ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
“Tell the Friar,” he writes, “that new trees must 
be planted in the grove at Murano, and let him take 
care to see that they are placed in formal rows at some 
interval, and above all, let him put in plenty of roses 
between the grove and the boundary wall, and see that 
they are trained to grow on a trellis, after the fashion 
which I admire in Spain. And see that in the autumn 
he goes to Selva, to see how the laurels are growing, 
and if the fruit trees have done better than they did 
last year. And I beg of you, my dear Ramusio, to 
adorn your own villa with fair trees, so that when I 
return home we may enjoy what remains to us of life 
with our books in the shade of our own groves.” 1 
But the peace and leisure for which the scholar-poet 
yearned never came. At the end of four years he at 
length returned to his beloved home, but he had hardly 
set foot on Venetian soil than he received orders to go to 
France as Ambassador to King Francis I. Before he had 
been at the French Court three months he fell ill of 
fever and died at Blois on the 8th of May, 1529, to the 
infinite grief of his friends in Venice. He was buried 
by his own wish in the church of S. Martina at Mur¬ 
ano, in a grave touching the garden which he loved. 
Poets and scholars lamented him in elegant Latin 
verse, and Sadoleto linked Messer Andrea’s name with 
that of his friend Castiglione in a memorable letter, 
deploring the heavy loss which Italy had sustained 
1 Atanagi, 668. 
122 
