country was, when not dissipated in riotous splendor, invested in real
estate upon the main-land as the Republic grew in territory, and the
income of the nobles is now from the rents of these lands. They reside
upon their estates during the season of the _villeggiatura_, which
includes the months of September and October, when every one who can
possibly leave the city goes into the country. Then the patricians betake
themselves to their villas near Padua, Vicenza, Bassano, and Treviso, and
people the sad-colored, weather-worn stucco hermitages, where the
mutilated statues, swaggering above the gates, forlornly commemorate days
when it was a far finer thing to be a noble than it is now. I say the
villas look dreary and lonesome as places can be made to look in Italy,
what with their high garden walls, their long, low piles of stabling, and
the _passee_ indecency of their nymphs and fauns, foolishly strutting
in the attitudes of the silly and sinful old Past; and it must be but a
dull life that the noble proprietors lead there.

It is better, no doubt, on the banks of the Brenta, where there are still
so many villas as to form a street of these seats of luxury, almost the
whole length of the canal, from Fusina to Padua. I am not certain that
they have a right to the place which they hold in literature and
sentiment, and yet there is something very charming about them, with their
gardens, and chapels, and statues, and shaded walks. We went to see them
one day early in October, and found them every one, when habitable,
inhabited, and wearing a cheerful look, that made their proximity to
Venice incredible. As we returned home after dark, we saw the ladies from
the villas walking unattended along the road, and giving the scene an air
of homelike peace and trustfulness which I had not found before in Italy;
while the windows of the houses were brilliantly lighted, as if people
lived in them; whereas, you seldom see a light in Venetian palaces. I am
not sure that I did not like better, however, the villas that were empty