rvice, an excellently well-kept and well-served table,
charming gardens, and all for about two dollars a day! Truly wonderful
are the possibilities brought within our reach by _co-operation!_
Still, I do not suppose that quite the same results could be attained
without the fortunate chance which placed a magnificent palace at the
disposal of the present proprietors at doubtless a comparatively very
small cost. _Morosini "nobis haec otra fecit"_ The princely expenditure
of that noble family in days long since gone by provided for us nomads
these enjoyments; for one is afraid to guess what the cost at the
present day of erecting such a pile would be. Throughout a large part
of the house, in the huge corridors and antechambers, a great deal
of the old furniture and the vast marble chimney-pieces and mural
decorations remain as the Morosini left them, and contribute their
part toward persuading us that we are not dwellers in a vulgar inn,
but the guests of some magnificent old doge, who leaves his friends
the most complete liberty and independence, and merely gratifies the
commercial traditions of his race by requesting us _pro forma_ to drop
a small present to his domestics at parting.

There are a great variety of charming drives and walks in the
neighborhood in every direction; and the whole district is full of
the villas and well-kept gardens of the rich Milanese, who have
chosen this favored spot for their country residences. I have said
_well-kept_ gardens advisedly; and it is worth noting that the love
of gardens and gardening seems to be a specialty of the Milanese among
all the Italians. One sees in other parts of Italy the remains of care
and magnificence of this sort--at Rome especially; but all (though
in many cases belonging to owners still wealthy as well as noble)
dilapidated, little cared for, and speaking in melancholy tones of
decay and perished splendor. A ruined building may be an extremely
picturesque object, but a ruined garden can never be other than a
melancholy and repulsive one. But the whole of this district testifies
to the love of the Milanese for their gardens; and most of them are
on a truly princely scale of magnificence. There is one villa which I
will mention, because the owner of it is doing there what recalls
to our minds strikingly the old days which saw the creation of that
Italian splendor the remains of which we still admire, and suggests
that it is not beyond hope that the privileged