l noble of the North. Boar and stag hunts had no attraction for
quiet men of business; forests stocked with wild beasts where vineyard
and cornfield might have extended, would have seemed to them the very
height of wastefulness, discomfort, and ugliness. Pacific and
businesslike, they merely transferred to the country the habits of
thought and of life which had arisen in the city. Not for them any
imitation of the feudal castle, turreted and moated, cut up into dark
irregular rooms and yards, filled with noisy retainers and stinking
hounds. On some gentle hillside a well-planned palace, its rooms
spacious and lofty, and sparely windowed for coolness in summer; with a
neat cloistered court in the centre, ventilating the whole house, and
affording a cool place, full of scent of flowers and sound of fountains
for the burning afternoons; a belvedere tower also, on which to seek a
breeze on stifling nights, when the very stars seem faint for heat, and
the dim plumy heads of cypress and poplar are motionless against the
misty blue sky. In front a broad terrace, whence to look down towards
the beloved city, a vague fog of roofs in the distance; on the side and
behind, elaborate garden walks walled with high walls of box and oak and
laurel, in which stand statues in green niches; gardens with little
channels to bring water, even during droughts, to the myrtles, the
roses, the stocks and clove pinks, over which bend with blossoms
brilliant against the pale blue sky the rose-flowered oleander, the
scarlet-flowered pomegranate; also aviaries and cages full of odd and
harmless creatures, ferrets, guinea pigs, porcupines, squirrels, and
monkeys; arbours where wife, daughters, and daughters-in-law may sew and
make music; and neat lawns where the young men may play at quoits,
football, or swordsticks and bucklers; and then, sweeping all round the
house and gardens and terraces an undulating expanse of field and
orchard, smoke-tinted with olive, bright green in spring with budding
crops, russet in autumn with sere vines; and from which, in the burning
noon, rises the incessant sawing noise of the cicalas, and ever and anon
the high, nasal, melancholy chant of the peasant, lying in the shade of
barn door or fig tree till the sun shall sink and he can return to his
labour. If the house in town, with its spacious store-rooms, its carved
chapel, and painted banqueting hall, large enough to hold sons' children
and brothers' wives and grandchi