pot for the last half century. Who wonders, if
the distracted Princess of "the scene" should love a picture that
recalls the most enthusiastic triumphs of her success? Why should not the
retired "Feri" like to wander at will through a more enchanting garden
than ever she pirouetted in?

Conspicuous amongst the places where these stage-like elements abound
is the Villa d'Este; situated in a little bay, with two jutting
promontories to guard it, the ground offers every possible variety of
surface and elevation. From the very edge of the calm lake, terrace
rises above terrace, clad with all that is rich and beautiful in
vegetation; rocks, and waterfalls, and ruins, and statues abound.
Everything that money could buy, and bad taste suggest, are there heaped
with a profusion that is actually confounding. Every stone stair leads
to some new surprise; every table-land opens some fresh and astonishing
prospect. Incongruous, inharmonious, tea-gardenish as it is, there is
still a charm in the spot which no efforts of the vilest taste seem
able to eradicate. The vines _will_ cluster in graceful groupings; the
oranges _will_ glow in gorgeous contrast to their dark mantle of leaves;
water _will_ leap with its own spontaneous gladness, and fall in diamond
showers over a grassy carpet no emerald ever rivalled; and, more than
all, the beautiful lake itself _will_ reflect the picture, with such
softened effects of light and shadow, that all the perversions of human
ingenuity are totally lost in the transmission.

This same Villa d'Este was once the scene of a sad drama; but it is
not to this era in its history we desire now to direct our reader's
attention, but to a period much later, when no longer the home of
an exiled Princess, or the retreat where shame and sorrow abandoned
themselves to every excess, its changed fortune had converted it into an
establishment for the water cure!

The prevailing zeal of our day is to simplify everything, even to things
which will not admit of simplicity. What with our local athenaeums, our
mechanics' institutes, our lecturing lords and discoursing baronets, we
have done a great deal. Science has been popularised, remote geographies
made familiar, complex machinery explained, mysterious inscriptions
rendered intelligible. How could it be expected that in the general
enthusiasm for useful knowledge medicine should escape, or that its
secrets should be exempt from a scrutiny that has spared nothing? H