the more important gar- 

 dens in Italy, leaving out the matter of research alto- 

 gether, since a more profitable study of the subject 

 can be made as the result of these reproductions of 

 nature, and it is quite possible (by making a careful 

 study of all the gardens as a whole) to come to cer- 

 tain conclusions as to the fundamental principles which 

 guided the original designers. 



The gardens existing to-day have all passed through 

 a variety of changes. Some of them have gone almost 

 to ruin through neglect or difference of taste in their 

 owners, and, with one or two exceptions, those which 



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