356 
THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
372. — THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE ASCENT, VILLA d’eSTE, CERNOBBIO. 
mountains in successive ridges, the misty clouds floating over the snowy peaks, the gorge-like 
chasms torn in the clift walls of the lake — these are the features which linger in the mind, 
obliterating as somewhat trivial the cube dots with which man has sprinkled so vast a 
landscape. 
Nature having evidently created the Italian lakes of to-dav as the earthly paradise ot 
honeymooning couples, the traveller unprovided with as good companionship must content 
himself with these 
inanimate beauties 0 f 
nature. 
The villa d’Este, 
some two and a half 
miles from Como, is 
now a hotel, but the 
garden remains as an 
instance of late work, 
striking to those to 
whom the earlier 
examples are not known. 
There is a screen wall 
facing the lake c 0 m- 
posed of two halves, 
each with an apsidal 
recess ten yards across, 
with flanking walls of 
six yards wide on each 
side (Fig. 372). The 
architectural and sculp- 
tural detail is inferior, 
373 —VILLA CARLOTTA, ON LAKE COMO. and the main interest is 
