ear, lost money by the acquaintance.

Vyell, his present patron, takes him out and shows him the site.
"Italy!" exclaims the Youth of Genius. "Italy?" echoes Maecenas,
astonished. "We'll make it so," says the Youth. "These terraces, this
spouting water, these pines to serve us for cypresses!" "But, my good
sir, the House?" cries the impatient Vyell. "A fig for your house!
Any fool can design a house when the Almighty and an artist together
have once made the landscape for it. Grant me two years for the
gardens," he pleads. "You shall have ten months to complete landscape,
house, everything." "I shall need armies of workmen." "You shall have
them." The Youth groaned. "I shall have to be sober for ten months on
end!" "What of that?" says V. Lovers are unconscionable.

Well, the Youth sits down to his plans, and at once orders begin to fly
across ocean to this port and that for the rarest marbles--_rosso
antico_ from Mount Taenarus, _verde antico_ from Thessally; with green
Carystian, likewise shipped from Corinth; Carrara, Veronese Orange,
Spanish _broccatello_, Derbyshire alabaster, black granite from Vyell's
Cornish estate, red and purple porphyries from high up the Nile. . . .
The Youth conjures up his gardens as by magic. Here you have a terrace
fenced with columns; below it a cascade pouring down a stairway of
circular basins--the hint of it borrowed from Frascati (from the Villa
Torlonia, if I remember); there an alley you'd swear was Boboli dipping
to rise across the river, on a stairway you'd swear as positively was
Val San Zibio. Yet all is congruous. The dog scouts the Villa d'Este
for a "toy-shop."

The house at first disappoints one, being straight and simple to the
last degree. ("D----n me," says he, "what can you look for, in ten
months?") It is of two storeys, the windows of the upper storey loftier
by one-third than those beneath; and has for sole ornament a balustraded
parapet broken midway by an Ionic portico of twelve columns, with a
_loggia_ deeply recessed above its entrance door. To this portico a
flight of sixteen steps conducts you from the uppermost terrace.

Such is Vyell's new pleasance of Eagles, Boston's latest wonder. I have
described it at this length because you profess to take more interest in
houses than in women; and also, to tell the truth, be cause I am shy of
describing Lady V. To call her roundly the loveliest creature I have
ever set eyes on, or am like to, i