he may have a golden age of eternal spring at home, and may see a 

 paradise of flowers laid out below his windows ; as large as possible, lest 

 the various and manifold nation of flowers should be too closely crowded ; 

 sheltered from the north, whose deadly cold might be breathed by the 

 tender plants in winter ; turning towards the South, whose warm, 

 humid, gentle-blowing breath is the life of the flowers. So let not the 

 little garden be inferior in the amenity of its site to Italy herself, which, 

 sheltered from the cold of the sterile north-wind by her Alpine walls, 

 seemed to Varro to be one orchard spread out towards the fertile 

 warmth of the Southern sky." 



In character with the garden, the casino is one of those charming old 

 Tuscan houses made to be lived in, and not merely a maison de plaisance 

 visited for a short villeggiatura when in the late summer the city becomes 

 insufferable : a long, low-lying house, its upper windows well within the 

 deep shadow cast by the great overhanging eaves, and shuttered with 

 cool green persiennes. Above the roof, the customary turret, without 

 which no Tuscan house would be complete, breaks the line of warm 

 grey tiles and recalls the days when a strong tower meant something 

 more than ornament. 



The house stands upon a broad paved terrace, with the garden spread 

 out beneath its windows. Below the garden comes the steeply sloping 

 ground chequered with corn and vine and olive, with here a line of 

 sombre cypress and there a group of dark stone-pines indicating the 

 presence of some villa ; then the wide grey plain, and that " city of 

 domes and towers " and the greyer hills beyond. Parallel to the terrace 

 wall a double stairway of a dozen steps or so, arching over a little grotto, 

 leads to the parterre. The whole face of the terrace and the stairway 

 itself is embowered in roses of all sorts and other luxuriant climbing plants, 

 with espaliers of lemon between. 



The shape of the garden being a somewhat extended oblong, the 

 main paths keep to the good safe rule and follow the lines of the 

 boundary wall, while others, crossing, meet the main central alley. 

 Some of the rectangular plots thus formed are further subdivided into 

 smaller beds by narrow paths, eighteen inches only in width, marked out 

 with rounded kerbs of local sandstone. 



100 



