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It degenerated with the license of later times. It was absorbed and sunk in the fashions and vices of imperial Rome. Though Nero built a public gymnasium, and Roman gentlemen attached private ones to their country-seats, it gradually fell into disuse, or existed only for ignoble purposes.
The boar's head, crowned with rosemary, had taken its honored station among the Christmas cheer; the festal board had been attended by glee singers and minstrels from the village to entertain the company with hereditary songs and catches during their repast; and the old Pyrrhic game of the sword dance, handed down since the time of the Romans, was admirably performed in the court-yard of the mansion by a band of young men, lithe and supple in their forms and graceful in their movements, who, I was told, went the rounds of the villages and country-seats during the Christmas holidays.
Nick felt himself catch the smile and all the reasons of it: they made up a charm to which he had perhaps not hitherto done justice something of the impression he had received when younger from showy "views" of fine country-seats that had pressed and patted nature, as by the fat hands of "benches" of magistrates and landlords, into supreme respectability and comfort.
"But, on the other hand, the work only lasts eight months of the year, and that cuts wages down to an average of a dollar a day." "Ah!" cried Annie. "There's some hope in that! What do they do when the work stops?" "Oh, they go back to their country-seats." "All?" "Perhaps not all." "I thought so!" "Well, you'd better look round among those that stay."
In distant country-seats, where people are thrown entirely upon their own resources, they must be provided beforehand with all that is requisite for repairing the building; and there is, accordingly, a person called a steward, who keeps everything under lock and key, and distributes to the workmen whatever materials they may require.
The little Dutch eighteenth-century country-seats and garden-houses in which the national spirit took great delight are the fulfilment of a purely Erasmian ideal. The host of the Convivium religiosum says: 'To me a simple country-house, a nest, is pleasanter than any palace, and, if he be king who lives in freedom and according to his wishes, surely I am king here'.
The neighbours of France were often warring among themselves but the Grand Seigneur here was settling down to beautifying his surroundings and framing his chateaux, manors and country-seats in dignified and most appealing pictures. Grass-plots appeared in dooryards, flowers climbed up along castle walls and shrubs and trees came to play a genuinely esthetic rôle in the life of the times.
Many people were at their country-seats, but politics kept a number of men in town, and for this political and wholly masculine salon of Mrs. Croix, Gouverneur Morris drove down from Morrisania, Robert Livingston from Clermont; Governor Clinton had made it convenient to remain a day longer in New York. Dr. Franklin had been a guest of my lady for the past two days.
To the left of Palermo the mountains open and shew the entrance into a broad and transcendently beautiful valley, in which the town of Monreal lies with magical effect. Several of these gaps occur along the coast, affording glimpses of the most lovely vales, with scattered villages and pretty country-seats. The harbour of Palermo is picturesque and eminently safe.
The stock of fame which he had acquired by his comedies was sufficient, assisted by the graces of his manner and conversation, to secure for him a high place in the estimation of the world. During the winter he lived among the most distinguished and agreeable people in London. His summers were passed at the splendid country-seats of ministers and peers.
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