sible to imagine anything more beautiful than the sight, looking down on the clear deep lake, and its high rocky barriers, broken into gorges and water-courses, tree-grown and verdant. A tower in olden time had been built on the height of the promontory—it is now in ruin—and through this there is an entrance to a summer-house that overlooks the deepest and most beautiful of the ravines, with its graceful wood. On the other side of the lake are the huge mountains surmounting Varenna, and, softened by distance, the roaring of a torrent falls on the ear; the sound of a mysterious fountain, called, from its milky colour, fiume latte, whose bed is full and noisy in summer, and empty and still in winter. The grounds of the Villa Serbelloni are peculiarly Italian. One path is cut through a cavern; and at a particular point a view is caught of the opposite bank and of the Villa Sommariva—a picture, as it were, set in a frame; descending terraces lead from the summer-house to the water’s edge. The gardens are not kept in English order; but Art has done much in laying them out to advantage, and the exuberant richness of Nature stands in place of trimness, which is not an apposite epithet for gardens in this country.[1] There is a great deal of ground;
- ↑ "retired leisure,
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure."
Milton's "Penseroso."
