Certainly as we walk round the villa, especially on its north side where it looks towards the double-peaked hill of Fiesole, seen somewhat bleak on a winter’s day, our mind is full of mediæval Florence, of a time before the nobles built such peaceful dwelling-houses with terraced gardens as the Villa Palmieri for instance, just in sight across the narrow valley of the Mugnone. Viewed only from this its austerest aspect the Salviati villa would be beautiful indeed, but unlike any other we know of it possesses a very different side of which Zocchi shows us something. An eighteenth century owner, feeling perhaps that the somewhat menacing look of his ancestral villa ill coincided with the more joyous tastes of his day, laid out the enchanting rococo orange houses with graceful balustrade ornamented with vases and a clock tower. Joined on to the villa at right angles and built in so opposite a style, it yet fascinates by very contrast, leading the eye gradually to feast with delight upon the terraced gardens laid out with such taste by Jacopo Salviati in 1510. From under the heavy foliage of the ilexes, trimmed and trained so closely as to let no glimpse of sky be seen between their branches, we look out across the city of Florence to the hill of San Miniato, a view, it is true, familiar to everyone who has walked on these slopes, but what a different foreground we have here! Where in Italy can one see not only so fair a city, bell-towers, domes and palaces, the late afternoon sun playing soft lights about them so that they seem distant, ethereal and shrouded in a thin faint film of golden mist; but between us and this fairy city lie two small lakelets, one below the other, their shining limpid water catching every glint of light till the sun shall have dropt behind the Signa hills. All the winds are hushed in this dell. They move the leaves and sway the branches of the narrow wood above, but here reigns a peace such as one finds in northern valleys, even the thin sharp shadows across the pools, from the clumps of white plumes of the pampas grass and the aloes in flower upon the banks, lie still on the unruffled surface of their waters.