THE GARDENS OF VENICE 



leone, spacious gardens are still to be found, where 

 you can walk between rows of tall cypresses and 

 pink oleanders, and discover ancient wells carved 

 with the arms of Venetian families and overgrown 

 with rose and jessamine, or, following Byron's 

 example, pick the bunches of purple grapes which 

 hang from the pergola overhead. The palace where 

 Bianca Capello lived, still retains its stately Renais- 

 sance terraces, adorned with classical peristyles and 

 moss-grown statues of nymphs and fawns, with 

 avenues of ilex and cypress. And there are other 

 gardens in the outlying parts of the city, where you 

 can wander at will among tall Madonna lilies and 

 bowers of honeysuckle, and look across the pearly 

 lagoon to the distant shores of the Lido and the 

 open sea, without hearing a sound but that of the 

 waves lapping against the low sea-wall. But these, 

 for the most part, are only fragments of what they 

 once were, and we are reminded of the saying of 

 our fellow-countryman, Lassels, who declared that 

 in Venice gardens were as wonderful things as 

 coaches, and complained that, looking down from 

 the top of the high steeple, he only saw two places 

 where there were any trees ! This, however, was at 

 the close of the seventeenth century, when wealthy 

 Venetians were forsaking the city for villas on the 

 mainland. In the great days of the Republic, when 

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