sessions of the Borromean family. Isola Bella was formerly much celebrated for its singular and beautiful gardens, which were visited by Burnet just at the period of their completion. "From Lugane, I went to the Lago Maggiore, which is a noble lake, six and fifty miles long and in most places six broad, and a hundred fathom deep about the middle of it: it makes a great bay towards the westward, and there lie two islands called the Borromean Islands, which are certainly the loveliest spots of ground in the world. There is nothing in all Italy that can be compared to them. They have the full view of the lake, and the ground rises so sweetly in them that nothing can be imagined equal to the terraces here. They belong to two counts of the Borromean family. I was only in one of them which belongs to the head of the family, nephew to the famous cardinal, known by the name of St. Carlo. On the west end lies the palace, which is one of the best in Italy for the lodgings within, though the architecture is but ordinary. There is one noble apartment above four and twenty feet high, and there is a vast addition making to it, and here is a great collection of noble pictures, beyond any thing I saw out of Rome. The whole island is a garden except a little corner to the south, set off for a village of about forty little houses. And because the figure of the island was not very regular by nature, they have built great vaults and porticoes along the rock which are all made grotesque, and so they have brought it to a regular form, by laying earth over those vaults. There is first a garden to the east, that rises up from the lake by five rows of terraces : on the three sides of the garden that are watered by the

lake, the stairs are noble, the walls are all covered with oranges and citrons, and a more beautiful spot of a garden cannot be seen. There are two buildings in the two corners of this garden: the one is a mill for fetching up the water, and the other is a noble summer-house all wainscoted over with alabaster and marble of a fine colour, inclining to red. From this garden one goes on a level to all the rest of the alleys and parterres, herb and flower gardens, in all which there are variety of fountains and arbours; but the great parterre is a surprising thing, for as it is well furnished with statues and fountains, and is of a vast extent and justly situated to the palace, at the further end of it there is a great mount. The face of it that looks to the parterre is made like a theatre, all full of fountains and statues, the height rising up in five several rows, about fifty feet high and almost fourscore feet in front; and round this mount answering to the five rows, into which the theatre is divided, there run as many terraces and noble walks. The walls are all close covered with oranges and citrons, as many of our walls in England are with laurels. The top of the mount is seventy feet long and forty broad, and here is a vast cistern into which the mill plays up the water that furnishes all the fountains. The fountains were not quite finished when I was there; but when all is complete the place will look like an enchanted island. The freshness of the air, it being both in a lake and near the mountains, the fragrant smell, the beautiful prospect and delightful variety that is here, makes it such a habitation for summer that, perhaps, the world has nothing like it."

Isola Bella was for

sessions of the Borromean family. merly much celebrated for its singular and beautiful gardens, which were visited by Burnet just at the period of their completion. "From Lugane, I went to the Lago Maggiore, which is a noble lake, six and fifty miles long and in most places six broad, and a hundred fathom deep about the middle of it: it makes a great bay towards the westward, and there lie two islands called the Borromean Islands, which are certainly the loveliest spots of ground in the world. There is nothing in all Italy that can be compared to them. They have the full view of the lake, and the ground rises so sweetly in them that nothing can be imagined equal to the terraces here. They belong to two counts of the Borromean family. I was only in one of them which belongs to the head of the family, nephew to the famous cardinal, known by the name of St. Carlo. On the west end lies the palace, which is one of the best in Italy for the lodgings within, though the architecture is but ordinary. There is one noble apartment above four and twenty feet high, and there is a vast addition making to it, and here is a great collection of noble pictures, beyond any thing I saw out of Rome. The whole island is a garden except a little corner to the south, set off for a village of about forty little houses. And because the figure of the island was not very regular by nature, they have built great vaults and porticoes along the rock which are all made grotesque, and so they have brought it to a regular form, by laying earth over those vaults. There is first a garden to the east, that rises up from the lake by five rows of terraces: on the three sides of the garden that are watered by the

lake, the stairs are noble, the walls are all covered with oranges and citrons, and a more beautiful spot of a garden cannot be seen. There are two buildings in the two corners of this garden: the one is a mill for fetching up the water, and the other is a noble summer-house all wainscoted over with alabaster and marble of a fine colour, inclining to red. From this garden one goes on a level to all the rest of the alleys and parterres, herb and flower gardens, in all which there are variety of fountains and arbours; but the great parterre is a surprising thing, for as it is well furnished with statues and fountains, and is of a vast extent and justly situated to the palace, at the further end of it there is a great mount. The face of it that looks to the parterre is made like a theatre, all full of fountains and statues, the height rising up in five several rows, about fifty feet high and almost fourscore feet in front; and round this mount answering to the five rows, into which the theatre is divided, there run as many terraces and noble walks. The walls are all close covered with oranges and citrons, as many of our walls in England are with laurels. The top of the mount is seventy feet long and forty broad, and here is a vast cistern into which the mill plays up the water that furnishes all the fountains. The fountains were not quite finished when I was there; but when all is complete the place will look like an enchanted island. The freshness of the air, it being both in a lake and near the mountains, the fragrant smell, the beautiful prospect and delightful variety that is here, makes it such a habitation for summer that, perhaps, the world has nothing like it."

The gardens of Isola Bella, with their straight walks, their porticos, their urns, their statues, and their temples, have excited the scorn and almost the indignation of modern travellers. Mr. Pennant, in a letter subjoined to Archdeacon Cox's Travels in Switzerland, has termed them " a monument of expense and folly;" Mr. Southey, in his pretty little poem on the Lago Maggiore, 'tells us they are "folly's prodigious work ;" and a late tourist speaks of them as "outraging all purity and simplicity." It may, however, be doubted, whether the modern taste for the natural has not been carried to an excess, and whether the more artificial gardens of former times did not contribute to the gratification of the taste as well as to that of the eye and of the fancy. In architectural ornament and in the artful and methodical arrangement of the ground there is, at least, as much to delight a refined and correct taste as in the unskilful imitations of natural scenery so acceptable to a modern eye. The stately aisle-like avenues of former days have given place to naked circuitous approaches, and the broad grassy alleys of our ancient gardens have been removed to make way for the contorted gravel walks of our modern grounds; changes which have been supposed to be improvements from the common mistake of confounding the artificial and the ungraceful.

Upon the Isola Bella is a laurel tree of great size and beauty. A late traveller says that "Buonaparte, when in this neighbourhood shortly after the battle of Marengo, came hither, and in an apparent fit of musing carved on its bark the word 'Battaglia,' some letters of which may still be traced."