129.  With all the praise, however, which we have bestowed upon it, we do not say that the villa of the Larian Lake is perfection; indeed we cannot say so, until we have compared it with a few other instances, chiefly to be found in Italy, on whose soil we delay, as being the native country of the villa, properly so-called, and as ever yet being almost the only spot of Europe where any good specimens of it are to be found; for we do not understand by the term “villa” a cubic erection, with one window on each side of a verdant door, and three on the second and uppermost story, such as the word suggests to the fertile imagination of ruralizing cheesemongers; neither do we understand the quiet and unpretending country house of a respectable gentleman; neither do we understand such a magnificent mass of hereditary stone as generally forms the autumn retreat of an English noble; but we understand the light but elaborate summer habitation, raised however and wherever it pleases his fancy, by some individual of great wealth and influence, who can enrich it with every attribute of beauty; furnish it with every appurtenance of pleasure; and repose in it with the dignity of a mind trained to exertion or authority.  Such a building could not exist in Greece, where every district a mile and a quarter square was quarreling with all its neighbors.  It could exist, and did exist, in Italy, where the Roman power secured tranquillity, and the Roman constitution distributed its authority among a great number of individuals, on whom, while it raised them to a position of great influence, and, in its later times, of wealth, it did not bestow the power of raising palaces or private fortresses.  The villa was their peculiar habitation, their only resource, and a most agreeable one; because the multitudes of the kingdom being, for a long period, confined to a narrow territory, though ruling the world, rendered the population of the city so dense, as to drive out its higher ranks to the neighboring hamlets of Tibur and Tusculum.

130.  In other districts of Europe the villa is not found, because in very perfect monarchies, as in Austria, the power is thrown chiefly into the hands of a few, who build themselves palaces, not villas; and in perfect republics, as in Switzerland, the power is so split among the multitude, that nobody can build himself anything.  In general, in kingdoms of great extent, the country house becomes the permanent and hereditary habitation; and the villas are all crowded together, and form gingerbread rows in the environs of the capital; and, in France and Germany, the excessively disturbed state of affairs in the Middle Ages compelled every baron or noble to defend himself, and retaliate on his neighbors as he best could, till the villa was lost in the chateau and the fortress; and men now continue to build as their forefathers built (and long may they do so), surrounding the domicile of pleasure with a moat and a glacis, and guarding its garret windows with turrets and towers:  while, in England, the nobles, comparatively few, and of great power, inhabit palaces, not villas; and the rest of the population is chiefly crowded into cities, in the activity of commerce, or dispersed over estates in that of agriculture; leaving only one grade of gentry, who have neither the taste to desire, nor the power to erect, the villa, properly so-called.