ITALIAN VILLAS 
into the lake below this pavilion has been converted 
into another series of terraces, with connecting flights 
of steps, which carry down to the water’s edge the 
exuberant verdure of the upper gardens. 
The palace is more remarkable for what it contains in 
the way of furniture and decoration than for any archi- 
tectural value. Its great bulk and heavy outline are 
quite disproportionate to the airy elegance of the gar- 
dens it overlooks, and house and grounds seem in 
this case to have been designed without any regard to 
each other. The palace has, however, one feature of 
peculiar interest to the student of villa-architecture, 
namely, the beautiful series of rooms in the south base- 
ment, opening on the gardens, and decorated with the 
most exquisite ornamentation of pebble-work and sea- 
shells, mingled with delicately tinted stucco. These 
low vaulted rooms, with marble floors, grotto-like walls, 
and fountains dripping into fluted conchs, are like a 
poet’s notion of some twilight refuge from summer 
heats, where the languid green air has the coolness of 
water; even the fantastic consoles, tables and benches, 
in which cool-glimmering mosaics are combined with 
carved wood and stucco painted in faint greens and 
rose-tints, might have been made of mother-of-pearl, 
coral and seaweed for the adornment of some submarine 
palace. As examples of the decoration of a garden- 
house in a hot climate, these rooms are unmatched in 
Italy, and their treatment offers appropriate suggestions 
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