pleasure and taste could want and thoroughly enjoy.  As he was fond of showing his winter-house, we may go back just seventeen hundred and eighty years and introduce you as his friend Gallus.  It is so long since that Pliny would not detect you, and we shall have the benefit of his own guidance in the intricacies of his spacious villa.  We will take his advice, and instead of traveling in the clumsy rheda over the sandy road, we will ride out on horseback.  The views along the road are pretty—­now in a woody skirt, now by meadows in which the sheep and cattle find a later pasturage than higher up the country; so, by a winding path, we come upon a roomy and hospitable villa.  This is Laurentinum, near Laurentum.  We come before the atrium:  a slave announces us, and the courteous master welcomes us on the steps of a porch shaped like the letter D, with pleasant transparent mica windows, and roofed over as a protection against showers.  Thence he ushers us into a cheerful entrance-hall:  “Let me show you my winter retreat.  Your room is in rather a distant part of my little villa, and it is nearly time to bathe.  Let me conduct you.”  We see that our friend is rather proud of his home, and so he ought to be, for we find it a snug retreat for a vacation.  Now let us see when and how he enjoys himself after his labors in either of the courts.  Let us follow him out of the hall into the dining-room, which has a pleasant southern outlook upon the sea.  The murmuring waves echo in it.  It has innumerable doors, and windows reaching to the floor, and is as pleasant as the banquet-room of the Americus Club-house.  You look out upon, as it were, triple seas:  so too from the atrium, the portico and the hall you can look over woods, hills or the sea.  Through the hall again, into an ample chamber, then out to a smaller one, which lets in the rising sunlight on the one side and the purple glow of sunset on the other.  Here, too, is a partial view of the sea.  These rooms are protected from all but fair-weather winds.  The great dining-room is the pleasant—­weather room.  Then next beyond is the apsidal chamber, which admits continuous sunshine through its many windows.  Book-presses stand against the partition wall, to hold the books in constant use.  “My uncle, good Gallus, taught me not to lose an hour.  Behind this is the dormitory, properly tempered according to the season:  farther on are the servants’ and freedmen’s apartments.  But here is your room.  After the bath we will see the rest.  The bath is here between these cool dressing-rooms:  you must need it after your dusty ride, my Gallus.