nd there along or near the
edge: their reflections will flash on the dark water, and will inform
the eye in a moment of the whole distance and transparency of the
surface it is traversing. When there is a slight swell on the water,
they will come down in long, beautiful, perpendicular lines, mingling
exquisitely with the streaky green of reflected foliage; when there is
none, they become a distant image of the object they repeat, endowed
with infinite repose.

116. These remarks, true of small lakes whose edges are green, apply
with far greater force to sheets of water on which the eye passes over
ten or twenty miles in one long glance, and the prevailing color of
whose borders is, as we noticed when speaking of the Italian cottage,
blue. The white reflections are here excessively valuable, giving space,
brilliancy, and transparency; and furnish one very powerful apology,
even did other objections render an apology necessary, for the pale tone
of the color of the villas, whose reflections, owing to their size and
conspicuous situations, always take a considerable part in the scene,
and are therefore things to be attentively considered in the erection of
such buildings, particularly in a climate whose calmness renders its
lakes quiet for the greater part of the day. Nothing, in fact, can be
more beautiful than the intermingling of these bright lines with the
darkness of the reversed cypresses seen against the deep azure of the
distant hills in the crystalline waters of the lake, of which some one
aptly says, "Deep within its azure rest, white villages sleep
silently;"[18] or than their columnar perspective, as village after
village catches the light, and strikes the image to the very quietest
recess of the narrow water, and the very farthest hollow of the folded
hills.

[Footnote 18: [A reminiscence of two lines from a poem on the "Lago di
Como" written by the author in 1833.]]

117. From all this, it appears that the effect of the white villa in
water is delightful. On land it is quite as important, but more
doubtful. The first objection, which strikes us instantly when we
_imagine_ such a building, is the want of repose, the startling glare of
effect, induced by its unsubdued tint. But this objection does not
strike us when we _see_ the building; a circumstance which was partly
accounted for before, in speaking of the cottage, and which we shall
presently see farther cause not to be surprised at. A more important
o