to necessitate the hall, and there are ample
gardens to make the peristyle superfluous. Here the walls of the house
may break forth into large and open windows, while all around may run
pillared verandahs. Built in any variety of shape, according to the
situation and the fancy, it may contain an immense variety of
sitting-rooms, dining-rooms, bedrooms, facing in every direction to
catch the sun, the shade, the breeze, or the prospect, as the case may
be. Not that magnificence is any more neglected than in the great
English country seats. The pillars and pavements are as rich as means
allow, and works of painting and statuary are perhaps even finer and
more numerous than in town; there is more time to look at them, and
there are better facilities for showing them off. Many of the best
works of ancient sculpture now extant in the museums have come from
such country seats. There were of course vulgar houses in bad taste,
where the owner's notions of magnificence consisted in ostentatious
extravagance and a desire to outdo his neighbour. As now, everything
depended either on the culture of the man or on the amount of his good
sense in leaving such matters to his artistic adviser.

Outside the house lie the gardens and grounds. For the most part these
are laid out in the formal style adopted so often in more modern Italy
and favoured so greatly in England in the early eighteenth century.
Perhaps the Villa d'Este at Tivoli, though of course not ancient, may
convey some approximate idea of the prevailing principle. Along one
side of the Roman house we should find a smooth terrace ornamented
with statues and vases, to be used as a promenade. There are straight
walks and avenues between hedges and trees and shrubs--cyprus, laurel,
box, and other manageable plants--cut to the shape of beasts and birds
and inanimate objects. There are flower-beds--of the rose, the crocus,
the wallflower, the narcissus, the violet, but not, for example, the
tulip--laid out in geometrical patterns. There are trellis-work
arbours and walks covered with leafy vines or other trailing plants.
There are clumps of bay-trees, plane trees, or myrtles, with marble
seats beneath. There is either an avenue or a covered colonnade, where
the ground is made of soft earth or sand, and where the family may
take exercise by being carried in a litter up and down in the open or
under the shade. There are greenhouses and forcing-houses, where
flowers are grown under g