358 THE REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA
that the nobles of Ragusa had their villeggiatura, and all about among the pleasant groves of the Lapad promontory or on the banks of the Ombla rose many a stately pleasure-house, filled with works of art and books, and surrounded by lovely gardens. Most of them, alas ! were plundered and burnt during the French wars and the Montenegrin invasion, and only a few now remain. Other more modern ones have sprung up, some inhabited by the descendants of these same noble families, others by wealthy merchants who have acquired fortunes in America. The villas among the hills at Giochetto and Bergato have nearly all been destroyed.
   On the Isola di Mezzo there are two castles, several churches and monasteries, and ruins of other edifices. The principal church is that of Santa Maria del Biscione, on the south side of the island; it is a fifteenth-century building, in the Venetian Gothic style, and contains, among other objects, an altar-piece of quaint design—a group of wooden, painted figures ; according to the local tradition they were brought by a native of Mezzo from England, where he had bought them from Henry VIII.’s private chapel, as that monarch, having become a Protestant, was selling its effects by auction. But Professor Gelcich gives extracts from local records, proving it to be seventeenth-century work by one “ Magister Urbanus Georgii de Tenum Derfort Banakus fabrolignarius.”2 The chancel has a good waggon ceiling of blue panels, and some handsome stonework. The Dominican church, also in the Italian Pointed style, is dismantled; its campanile of the fifteenth century has the “midwall shafts” 1 Gelcich, p. 8o.