“Up and down the height of the tower were scattered three or four windows, the lower ones grated with iron bars, the upper ones vacant both of window-frames and glass. Besides these larger openings, there were several loopholes and little square apertures which might be supposed to light the staircase that doubtless climbed the interior towards the battlemented and machicolated summit. With this last-mentioned war-like garniture upon its stern old head and brow, the tower seemed evidently a stronghold of times long past. Many a crossbowman had shot his shafts from those windows and loopholes, and from the vantage height of those grey battlements; many a flight of arrows, too, had hit all round about the embrasures above, or the apertures below, where the helmet of a defender had momentarily glimmered.... Connected with the tower, and extending behind it, there seemed to be a very spacious residence, chiefly of more modern date. It perhaps owed much of its fresher appearance, however, to a coat of stucco and yellow wash, which is a sort of renovation very much in vogue with the Italians.” [Illustration: (Drawing looking up at tower from lawn)] FOOTNOTES: [44] _Italy._ Samuel Rogers. P. 140. [Illustration: VILLA DI CASTELLO] [Illustration: (Drawing of wide stone stairway with statues, leading to fountain)] VILLA DI CASTELLO The villa of Castello, “built by Pier Francesco de’ Medici with much judgment,” as Vasari remarks, belonged to the Medici family before they became Grand Dukes of Tuscany, and was always one of their favourite residences. Unlike Petraja, which towers above the plain, Castello is a long low villa on a gentle incline above the high road, with no extensive view, and the eye feasts only on the garden behind. And what a charming scene it is on a windless summer’s day! The magnolia trees, the pride of the place, are in flower, copper beeches and oleanders mingle their glorious colours in marvellous variety above the green lawns and give a luxuriant look to what is really a formal garden; for on the terraces which rise from the back of the villa, lemon trees in big terra-cotta pots edge the gravel walks, and the Florentine gardener has not forgotten to tie the carnations to canes so that they stand stiffly up from their pots on the low walls. Then there is the fountain in the centre of a terrace of its own, divided from the others by steps, and surrounded with statues of ladies and gentlemen of the Medici family; but their drapery is so tightly drawn round them in stiff straight folds that they resemble far more one’s idea of Roman senators and their wives.