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approaching from a remote distance, and numerous towns and hamlets seated on the sunny promontories. Beneath, lay Bardoleno, its declivities crowned with olives and orange trees-the hilly summits here embrowned with shady woods, there spreading a green and luxuriant pasture. The damp unwholesome winds from the south were warded off by an orchard of the choicest fruit trees, so arranged as to form a screen to the villa, while mount Baldo on the north, towering behind, protected it from the rigorous blasts of winter. Fracastoro has himself celebrated, in a poem addressed to his friend Francesco Torriano, the studious pleasures of this charming retreat.

"Here peaceful solitude the muse befriends,
Soothes us awake, and on our sleep attends.
What, if my ceiling boast no painted dyes,
Nor fears the innoxious dust that round it flies;
If chisell❜d by the immortal sculptor's hand,
No busts surprise, nor breathing statues stand;
Here Freedom dwells, that loves the rural plains,
And wide expatiates in her own domains."

GRESWELL.

In this retreat Fracastoro died in the year 1553. The inhabitants of Verona, of which city he was a native, erected a statue to his memory.

VICENZA.

Monia, templa, domus, et propugnacula, et arces,

Atque alia in multis sunt monumenta locis
Istius ingenio, et cura fabrefacta decenter

Fama unde illius vivet, honorque diu.

BRESSANI.

66

VICENZA is to be visited as the city of Palladio. It is the Mecca of architects, adorned with a hundred shrines, each claiming the devotion of the pilgrim. Vicenza," says an excellent critic (Mr. Forsyth), " is full of Palladio. His palaces here, even those which remain unfinished, display a taste chastened by the study of ancient art. Their beauty originates in the design, and is never superinduced by ornament. Their elevations enchant you, not by the length and altitude, but by the consummate felicity of their proportions, by the harmonious distribution of solid and void, by that happy something between flat and prominent, which charms both in front and in profile; by that maëstria which calls in columns, not to encumber, but to support, and reproduces ancient beauty in combinations unknown to the ancients themselves. Even when obliged to contend with the coarsest Gothic at La Ragione, how skilfully has Palladio screened the external barbarism of that reversed hulk, by a Greek elevation as pure as the original would admit. His Vicentine villas have been often imitated in England, and are models more adapted to resist both our climate and

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our reasoning taste, than the airy extravagant structures of the south."

One of the latest and most signal triumphs of Palladio's genius, is the Teatro Olympico, or Olympic Theatre, erected at the expense of the Olympic Academy, an association formed in the sixteenth century for the promotion of polite literature. This splendid edifice, framed upon the model of the ancient theatres, exhibits, in the place of the moveable scenery which decorates modern theatres, a stationary view. Looking through the proscenium, which consists of a magnificent archway, supported by columns, the spectator sees five several streets or approaches to the stage, formed from actual models of buildings, so framed as to imitate an architectural perspective. The centre portion of the theatre is occupied by the orchestra, and around it rise the seats in the form of an ellipsis, and above the seats a range of Corinthian columns.

Another celebrated structure of Palladio is the Rotonda, so called from its containing in the centre a large circular room with a cupola. The building itself is square, having four colonnades, each of six unfluted Ionic columns, with a flight of steps and a pediment. The Rotonda is situated on the Monte of Vicenza, a hill near the city, covered with the seats and casinos of the Vicentine gentry, and which may be ascended under the cover of porticos, resembling those near Padua, and leading to the church of Madonna di Monte. The extraordinary view from the summit of the Monte has been described by Mr. Stewart Rose. The Rotonda of Palladio was imitated by Lord Burlington in his villa at Chiswick, now the property of the Duke of Devonshire.

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