"In the middest of all the place was a faire pond, whose shaking cristall was a perfect mirrour to all the other beauties, so that it bare shew of two gardens, one in deed, the other in shadowes. And in one of the thickets was a fine fountaine made thus: a naked Venus of white marble, wherin the graver had used such cunning that the natural blue veins of the marble were framed in fit places to set forth the beautifull veines of her body. At her breast she had her babe AEneas, who seemed, having begun to sucke, to leave that, to look upon her faire eyes, which smiled at the babe's folly, meane while the breast running."[198] The effect produced must undoubtedly have been very pleasant, but scarcely more "natural" than the embellishments recommended by Bacon, who declares that hedges and arbours ought to be enlivened by the songs of birds; and that to make such enlivening sure and permanent, the birds should be secured in cages. A good example of a garden in Sidney's time with beds of flowers, arbours, pavilions, and covered galleries is to be seen in his own portrait by Isaac Oliver, of which we give a reproduction. It must be noticed that only the lower part of the long gallery at the back is built; the vault-shaped upper portion is painted green, being supposed to be made of actual leaves and foliage. Except for such books as Sidney's it could not be said of those gardens that "they too were once in Arcady." [Illustration: A PRINCESS OF ARCADY, FROM THE TITLE-PAGE OF SIDNEY'S "ARCADIA."] Costumes and furniture are of the same style, and accord with such gardens much more than with shepherd life. They are pure Renaissance, half Italian and half English. Musidorus disguised as a shepherd, dresses his hair in such a way as to look much more like one of the Renaissance Roman Emperors at Hampton Court than like a keeper of sheep: we see him while receiving a lesson on the use of the "sheep-hooke," wearing "a garland of laurell mixt with cypres leaves on his head."[199] The glowing descriptions of the private apartments of the heroes suit modern palaces better than Greek cottages; while representations of ladies recumbent on their couches are obvious reminiscences of Tintoretto or Titian, whose newly painted works Sidney had admired in Italy. Here is a description of the beautiful Philoclea, resting in her bedroom; it shows unmistakable signs of Sidney's acquaintance with the Italian painters: "She at that time lay, as the heate of that country did well suffer, upon the top of her bed, having her beauties eclipsed with nothing, but with her faire smocke, wrought all in flames of ash-colour silk and gold; lying so upon her right side, that the left thigh down to the foot, yielded hir delightfull proportion to the full view, which was seene by the helpe of a rich lampe, which thorow the curtaines a little drawne cast forth a light upon her, as the moone doth when it shines into a thinne wood."[200]