population
of the city so dense, as to drive out its higher ranks to the
neighboring hamlets of Tibur and Tusculum.

130. In other districts of Europe the villa is not found, because in
very perfect monarchies, as in Austria, the power is thrown chiefly into
the hands of a few, who build themselves palaces, not villas; and in
perfect republics, as in Switzerland, the power is so split among the
multitude, that nobody can build himself anything. In general, in
kingdoms of great extent, the country house becomes the permanent and
hereditary habitation; and the villas are all crowded together, and form
gingerbread rows in the environs of the capital; and, in France and
Germany, the excessively disturbed state of affairs in the Middle Ages
compelled every baron or noble to defend himself, and retaliate on his
neighbors as he best could, till the villa was lost in the chateau and
the fortress; and men now continue to build as their forefathers built
(and long may they do so), surrounding the domicile of pleasure with a
moat and a glacis, and guarding its garret windows with turrets and
towers: while, in England, the nobles, comparatively few, and of great
power, inhabit palaces, not villas; and the rest of the population is
chiefly crowded into cities, in the activity of commerce, or dispersed
over estates in that of agriculture; leaving only one grade of gentry,
who have neither the taste to desire, nor the power to erect, the villa,
properly so-called.

131. We must not, therefore, be surprised if, on leaving Italy, where
the crowd of poverty-stricken nobility can still repose their pride in
the true villa, we find no farther examples of it worthy of
consideration; though we hope to have far greater pleasure in
contemplating its substitutes, the chateau and the fortress. We must be
excused, therefore, for devoting one paper more to the state of villa
architecture in Italy; after which we shall endeavor to apply the
principles we shall have deduced to the correction of some abuses in the
erection of English country houses, in cases where scenery would demand
beauty of design and wealth permit finish of decoration.

III.

THE ITALIAN VILLA (Concluded).

132. We do not think there is any truth in the aphorism, now so
frequently advanced in England, that the adaptation of shelter to the
corporal comfort of the human race is the original and true end of the
art of architecture, properly so-called: for, were such