The palaces of the great lords are extremely vast, of an architecture often very fine, and always imposing:  but the interior ornaments are rarely tasteful; we do not find in them even an idea of those elegant apartments which the finished enjoyments of social life have given rise to elsewhere.  These vast abodes of the Roman princes are empty and silent; the lazy inhabitants of these superb palaces retire into a few small chambers unperceived, and leave strangers to survey their magnificent galleries where the finest pictures of the age of Leo X. are collected together.  The great Roman lords of the present day, are as unacquainted with the pompous luxury of their ancestors, as these ancestors themselves were with the austere virtues of the Roman republic.  The country houses convey still more the idea of this solitude, of this indifference of the possessors in the midst of the most admirable abodes in the world.  People may walk in these immense gardens without suspecting that they have a master.  The grass grows in the middle of the walks, and in these very walks are trees fantastically cut according to the ancient taste that prevailed in France.—­What a singular whimsicality is this neglect of the necessary, and affectation of the useless!—­But one is often surprised at Rome, and in the greater part of the other cities of Italy, at the taste of the Italians for extravagant ornaments,—­they who have incessantly before their eyes the noble simplicity of the antique.  They love what is brilliant, much better than what is elegant and commodious.  They have in every instance, the advantages and the inconveniences of not living habitually in society.  Their luxury is rather that of the imagination, than the luxury of actual enjoyment;—­isolated as they are among themselves, they cannot dread the spirit of ridicule, which seldom penetrates at Rome into domestic secrecy; and often, in contrasting the interior with the exterior of their palaces, one would say, that the greater part of the Italian nobility arrange their dwellings more to dazzle the passers-by than to receive their friends.

After having surveyed the churches and the palaces, Corinne conducted Oswald to the villa Mellini, a solitary garden, without any other ornament than its magnificent trees.  From here is seen, at a distance, the chain of the Appenines; the transparency of the air colours these mountains and throws them forward in the perspective, giving them a most picturesque appearance.  Oswald and Corinne remained in this spot to enjoy the charms of the sky and the tranquillity of nature.  It is impossible to form an idea of this singular tranquillity without having lived in Southern countries.  On a hot day there is not felt the lightest breath of wind.  The feeblest blade of grass is perfectly still, and the animals themselves partake of the indolence which the fine weather inspires:  in the middle of the day, you neither hear the hum of flies, the chirping of grasshoppers, nor the song of birds; no object fatigues itself with useless and trifling agitation; all sleep till storm or the passions awaken the vehemence of nature, who then rushes with impetuosity from her profound repose.