A Villa in the Italian style.

"...As a rural style, expressing country life, the Italian is inferior to pointed and high-roofed modes. If it is not so essentially country-like in character, it is however remarkable for expressing the elegant culture and variety of accomplishment of the retired citizen or man of the world, and as it is capable of the most varied and irregular as well as very simple outlines, it is also very significant of the multiform tastes, habits, and wants of modern civilization. On the whole, then, we should say that the Italian style is one that expresses not wholly the spirit of country life nor of town life, but something between both, and which is a mingling of both." [Downing, 285-6.]