NTAIN, VILLA D'ESTE]

The Villa d'Este is not yet a ruin, but it is ruinous enough to win the
fancy without cumbering it with the mere rubbish of decay. Some
neglected pleasances are so far gone that you cannot wish to live in
them, but the forgottenness of the Villa d'Este hospitably allured me to
instant and permanent occupation, so that when I heard it could now be
bought, casino and all, for thirty thousand dollars, nothing but the
want of the money kept me from making the purchase. I indeed recognized
certain difficulties in living there the year round; but who lives
anywhere the year round if he can help it? The casino, standing among
the simpler town buildings on the plateau above the gardens, would be a
little inclement, for all its frescoing and stuccoing by the
sixteenth-century arts, and in its noble halls, amid the painted and
modelled figures, the new American proprietor would shiver with the
former host and guests after the first autumn chill began; but while it
was yet summer it Avould be as delicious there as in the aisles and
avenues of the garden which its balustrated terrace looked into. From
that level you descend by marble steps which must have some trouble in
knowing themselves from the cascades pouring down the broken steeps
beside them, and companionably sharing their seclusion among the
cypresses and ilexes. You are never out of the sight and sound of the
plunging water, which is still trained in falls and fountains, or left
to a pathetic dribble through the tattered stucco of the neglected
grots. It is now a good three centuries and a half since the Cardinal
Ippolito d'.Este had these gardens laid out and his pleasure-house built
overlooking them; and his gardener did not plan so substantially as his
architect. In fact, you might suppose that the landscapist wrought with
an eye to the loveliness of the ruin it all would soon fall into, and,
where he used stone, used it fragilely, so that it would ultimately
suggest old frayed and broken lace. Clearly he meant some of the
cataracts to face one another, and to have a centre from which they
could all be seen--say the still, dull-green basin which occupies a
large space in the grounds between them. But he must have meant this for
a surprise to the spectator, who easily misses it under the trees
overleaning the moss-grown walks which hardly kept themselves from
running wild. There is a sense of crumbling decorations of statues,
broken in their rococ