ill a plentiful store of spring
water, which a beautiful Naiad, placed as high as is possible in
the centre of the wall, pours out from an urn. This, by a fall of
above twenty foot, makes a most delightful cascade into a basin,
that opens wide within the marble floor on that side. At a
reasonable distance, on either hand of the cascade, the wall is
hollowed into two spreading scallops, each of which receives a
couch of green velvet, and forms at the same time a canopy over
them. Next to them come two large aviaries, which are likewise let
into the stone. These are succeeded by two grottoes, set off with
all the pleasing rudeness of shells and moss, and cragged stones,
imitating in miniature rocks and precipices, the most dreadful and
gigantic works of Nature. After the grottoes, you have two niches,
the one inhabited by Ceres, with her sickle and sheaf of wheat; and
the other by Pomona, who, with a countenance full of good cheer,
pours a bounteous autumn of fruits out of her horn. Last of all
come two colonies of bees, whose stations lying east and west, the
one is saluted by the rising, the other by the setting sun. These,
all of them being placed at proportioned intervals, furnish out the
whole length of the wall; and the spaces that lie between are
painted in fresco, by the same hand that has enriched my ceiling.

"Now, sir, you see my whole contrivance to elude the rigour of the
year, to bring a northern climate nearer the sun, and to exempt
myself from the common fate of my countrymen. I must detain you a
little longer, to tell you, that I never enter this delicious
retirement, but my spirits are revived, and a sweet complacency
diffuses itself over my whole mind. And how can it be otherwise,
with a conscience void of offence, where the music of falling
waters, the symphony of birds, the gentle humming of bees, the
breath of flowers, the fine imagery of painting and sculpture: in a
word, the beauties and the charms of nature and of art court all my
faculties, refresh the fibres of the brain and smooth every avenue
of thought. What pleasing meditations, what agreeable wanderings of
the mind, and what delicious slumbers, have I enjoyed here! And
when I turn up some masterly writer to my imagination, methinks
here his beauties appear in the most a