of purer air and beautiful landscape surroundings. The sea-shore and the 

 lower slopes of the Apennines, more especially in the immediate vicinity 

 of Rome, were at an early date occupied by the villas of the wealthy, 

 though these were also to be found in every part, not only of Italy but 

 of the whole Roman Empire. 



To this class belong the villas described by the younger Pliny in 

 his Letters. Of these the description of his Tuscan villa is the most 

 complete and interesting. He writes : " My house, although built at 

 the foot of a hill, has a view as if it stood upon the brow of it. . . . 

 Behind it, but at a distance, is the Apennine mountain. ... In the 

 front of it is a portico, pretty large and of a proportionable length, 

 in which there are several apartments ; and the court is laid out after 

 the manner of the ancients. 



" Before the portico is a terrace, adorned with various figures and 

 bounded with an edging of box. Below this is a gravel walk, on each 

 side of which are figures of divers animals cut in box. Round a 

 level plot is a walk bounded by a close hedge of evergreens cut 

 into variety of shapes ; on the other side is a ring, for taking the 

 air on horseback, in the shape of a circus, which goes round the 

 box-hedge, that is cut into different shapes, and a row of dwarf 

 trees that are always kept sheared. The whole is encompassed with 

 a wall so screened with box that no part of it can be seen. . . . 

 Almost opposite to the middle of the portico is a summer-house, which 

 surrounds a small court shaded by four plane-trees, in the midst of which 

 a marble fountain gently plays upon those trees and upon the grass-plots 

 under them. ... In the corner of the portico is a very spacious bed- 

 chamber, facing the dining-room, with windows both to the terrace and 

 to the meadows, and before it a piece of water, which delights at once 

 our ears and eyes, being near and in the view of the front windows, and 

 falling from a considerable height into a marble cistern, where it breaks 

 and foams. . . . 



"The disposition of the several parts of the house is extremely 

 delightful, although it equals in no degree the beauty of the hippo- 

 drome, which is a large open area set round with plane-trees. . 

 The strait boundary of the hippodrome changes its figure at the end into 



4 



