LOMBARD VILLAS 
with glorious views over the Alps and Apennines, and is 
curious to the student as an example of the neo-classi- 
cism of the Empire ; but it has of course no gardens in 
the old sense of the term. 
The flat environs of Milan were once dotted with 
country houses, but with the growth of the city and the 
increased facilities of travel, these have been for the most 
part abandoned for villas in the hills or on the lakes, 
and to form an idea of their former splendour one must 
turn to the pages of Alberto del Re’s rare volumes. 
Here one may see in all its detail that elaborate style of 
gardening which the French landscape-gardeners devel- 
oped from the “grand manner” acquired by Le Notre 
in his study of the great Roman country-seats. This 
style, adapted to the flat French landscape, and com- 
plicated by the mannerisms and elaborations of the 
eighteenth century, came back to Italy with the French 
fashions which Piedmont and Lombardy were so fond 
of importing. The time had passed when Europe mod- 
elled itself on Italy: France was now the glass of fashion, 
and, in northern Italy especially, French architecture and 
gardening were eagerly reproduced. 
In Lombardy the natural conditions were so similar 
that the French geometrical gardens did not seem out 
of place ; yet even here a difference is felt, both in the 
architecture and the gardens. Italy, in spite of Palladio 
and the Palladian tradition, never freed herself from the 
baroque. Her artistic tendencies were all toward free- 
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