Michael Terry

“ Looking around us, we see the celebrated Pine Forest, once the great resource for Roman ship-builders, apparently so close that we are easily lured onwards to seek a lounge amidst its shade and sylvan beauties, before returning to the rough streets and dull circumstantials of the old city of the Gracchi. The road by which it is accessible proves to be much longer than we anticipated; the heat is dissolving and paralysing ”

“ It is the time for funerals, and ever and anon a hoarse strain from the Misericordians wakes up the echoes of the streets, while their huge torches cast a sickening glare over wall and casement, revealing at the same time the hideous costume of these valuable agents of mercy. Few of the inhabitants can enter dreamland without ghastly reminiscences of the passage of silent sleepers on their way to the day's yawning vault outside the walls. ”

“ It contains dwellings for its inmates of goodly architecture, ranged in pairs, at intervals, round a quadrangle of singular beauty, where the figures of those who enjoy its shady walks are seen through arches of the finest moulded brick, decorated with the most exquisite reliefs in terra-cotta. Every tenement has its rooms complete, and its separate garden and vineyard, while the library close by is of the noblest and fullest for a private institution. ”

“ The pace at which they are carried is more like that of the desperate Bersaglieri of Turin than the solemn cavalcade amongst us which conveys the lifeless burden away from its home of the past to its long one of the future. ”

“ Hour after hour they move about on the slimy bottom of the flooded field, inhaling the marshy exhalations, baked in the noon-tide blaze, pulling up with aged or childish hands the obstructive weeds, or otherwise preparing in spring for the autumn crop of rice. ”

“ As if using a permission to gladden the stranger and orbit in the heavens, it sends in our direction a transverse flood of silvery light over the drowsy expanse that separates us from the looming mountains of Laveno on the opposite shore. ”

“ If he wraps himself up, and looks despairingly out of doors, he is very likely to see them in the highest state of mundane enjoyment, rollicking and “kicking up behind and before” on their newly-laid bed, as if human annoyance in frozen altitudes was their pet subject of festivity. ”

“ It is doubtful whether anyone besides the Emperor himself can have known whether he took its upper part to represent the Latin letter P, or the Greek one for R. The great comparative prominence of the said upper part on early monuments, joined to Constantine’s ignorance of Greek, inclines us to the former opinion, and perhaps Eusebius as an enthusiastic Oriental gave rise to the latter. There is some evidence that the Roman Emperor Probus brought the monogram, or something like it, from Egypt in the third century. ”

“ The poor women, whom we reach in our walk, look at a little distance like so many monstrous human Cochin-Chinas,—the result of being obliged to remain perpetually in a low stooping posture, without soaking or perhaps being interfered with by their drapery. The difficulty of keeping their drapery permanently out of the water is so great, that they are obliged constantly to get upon the dykes, and there repeat what is evidently a very skilful arrangement under the circumstances, but the nature of which we need not divulge until rices come to be extensively cultivated amongst ourselves. ”

“ Small dark insects at other times, and only developing their brightest qualities when they are in activity and happiness, they awake to their sprightly revelry when darkness shrouds more vulgar beauties, and thread the mazes of their fantastic curves with delicate scintillations of the palest blue or green. ”

“ Now-a-days, lying about as they do in the dark damp cross-passages of the Hospice, infecting the close atmosphere with unsavoury odours, and leaving their rejected bones about, to be kicked over by the unwary explorer, they give the untoward impression of occupying the interior of the house as a sort of den, from which all but Van Amburghs would gladly be released. ”

“ Whatever may be said of the Popes in the position they have assumed ecclesiastically, spiritually or politically, it is unreasonable to refuse them the fullest credit for having consistently done their very best to foster the pursuit of excellence in the art now so successfully practised in the “studio.” A love for Mosaics has been traditional with them since the days of early Christianity, when it was often handed down as something exemplary in the lives of many of the Bishops of Rome, that they set up or restored that kind of “image.” ”

“ Perhaps few things are better adapted to rebuke a carelessness about what is going on at all times beyond the sight than, after kicking drearily over the piles of dust which fascination, and looking vacantly by day at the motionless growth of ordinary crops, to return by the same road after nightfall with a commanding position in the banquette of the conveyance. Then a change comes o'er the spirit of our philosophy, and we observe that all we thought of in the field is as nothing to the teeming growth and life that really belongs to it. ”

“ The place is pretty, but its beauty is not of a fascinating order, being too much like that of some very correct Greek faces, whose regular features convey the impression of something rather strong-minded than sympathetic. Some three years ago it was easy for the stranger to catch the gloom of brooding mischief which hung about the aspect of scanty passers-by in the great thoroughfares, and the Alpine snow that looked down upon him in every odd street seemed in chilling unison with all around. ”

“ There are scenes of night to be witnessed or felt in Italy which realise far more completely than the haze or glare of day the difference of latitude in which they occur. A good place for enjoying them is on the margin of some vast lake, like the broad part of Maggiore off Baveno, and there, while listening to the placid ripple of the waters, one's own "particular star" may be observed not only in the ascendant, but, what for once we like as well, in the descendant also. ”

“ We stand once more in the nave of the fine church the royal Goth built at the beginning of the sixth century, as a cathedral for his Arian bishops, and rejoice to find that there at least there is nothing “to let.” After thirteen centuries the twenty-two virgins still offer their vows to the Virgin, and the twenty-five saints theirs to the Saviour, in the fine mosaic which lines the walls of the Clerestory almost from end to end. Other sights then gladden the eye of the antiquarian; but our purpose is a walk, and we must not stop there any longer. ”

“ Their chief indulgence must be a gathering on festivals, to interchange solemn thought in some garden a little larger than their own slip of ground; but, otherwise, they must take the usual recipe for dulness, plenty of work and no play. Some try the place and system only for awhile; others, who have tested it for a quarter of a century, thrive under it, and like it. ”

“ Some are more sedately spangling the lowlier class of herbs, but innumerable hosts of them are on the wing—dashing, wheeling, quaintly curvetting about the leaves of the festooned vine, or wantonly pretending to fly away from the earth which soon charms their pretty vagrancy back again to its bosom. ”

“ Where we can suppose our countrywomen a little envious, is in the neighbourhood of Florence, itself the great centre of the straw-plait manufacture, where the damsels come forth to captivate the hearts of certain open-mouthed swains, in their large flapping hats, so limp as to take all sorts of shapes with the passing breeze, and yet so well made as to return forthwith to their normal condition. ”

“ But our attention is attracted by a something novel and puzzling:—bundles of human clothing appear moving along mysteriously at a certain height from the ground, and the rank vegetation does not at first allow us to detect the machinery with which they are connected. ”

“ Unlike the lady glowworm, from whom wings are withheld by nature like the use of the foot by the stern law of Chinese barbarity, the female of the Lampyris Italica—as naturalists call our little favourite—disports herself on equal terms with her cavalier, sometimes rivalling him in untaught gambols round the upper branches of the trees, sometimes flitting away in expeditions to some well-known wheatear, or paying visits at the fashionable hour of the community. ”

“ The bleached remains of their former repasts outside, add somewhat to the gloominess of the whole situation and circumstances; and, when the dreaded snow-storm comes driving on, they themselves do little to mitigate the chilly misgiving that accompanies it. The traveller knows he must either prepare for mischief along the obliterated track, or remain for an indefinite period a prisoner instead of a guest where he is, and he is naturally not in the best of humours to appreciate anything that does not help his bewilderment. ”

“ The most prominent figure is a tall, swarthy man, generally holding a sort of tall wooden prong, and his authority seems a little rigidly exerted over the batch of female “workers" under his direction. The fields are several inches under water, as they are allowed to be in Italy during the whole period of growth of the rice plant; and men may often in Lombardy be seen mowing it up to their knees in the genial fluid, which is said to support the weakness of the stalk. ”

“ Those who wish to notice carefully the process, will find themselves courteously welcomed to do so, by the different grades of “professor” in the art that may chance to be at work, and, before they leave, it is very likely they will be shown a finished specimen of Raphael’s Mad. della Seggiola, or some other popular favourite, and hardly know the enamel from the canvas copy. The small mosaics in the shops, of which some are so pretty, and of which all the good ones are so expensive, seem only to have become common articles of manufacture within recent times. ”

“ Yet it may so happen that the visitor has the particular object of seeing what is being made in the old palace, rather than, for the nonce, those far-famed treasures of ancient art, which have found their way ready-made into its galleries. ”

“ If one of them condescends to allow himself to be specially “noticed,” the others will soon manifest such tremendous signs of discontent, that the stranger having any private regard for the safety of his hands or throat, is apt rather to desist rapidly from the process of conciliation, than to run the risk of prolonging it. Castor, the pride of the present pack, is a perfect model of a large dog, of a dark tan, with coat rather long and curly, and little, if any, black about his muzzle. The others are lighter in colour, and straighter in the hair, but very tall, well-shaped animals. ”

“ Refreshed now and then with a draught of purer water than what surrounds them, old and young amongst them contrive, even in a posture not best adapted for vocalisation, to strike up a faint chorus, and suggest the idea of contentment with their lot, while it may chance to carry their thoughts for a while elsewhere, or lessen the sense of vertebral dislocation. On the whole, the sort of work is not probably so unhealthy as rice-cultivation in the swamps of America ”

“ It is said that the concentrated light of three or four of the fire-flies would make a small object clearly visible, so that if the eye has not seen, the mind has some data for imagining the effect of passing through their busy multitudes, all contemptuously independent of the roads or gauges to which the traveller is limited. ”

“ He may become painfully aware, as he passes up-stairs along the corridors, once glowing with matchless arabesques upon their roofs, that many an artist and workman is required to bring out their faded glories, or make “a clean job” of sundry places where the plaster has fallen off, and denuded entirely those skeleton laths which nobody particularly wants to see. ”

“ As for the glades of the Pine Forest, to which we resort after our other wanderings, they have had great poets and writers to expatiate upon them, and we can only say that they are not likely to disappoint expectation. ”

“ Antiquarians generally begin with the description in the Book of Esther of the “pavement of red and blue and white and black marble,” as affording evidence of an advanced state of that sort of inlaid work in Persia, whence they suppose he taste to have spread into Assyria and Greece. Mosaics a century older than the Christian era were known to writers two hundred years afterwards as still existing in a temple near Rome, at what is now called Palestrina, but was the classical Præneste. ”

“ Turning our eyes upwards, we seem to have more visitors from celestial regions than the fabled Endymion, and a sudden consciousness comes over us that, almost imperceptible specks as we are, we do indeed form, as astronomers say, part of that to us illimitable galaxy which closer home appears so distant. ”

“ There the ladies make head-dress ornaments of them; surely too bold and unscrupulous use of a phenomenon which has excited the deepest interest in naturalists and observers from the earliest ages. Far better that they should dance and glimmer out their little lives with the brevet-rank of elves, and please the eyes of all, instead of ministering to the vanity of a few. ”