THE GARDENS OF VENICE 
leone, spacious gardens are still to be found, where 
you can walk between rows of tall cypresses and 
pink oleanders, and discover ancient wells carved 
with the arms of Venetian families and overgrown 
with rose and jessamine, or, following Byron’s 
example, pick the bunches of purple grapes which 
hang from the pergola overhead. The palace where 
Bianca Capello lived, still retains its stately Renais¬ 
sance terraces, adorned with classical peristyles and 
moss-grown statues of nymphs and fawns, with 
avenues of ilex and cypress. And there are other 
gardens in the outlying parts of the city, where you 
can wander at will among tall Madonna lilies and 
bowers of honeysuckle, and look across the pearly 
lagoon to the distant shores of the Lido and the 
open sea, without hearing a sound but that of the 
waves lapping against the low sea-wall. But these, 
for the most part, are only fragments of what they 
once were, and we are reminded of the saying of 
our fellow-countryman, Lassels, who declared that 
in Venice gardens were as wonderful things as 
coaches, and complained that, looking down from 
the top of the high steeple, he only saw two places 
where there were any trees ! This, however, was at 
the close of the seventeenth century, when wealthy 
Venetians were forsaking the city for villas on the 
mainland. In the great days of the Republic, when 
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