be assisted by the botanical
effect.

These, then, are a few of the more important principles of architecture,
which are to be kept in view in the blue and in the green country. The
wild, or gray, country is never selected, in Britain, as the site of a
villa; and, therefore, it only remains for us to offer a few remarks on
a subject as difficult as it is interesting and important, the
architecture of the villa in British hill, or brown, country.

VII.

THE BRITISH VILLA.--PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION.

_D. Hill, or Brown Country._

"Vivite contenti casulis et collibus istis."--Juvenal [xiv. 179.]

213. In the Boulevard des Italiens, just at the turning into the Rue de
la Paix (in Paris), there stand a few dusky and withered trees, beside a
kind of dry ditch, paved at the bottom, into which a carriage can with
some difficulty descend, and which affords access (not in an unusual
manner) to the ground floor of a large and dreary-looking house, whose
passages are dark and confined, whose rooms are limited in size, and
whose windows command an interesting view of the dusky trees before
mentioned.

This is the town residence of one of the Italian noblemen, whose country
house has already been figured as a beautiful example of the villas of
the Lago di Como. That villa, however, though in one of the loveliest
situations that hill, and wave, and heaven ever combined to adorn, and
though itself one of the most delicious habitations that luxury ever
projected or wealth procured, is very rarely honored by the presence of
its master; while attractions of a very different nature retain him,
winter after winter, in the dark chambers of the Boulevard des Italiens.

214. This appears singular to the casual traveler, who darts down from
the dust and heat of the French capital to the light and glory of the
Italian lakes, and finds the tall marble chambers and orange groves, in
which he thinks, were he possessed of them, he could luxuriate forever,
left desolate and neglected by their real owner; but, were he to try
such a residence for a single twelvemonth, we believe his wonder would
have greatly diminished at the end of the time. For the mind of the
nobleman in question does not differ from that of the average of men;
inasmuch as it is a well-known fact that a series of sublime
impressions, continued indefinitely, gradually pall upon the
imagination, deaden its fineness of feeling, and in the end induce a
gloomy and mor