ore to that of our English
nobles, who, in Elizabethan or Queen Anne days or later, built
themselves country seats, one, two, or more, indulging in
architectural fancies and surrounding all with spacious gardens,
ponds, and rockeries. The Roman man of wealth created no hotels. He
dotted his country seats about in places where the air was warm for
winter and spring, or cool for summer and autumn, by the seashore, on
the lower hills, or high on the mountain side. You would find them on
the Italian lakes or elsewhere toward the north. In greater numbers
would you find them on the hills near Rome, at the modern Tivoli or
Palestrina, on the Alban heights near what are now Frascati, Albano,
or Genzano, along the shore at Antium, Terracina, Baiae, Naples,
Herculaneum, Pompeii, Castellamare, and Sorrento.

Perhaps it is not too much to say that more than a hundred and twenty
miles of this coast were practically a chain of country houses. The
shore of the Bay of Naples has been compared to a collar of pearls
strung round the blue. Wherever there was a wide and varied landscape
or seascape, there arose a Roman country house. We are too prone to
assume that the ancients felt but little love or even appreciation of
scenery, and to fancy that the feeling came as a revelation to a
Rousseau, a Wordsworth, or a nineteenth-century painter. That Roman
literature does not gush about the matter has been absurdly taken for
proof that the Roman writer did not copiously enjoy the glories
presented to his eyes. But, though Roman literature does not gush, it
often exhibits the same feelings towards scenery which at least a
Thomson or a Cowper exhibits. Perhaps it was so accustomed to scenic
beauties that it took for granted much that an English or German
writer cannot. At any rate we are sure that the Roman chose for his
country seat a site commanding the widest and most beautiful outlook,
and that he even built towers upon his house to command the view the
better. In this respect he was like the mediaeval monks, when they
chose the sites of monasteries at San Martino or Amalfi, and his love
of a belvedere was probably quite as great as theirs.

The country seat differed widely from the town house. We must forget
the plan which has been given above, with its hall and court lighted
from within, and made private from the passing crowds in the street.
In the country there is no need of such an arrangement. Moreover there
are no formal receptions