GARDENS OF FLORENTINE HUMANISTS 
cultivation. On the other side, the great pleasures of 
these countries are coolness of air and whatever looks 
cool even to the eyes, and relieves them from the 
unpleasant sight of dusty streets and parched fields. 
This makes the gardens of those countries to be 
chiefly valued by largeness of extent, which gives 
greater play and openness of air, by shades of trees, by 
frequency of living streams or fountains, by perspectives, 
by statues, and by pillars and obelisks of stone, 
scattered up and down, which all conspire to make any 
place look fresh and cool. We, on the contrary, are 
careless of shade and seldom curious in fountains. 
Good statues are in the reach of few men, and common 
ones are greatly despised and neglected.” 1 
Shade, no doubt, was one of the chief require¬ 
ments of Italian gardens. A wood was always 
planted near the house, and ilex-groves and tunnels 
of pleached and knotted trees afforded a soft twilight 
on blazing August days. The perennial verdure of 
cypress and pine, ilex and box was invaluable in the 
winter months, while in spring and summer it formed 
a pleasant contrast to the lighter foliage of elm and 
plane, of orange and citron trees. Grottoes, with 
marble basins, in which the water trickled over beds 
of moss and maidenhair, supplied a cool retreat in 
the hot season, and were prominent features in the 
ducal gardens of Castello and Boboli. The pleasant 
sound of falling water and murmuring streams was 
1 Temple, Works, iii. 217. 
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