115.  But this principle applies only to small pieces of water, on which we look down, as much as along the surface.  As soon as we get a sheet, even if only a mile across, we lose depth; first, because it is almost impossible to get the surface without a breeze on some part of it; and, again, because we look along it, and get a great deal of sky in the reflection, which, when occupying too much space, tells as mere flat light.  But we may have the beauty of extent in a very high degree; and it is therefore desirable to know how far the water goes, that we may have a clear conception of its space.  Now, its border, at a great distance, is always lost, unless it be defined by a very distinct line; and such a line is harsh, flat, and cutting on the eye.  To avoid this, the border itself should be dark, as in the other case, so that there may be no continuous horizontal line of demarcation; but one or two bright white objects should be set here and there along or near the edge:  their reflections will flash on the dark water, and will inform the eye in a moment of the whole distance and transparency of the surface it is traversing.  When there is a slight swell on the water, they will come down in long, beautiful, perpendicular lines, mingling exquisitely with the streaky green of reflected foliage; when there is none, they become a distant image of the object they repeat, endowed with infinite repose.

116.  These remarks, true of small lakes whose edges are green, apply with far greater force to sheets of water on which the eye passes over ten or twenty miles in one long glance, and the prevailing color of whose borders is, as we noticed when speaking of the Italian cottage, blue.  The white reflections are here excessively valuable, giving space, brilliancy, and transparency; and furnish one very powerful apology, even did other objections render an apology necessary, for the pale tone of the color of the villas, whose reflections, owing to their size and conspicuous situations, always take a considerable part in the scene, and are therefore things to be attentively considered in the erection of such buildings, particularly in a climate whose calmness renders its lakes quiet for the greater part of the day.  Nothing, in fact, can be more beautiful than the intermingling of these bright lines with the darkness of the reversed cypresses seen against the deep azure of the distant hills in the crystalline waters of the lake, of which some one aptly says, “Deep within its azure rest, white villages sleep silently;"[18] or than their columnar perspective, as village after village catches the light, and strikes the image to the very quietest recess of the narrow water, and the very farthest hollow of the folded hills.

[Footnote 18:  [A reminiscence of two lines from a poem on the “Lago di Como” written by the author in 1833.]]