Such a building could not
exist in Greece, where every district a mile and a quarter square was
quarreling with all its neighbors. It could exist, and did exist, in
Italy, where the Roman power secured tranquillity, and the Roman
constitution distributed its authority among a great number of
individuals, on whom, while it raised them to a position of great
influence, and, in its later times, of wealth, it did not bestow the
power of raising palaces or private fortresses. The villa was their
peculiar habitation, their only resource, and a most agreeable one;
because the multitudes of the kingdom being, for a long period, confined
to a narrow territory, though ruling the world, rendered the population
of the city so dense, as to drive out its higher ranks to the
neighboring hamlets of Tibur and Tusculum.
130. In other districts of Europe the villa is not found, because in
very perfect monarchies, as in Austria, the power is thrown chiefly into
the hands of a few, who build themselves palaces, not villas; and in
perfect republics, as in Switzerland, the power is so split among the
multitude, that nobody can build himself anything. In general, in
kingdoms of great extent, the country house becomes the permanent and
hereditary habitation; and the villas are all crowded together, and form
gingerbread rows in the environs of the capital; and, in France and
Germany, the excessively disturbed state of affairs in the Middle Ages
compelled every baron or noble to defend himself, and retaliate on his
neighbors as he best could, till the villa was lost in the chateau and
the fortress; and men now continue to build as their forefathers built
(and long may they do so), surrounding the domicile of pleasure with a
moat and a glacis, and guarding its garret windows with turrets and
towers: while, in England, the nobles, comparatively few, and of great
power, inhabit palaces, not villas; and the rest of the population is
chiefly crowded into cities, in the activity of commerce, or dispersed
over estates in that of agriculture; leaving only one grade of gentry,
who have neither the taste to desire, nor the power to erect, the villa,
properly so-called.
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