22 ENGLISH PLEASURE GARDENS 



several of the younger Pliny's letters. He points out as 

 the great advantage of his Tuscan property above all his 

 other villa grounds that here " there is no need to put 

 on your toga, no one wants you in the neighbourhood, 

 everything is calm and quiet, and this in itself adds to 

 the healthful ness and cheerfulness of the place, no less 

 than the brightness of the sky and the clearness of the 

 atmosphere." 



Of Pliny's Tusculan villa, about one hundred and 

 fifty miles from Rome, he wrote to his friend Apollinaris 

 in the latter part of the first century: 



Pliny's " My villa is so advantageously situated, that it com- 



^na CUla mands a full view of all the country round; yet you 

 approach it by so insensible a rise that you find your- 

 self upon an eminence without perceiving you have 

 ascended. Behind, but at a great distance, stand the 

 Apennine Mountains. In the calmest days we are 

 refreshed by the winds that blow 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 

 exposure of the principal house front 

 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 



