ITALIAN VILLAS 
Thus impartially judged, the Isola Bella still seems 
to many too complete a negation of nature ; nor can it 
appear otherwise to those who judge of it only from 
pictures and photographs, who have not seen it in its 
environment. For the landscape surrounding the Bor- 
romean Islands has precisely that quality of artificiality, 
of exquisitely skilful arrangement and manipulation, 
which seems to justify, in the garden-architect, almost 
any excesses of the fancy. The Roman landscape, 
grandiose and ample, seems an unaltered part of nature ; 
so do the subtly modelled hills and valleys of central 
Italy: all these scenes have the deficiencies, the repeti- 
tions, the meannesses and profusions, with which nature 
throws her great masses on the canvas of the world; 
but the lake scenery appears to have been designed by 
a lingering and fastidious hand, bent on eliminating 
every crudeness and harshness, and on blending all 
natural forms, from the bare mountain-peak to the 
melting curve of the shore, in one harmony of ever- 
varying and ever-beautiful lines. 
The effect produced is undoubtedly one of artificiality, 
of a chosen exclusion of certain natural qualities, such 
as gloom, barrenness, and the frank ugliness into which 
nature sometimes lapses. There is an almost forced 
gaiety about the landscape of the lakes, a fixed smile of 
perennial loveliness. And it is as a complement to this 
attitude that the Borromean gardens justify themselves. 
Are they real? No ; but neither is the landscape about 
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