Hail! to thy
thousand bays, and deep-red earth, thy marble quarries, and thy silver
veins! Hail! to thy far-extending landscape, whose sparkling villages
and streaky fields no clime can match!
Some gales we owe to thee of balmy breath, some gentle hours when life
had fewest charms. And we are grateful for all this, to say nothing of
your cider and your junkets.
The Duke arrived just as the setting sun crowned the proud palace with
his gleamy rays. It was a pile which the immortal Inigo had raised in
sympathy with the taste of a noble employer, who had passed his
earliest years in Lombardy. Of stone, and sometimes even of marble, with
pediments and balustrades, and ornamental windows, and richly-chased
keystones, and flights of steps, and here and there a statue, the
structure was quite Palladian, though a little dingy, and, on the whole,
very imposing.
There were suites of rooms which had no end, and staircases which had no
beginning. In this vast pile, nothing was more natural than to lose your
way, an agreeable amusement on a rainy morning. There was a collection
of pictures, very various, by which phrase we understand not select.
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