390 COSMOS. 



nature amongst the Romans, had not these buildings, like 

 those of Scaurus and Maecenas, of Lucullus, and Adrian, been 

 overstocked with edifices, designed for pomp and display; 

 temples, theatres, and race-courses alternating with aviaries, 

 and houses for rearing snails and dormice. The elder 

 Scipio had surrounded his simpler country house at Litur- 

 num with towers in the castellated style. The name of 

 Matius. a friend of Augustus, has come down to us as that of 

 the person, who, in his love for unnatural stiffness, first caused 

 trees to be cut in imitation of architectural and plastic pat- 

 terns. The letters of the younger Pliny give us a charming 

 description of two of his numerous villas, Laurentinum and 

 Tuscum.* 1 Although in these two buildings, surrounded by 

 cut box- trees, we meet with a greater number of objects 

 crowded together, than we with our ideas of nature would 

 esteem in accordance with good taste, yet these descriptions, 

 as well as the imitation of the valley of Tempe in the Tibur- 

 tiue villa of Adrian, show us that a love for the free enjoy- 

 ment of nature was not wholly lost sight of by the Roman 

 citizens in their love of art, and in their anxious solicitude for 

 their personal comfort in adapting the locality of their country 

 houses to the prevailing relations of the sun and winds. It 

 is gratifying to be able to add, that this enjoyment was less 

 disturbed on the estates of Pliny than elsewhere, by the 

 revolting features of slavery. This wealthy man was not 

 only one of the most learned of his age, but he likewise 



* Plin., Epist., ii. 17; v. 6; ix. 17; Plin., Hist. Nat., xii. 6; Hirt, 

 Gesch. der Baukunst bei den Alien, bd. ii. s. 241, 291, 376. The villa 

 Laurentina of the younger Pliny, was situated near the present Torre 

 di Paterno in the littoral valley of Palombara, east of Ostia; see Viaggio 

 da Ostia a la villa di Plinio, 1802, p. 9, and Le Laurentin, by 

 Haudelcourt, 1838, p. 62. A deep feeling for nature is expressed in 

 the few lines which Pliny wrote from Laurentinum to Minutius Fun- 

 danus, " Mecwn tantum et cum libellis loquor. Rectam sinceramque 

 vitam ! dulce otium honestumque ! mare, o littus, verum secretumque 

 fjLovcreiov ! quam multa invenitis, quam multa dictatis!" (i. 9.) 

 Hirt was persuaded that the origin in Italy during the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries of that stiff and systematic style of gardening long 

 known as the French, in contradistinction to the freer mode of land- 

 scape gardening of the English, and the early taste for wearisome and 

 regular lines, is to be ascribed to a wish of imitating that which Pliny 

 the younger has described in his letters (Geschichte der Baukunst bei 

 den Alien, th. ii. s. 366). 



