[b] _And, thro’ the various year, the various day,_ Horace commends the house, ‘longos quæ prospicit agros.’ Distant views contain the greatest variety, both in themselves, and in their accidental variations. GILPIN. [c] _Small change of scene, small space his home requires,_ Many a great man, in passing through the apartments of his palace, has made the melancholy reflection of the venerable Cosmo: “Questa è troppo gran casa à si poco famiglia.” MACH. Ist. Fior. lib. vii. “Parva, sed apta mihi,” was Ariosto’s inscription over his door in Ferrara; and who can wish to say more? “I confess,” says Cowley, “I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a very little feast.” Essay vi. When Socrates was asked why he had built for himself so small a house, “Small as it is,” he replied, “I wish I could fill it with friends.” PHÆDRUS, 1. iii. 9. These indeed are all that a wise man would desire to assemble; “for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.” BACON’S Essays, xxvii. [d] _From every point a ray of genius flows!_ By this means, when all nature wears a lowering countenance, I withdraw myself into the visionary worlds of art; where I meet with shining landscapes, gilded triumphs, beautiful faces, and all those other objects that fill the mind with gay ideas, &c. ADDISON. It is remarkable that Antony, in his adversity, passed some time in a small but splendid retreat, which he called his Timonium, and from which might originate the idea of the Parisian Boudoir, that favourite apartment, _ou I’on se retire pour étre seul, mais ou l’on ne boude point_. STRABO, 1. xvii. PLUT, in Vit. Anton. [e] _At GUIDO’S call, &c_. Alluding to his celebrated fresco in the Rospigliosi Palace at Rome. [f] _And still the Few best lov’d and most rever’d_ The dining-room is dedicated to Conviviality; or, as Cicero somewhere expresses it, “Communitati vitæ atque victûs.” There we wish most for the society of our friends; and, perhaps, in their absence, most require their portraits. The moral advantages of this furniture may be illustrated by the pretty story of an Athenian courtezan, “who, in the midst of a riotous banquet with her lovers, accidentally cast her eye on the portrait of a philosopher, that hung opposite to her seat: the happy character of temperance and virtue struck her with so lively an image of her own unworthiness, that she instantly quitted the room; and, retiring home, became ever after an example of temperance, as she had been before of debauchery.” [g] _Read antient looks, or woo inspiring dreams;_ The reader will here remember that passage of Horace, _Nunc veterum libris, nunc somno, &c_ which was inscribed by Lord Chesterfield on the frieze of his library. [h] _And, when a sage’s lust arrests then there_,