Along the picturesque heights above the lake would rise in beauty the costly villas and the splendid summer residences of capital.
"Finally, luxury, carried further and further every day, covered the soil of Italy with elegant villas, which occupied whole cantons.
The men of ideas, like young Niccolo Macchiavelli, went to observe and write reports to friends away in country villas; the men of appetites, like Dolfo Spini, bent on hunting down the Frate, as a public nuisance who made game scarce, went to feed their hatred and lie in wait for grounds of accusation.
White villas peep from the birch forest; and, on a fine summer day, there is scarcely a turn of the pass at which may not be seen some angler casting his fly on the foam of the river, some artist sketching a pinnacle of rock, or some party of pleasure banqueting on the turf in the fretwork of shade and sunshine.