up the place where the tufa is worn away.

He lays stress upon the contrast between culture and Nature, town
luxury and country solitude, in his second letter to Domidius, and
describes the beauties of his own modest estate with sentimental
delight:

You reproach me for loitering in the country; I might complain
with more reason that you stay in the town when the earth shines
in the light of spring, the ice is melting from the Alps, and the
soil is marked by the dry fissures of tortuous furrows ... the
stones in the stream, and the mud on the banks are dried up ...
here neither nude statues, comic actors, nor Hippodrome are to be
found ... the noise of the waters is so great that it drowns
conversation. From the dining-room, if you have time to spare at
meals, you can occupy it with the delight of looking at the
scenery, and watch the fishing ... here you can find a hidden
recess, cool even in summer heat, a place to sleep in. Here what
joy it is to listen to the cicadas chirping at noonday, and to
the frogs croaking when the twilight is coming on, and to the
swans and geese giving note at the early hours of the night, and
at midnight to the cocks crowing together, and to the boding
crows with three-fold note greeting the ruddy torch of the rising
dawn; and in the half light of the morning to hear the
nightingale warbling in the bushes, and the swallow twittering
among the beams.... Between whiles, the shepherds play in their
rustic fashion. Not far off is a wood where the branches of two
huge limes interlace, though their trunks are apart (in their
shade we play ball), and a lake that rises to such fury in a
storm that the trees that border it are wetted by the spray.