The country seat differed widely from the town house.  We must forget the plan which has been given above, with its hall and court lighted from within, and made private from the passing crowds in the street.  In the country there is no need of such an arrangement.  Moreover there are no formal receptions to necessitate the hall, and there are ample gardens to make the peristyle superfluous.  Here the walls of the house may break forth into large and open windows, while all around may run pillared verandahs.  Built in any variety of shape, according to the situation and the fancy, it may contain an immense variety of sitting-rooms, dining-rooms, bedrooms, facing in every direction to catch the sun, the shade, the breeze, or the prospect, as the case may be.  Not that magnificence is any more neglected than in the great English country seats.  The pillars and pavements are as rich as means allow, and works of painting and statuary are perhaps even finer and more numerous than in town; there is more time to look at them, and there are better facilities for showing them off.  Many of the best works of ancient sculpture now extant in the museums have come from such country seats.  There were of course vulgar houses in bad taste, where the owner’s notions of magnificence consisted in ostentatious extravagance and a desire to outdo his neighbour.  As now, everything depended either on the culture of the man or on the amount of his good sense in leaving such matters to his artistic adviser.

Outside the house lie the gardens and grounds.  For the most part these are laid out in the formal style adopted so often in more modern Italy and favoured so greatly in England in the early eighteenth century.  Perhaps the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, though of course not ancient, may convey some approximate idea of the prevailing principle.  Along one side of the Roman house we should find a smooth terrace ornamented with statues and vases, to be used as a promenade.  There are straight walks and avenues between hedges and trees and shrubs—­cyprus, laurel, box, and other manageable plants—­cut to the shape of beasts and birds and inanimate objects.  There are flower-beds—­of the rose, the crocus, the wallflower, the narcissus, the violet, but not, for example, the tulip—­laid out in geometrical patterns.  There are trellis-work arbours and walks covered with leafy vines or other trailing plants.  There are clumps of bay-trees, plane trees, or myrtles, with marble seats beneath.  There is either an avenue or a covered colonnade, where the ground is made of soft earth or sand, and where the family may take exercise by being carried in a litter up and down in the open or under the shade.  There are greenhouses and forcing-houses, where flowers are grown under glass.  There are fish-ponds, fountains, and water-channels, with artificial cascades and a general suggestion of babbling streams.  Out beyond lie the orchards and the vegetable gardens, where are grown most of the modern fruits, including peaches, apricots, and almonds, but not yet including either the orange or the lemon.