Nathaniel Parker Willis

“ And find calm thoughts beneath the whispering tree;
To see, and hear, and breathe the evidence
Of God’s deep wisdom in the natural world!
It is to linger on ‘the magic face
Of human beauty,’ and from light and shade
Alike to draw a lesson; ’tis to love
The cadences of voices that are tuned
By majesty and purity of thought;
To gaze on woman’s beauty, as a star
Whose purity and distance make it fair;
And in the gush of music to be still,
And feel that it has purified the heart!
It is to love all virtue for itself,
All nature for its breathing evidence ”

“ Near Devonshire house I saw, fretting behind the slow-moving press of vehicle, a pair of magnificent and fiery blood horses, drawing a coach, which, though quite new, was of a color and picked out with a peculiar stripe that was familiar to my eye. The next glance convinced me that the livery was that of Lady Blessington; but, for the light chariot in which she used to drive, here was a stately coach—for the one tall footman, two—for the plain but elegant harness, a sumptuous and superb caparison—the whole turn-out on a scale of splendor unequalled by anything around us. ”

“ The ice crashes and loosens in the large rivers, and with the loosening of their frost-bound chains, the merry dance is led off to the ocean. If you would see waterfalls, it should be then; though the foliage is not around them, nor the sky or the moon-light so genial above. Niagara alone, of all the cataracts, remains unchanged. He rolls on in his calm sublimity, spring and autumn, summer and winter, the same. His floods seem never to increase by the melting of snow, nor to be drunk up by the fervour of the sun. ”

“ Just above it rises the abrupt and heavily wooded mountain, from which it derives its name; a thick grove hides it from the village at its foot; and, from the portico of the mansion, extend views in three directions unparalleled for varied and surprising beauty. A road, running between high-water mark and the park gate, skirts the river in eccentric windings for five or six miles; the brows of the hills descending to the Hudson in the west and north, are nobly wooded and threaded with circuitous paths, and all around lies the most romantic scenery of the most romantic river in the world. ”

“ The delicate flush has faded, and the light
Dead in her soft dark eye, and on her lip,
That was so exquisitely pure, the dew
Of the damp grave has fallen! Who, so lov'd,
Is left among the living? Who hath walk'd
The world with such a winning loveliness,
And on its bright, brief journey, gather'd up
Such treasures of affection? She was lov'd
Only as idols are. She was the pride
Of her familiar sphere—the daily joy
Of all who on her gracefulness might gaze,
And, in the light and music of her way,
Have a companion's portion. ”

“ When the tents of the summer camp are shining on the field; the flag, with its blood-bright stripes, waving against the foliage of the hills; the trumpet echoing from bluff to bluff, and the compact battalion cutting its trim line across the green-sward,—there are few more fairy spots in this working-day world.
On the extreme edge of the summit, overlooking the river, stands a marble shaft, pointing like a bright finger to glory,—the tomb of the soldier and patriot Kosciusko. The military colleges and other buildings skirt the parade on the side of the mountain ”

“ We were six days and a half accomplishing the hundred and eighty miles from Rome to Florence—slow travelling—but not 326 too slow in Italy, where every stone has its story, and every ascent of a hill its twenty matchless pictures, sprinkled with ruins, as a painter's eye could not imagine them. We looked down on the Eden-like valley of the Arno at sunrise, and again my heart leaped to see the tall dome of Florence, and the hills all about the queenly city, sparkling with palaces and bright in a sun that shines nowhere so kindly. ”

“ There are no ruined castles, nor old cathedrals. Every village has its small white church, with a tapering spire, large manufactories cluster on the water-courses, the small rivers are rapid and deep, the horses large and strong, the barns immense, the crops heavy, the people grave and hard at work, and not a pauper by the post together. We are very far north, too, and the climate is like New England. The wind, though it is midsummer, is bracing, and there is no travelling as in Italy, with one’s hat off and breast open, dissolving at midnight in the luxury of the soft air. ”

“ To turn unsatisfied from love to fame, has been a common transit in the history of gifted women. To turn unsatisfied from fame to love—and that, too, with no volatile caprice of disappointment, but with fame’s most brimming cup fairly won and fully tasted—is a novelty indeed. Simple every day love, with such experience on the heart’s record before it, has never been pictured, even in poetry.
Jenny Lind has genius, and the impulses and sensibilities of genius are an eternal Spring. She is more right and wise than would seem probable at a first glance, in marrying one younger than herself. ”

“ In its most subtle luxury. The air
Is like a breathing from a rarer world;
And the south wind seems liquid—it o’ersteals
My bosom and my brow so bathingly.
It has come over gardens, and the flowers
That kissed it are betrayed; for as it parts
With its invisible fingers my loose hair,
I know it has been trifling with the rose,
And stooping to the violet. There is joy
For all God’s creatures in it. The wet leaves
Are stirring at its touch, and birds are singing
As if to breathe were music, and the grass
Sends up its modest odor with the dew,
Like the small tribute of humility. ”

“ The dull colours of English autumnal foliage give you no conception of this marvellous phenomenon. The change here is gradual; in America it is the work of a night—of a single frost!
“Oh, to have seen the sun set on hills bright in the still green and lingering summer, and to awake in the morning to a spectacle like this!
“It is as if a myriad of rainbows were laced through the tree-tops—as if the sunsets of a summer—gold, purple, and crimson—had been fused in the alembic of the west, and poured back in a new deluge of light and colour over the wilderness. ”

“ A hasty farewell look, as we sped down the grand canal, at the gorgeous palaces, even less famous than beautiful—a glance at the disappearing Rialto, and we shot out into the Giudecca in a blaze of sunset glory. Oh how magnificently looked Venice in that light—rising behind us from the sea—all her superb towers and palaces, turrets and spires, fused into gold; and the waters about her, like a mirror of stained glass, without a ripple!
An hour and a half of hard rowing brought us to the nearest 255 land. You should go to Venice to know how like a dream a reality may be. ”

“ The Bosphorus is quite—there can be no manner of doubt of it—the most singularly beautiful scenery in the world. From Constantinople to the Black Sea, a distance of twenty miles, the two shores of Asia and Europe, separated by but half a mile of bright blue water, are lined by lovely villages, each with its splendid palace or two, its mosque and minarets, and its hundred small houses buried in trees, each with its small dark cemetery of cypresses and turbaned head-stones, and each with its valley stretching back into the hills, of which every summit and swell is crowned with a fairy kiosk. ”

“ The gentlemen in that carriage are Rubini, Lablache, and a gentleman who passes for the lady’s uncle; and the lady is Julia Grisi.
The smoke over the heart of the city begins to thicken into darkness, the gas lamps are shooting up, bright and star-like, along the Kensington road, and the last promenaders disappear. And now the world of London, the rich and gay portions of it at least, enjoy that which compensates them for the absence of the bright nights and skies of Italy—a climate within doors, of comfort and luxury, unknown under brighter heavens. ”

“ The passage through the highlands at West Point still bears the old name of Wey-gat, or Wind-gate; and one of the prettiest moving dioramas conceivable, is the working through the gorge of the myriad sailing-craft of the river. The sloops which ply upon the Hudson, by the way, are remarkable for their picturesque beauty, and for the enormous quantity of sail they carry on in all weathers; and nothing is more beautiful than the little fleets of from six to a dozen, all tacking or scudding together, like so many white sea-birds on the wing. ”

“ You step into the woods from the very pavement of one of the most populous streets in Florence; from dust and noise and a crowd of busy people to scenes where Boccacio might have fitly laid his "hundred tales of love." The river skirts the Cascine on one side, and the extensive grounds of a young Russian nobleman's villa on the other; and here at sunset come all the world to walk and drive, and on festas like this, to encamp, and keep holy-day under the trees. The whole place is more like a half-redeemed wild-wood in America, than a public promenade in Europe. ”

“ Between the Seven Towers and the Golden Horn you may count the “seven hills” of ancient Stamboul, the towering arches of the aqueduct of Valens, crossing from one to the other, and the swelling dome and gold-tipped minarets of a hundred imperial mosques crowning and surrounding their summits. What an Orient look do those gallery-bound and sky-piercing shafts give to the varied picture!
There is but one “Seraglio Point” in the world. Look at that tapering cape, shaped like a lady’s foot, projecting from Stamboul toward the shore of Asia, and dividing the bay from the sea of Marmora. ”

“ Martin’s lane, life appears to have become suddenly a struggle and a calamity. Turbulent and dirty women are everywhere visible through the open windows; the half-naked children at the doors look already care-worn and incapable of a smile; and the men throng the gin-shops, bloated, surly, and repulsive. Hurry through this leprous spot in the vast body of London, and let us emerge in the Strand.
You would think London Strand the main artery of the world. I suppose there is no thoroughfare on the face of the earth where the stream of human life runs with a tide so overwhelming. ”

“ The Friuli mountains rose in the north with the deep blue dyes of distance, breaking up the else level horizon; the shore of Italy lay like a low line-cloud in the west; the spot where the Brenta empties into the sea glowing in the blaze of the sunset. About us lay the smaller islands, the suburbs of the sea-city, and all among them, and up and down the Giudecca, and away off in the lagunes, were sprinkled the thousand gondolas, meeting and crossing in 250 one continued and silent panorama. The Lido, with its long wall hemmed in the bay, and beyond this lay the wide Adriatic. ”

“ I can compare standing on the top of Vesuvius and looking down upon the bay and city of Naples, to nothing but mounting a peak in the infernal regions overlooking paradise. The larger crater encircles you entirely for a mile, cutting off the view of the sides of the mountain, and from the elevation of the new cone, you look over the rising edge of this black field of smoke and cinders, and drop the eye at once upon Naples, lying asleep in the sun, with its lazy sails upon the water, and the green hills enclosing it clad in the indescribable beauty of an Italian atmosphere. ”

“ We were strongly impressed with these outer signs of the two natures of Kossuth. He has a heart like other men—his exquisitely moulded chin and lips of exceeding physical beauty and expression sufficiently show. But, from all that can reach these, his intellect is islanded away. The upper part of his face is calmly separate, not only from the movement, but from the look, of emotion. It is a mind unreachable by nerves—a brain that thinks on, as the sun pursues its way across the heavens, unhindered by the clouds that may gather beneath. ”

“ No cast gives you any idea worth having of the Apollo Belvidere. It is a god-like model of a man. The lightness and the elegance of the limbs; the free, fiery, confident energy of the attitude; the breathing, indignant nostril and lips; the whole statue's mingled and equal grace and power, are, with all its truth to nature, beyond any conception I had formed of manly beauty. It spoils one's eye for common men to look at it. It stands there like a descended angel, with a splendor of form and an air of power, that makes one feel what he should have been, and mortifies him for what he is. ”

“ A little lap of a valley opens right away from the door to the bosom of the bay, and in the midst of the glassy basin lies the bold peninsular promontory and fortification of Porto Ferrajo, like a castle in a loch, connected with the body of the island by a mere rib of sand. Off beyond sleeps the main-land of Italy, mountain and vale, like a smoothly-shaped bed of clouds; and for the foreground of the landscape, the valleys of Elba are just now green with fig-trees and vines, speckled here and there with fields of golden grain, and farm-houses shaded with all the trees of this genial climate. ”

“ If ever there was a writer who sees things as every one wishes to, and nobody else can—whose eyes penetrate just to the right depth through the skin of human nature, neither too much nor too little—who describes people with an unequalled novelty and just-enough-ness, that is to say, and at the same time, invariably betters the heart of the reader, it is this Swedish authoress. I would rather see her than any woman living whom I have not seen, and I feel very much interested that our country should cherish her, and show her its appreciation of her womanly and yet wonderful genius. ”

“ It is Sunday, and an Italian summer morning. I do not think my eyes ever woke upon so lovely a day. The long, lazy swell comes in from the Mediterranean as smooth as glass; the sails of a beautiful yacht, belonging to an English nobleman at Nice, and lying becalmed just now in the bay, are hanging motionless about the masts; the sky is without a speck, the air just seems to me to steep every nerve and fibre of the frame with repose and pleasure. Now and then in America I have felt a June morning that approached it, but never the degree, the fulness, the sunny softness of this exquisite clime. ”

“ On a wild crag to the left, a small, white marble monument, with the earth still fresh about it, marks the grave of some victim of the late naval battle. The town and fortress, miserable heaps of dirty stone, lie in the curve of the southern shore. A French brig-of-war is at anchor in the port, and broad, barren hills, stretching far away on every side, complete the scene before us. We run up the harbour, and tack to stand out again, without going ashore. Not a soul is to be seen, and the bay seems the very sanctuary of silence. ”

“ Still our people last—and though I should define the English climate as the one in which the human frame is in the highest condition, I should say of America, that it is the one in which you could get the most work out of it.
Atmosphere, in England and America, is the first of the necessaries of life. In Italy, it is the first of its luxuries. We breathe in America, and walk abroad, without thinking of these common acts but as a means of arriving at happiness. In Italy, to breathe and to walk abroad are themselves happiness. ”

“ It is now the middle of April, and, sitting at my window on the Rue Rivoli, I look through one of the long, clipped avenues of the Tuileries, and see an arch of green leaves, the sun of eight o'clock in the morning just breaking through the thin foliage and dappling the straight, even gravel-walk below, with a look of summer that makes my heart leap. The cholera has put an end to dissipation, and one gets up early, from necessity. It is delicious to step out before breakfast, and cross the street into those lovely gardens, for an hour or two of fresh air and reflection. ”

“ Can this be Athens? Are these the same isles and mountains Alcibiades saw, returning with his victorious galleys from the Hellespont; the same that faded on the long gaze of the conqueror of Salamis, leaving his ungrateful country for exile; the same that to have seen, for a Roman, was to be complete as a man; the same whose proud dames wore the golden grasshopper in their hair, as a boasting token that they had sprung from the soil; the same where Pericles nursed the arts, and Socrates and Plato taught “humanity,” and Epicurus walked with his disciples, looking for truth? ”

“ There is nothing like—nothing equal to Venice. She is the city of the imagination—the realization of romance—the queen of splendor and softness and luxury. Allow all her decay—feel all her degradation—see the "Huns in her palaces," and the "Greek upon her mart," and, after all, she is alone in the world for beauty, and, spoiled as she has been by successive conquerors, almost for riches too. Her churches of marble, with their floors of precious stones, and walls of gold and mosaic; her ducal palace, with its world of art and massy magnificence ”

“ Yet the world contains nothing like Constantinople! If we could compel all our senses into one, and live by the pleasures of the eye, it were a paradise untranscended. The Bosphorus—the superb, peculiar, incomparable Bosphorus! the dream-like, fairy-built seraglio! the sights within the city so richly strange, and the valleys and streams around it so exquisitely fair! the voluptuous softness of the dark eyes haunting your every step on shore, and the spirit-like swiftness and elegance of your darting caique upon the waters! In what land is the priceless sight such a treasure? ”

“ What can you believe ill of a people whose slightest look toward you is made up of grace and kindness.
We are dawdling along thirty miles a day through Burgundy, sick to death of the bare vine-stakes, and longing to see a festooned vineyard of Lombardy. France is such an ugly country! The diligences lumber by, noisy and ludicrous; the cow-tenders wear cocked hats; the beggars are in the true French extreme, theatrical in all their misery; the climate is rainy and cold, and as unlike that of Italy as if a thousand leagues separated them, and the roads are long, straight, dirty, and uneven. ”

“ The anchor is dragged in by this rushing Hellespont, and holds on as if the bridge of Xerxes were tangled about the flukes. “Up she comes at last,” and, yielding to her broad canvass, the gallant frigate begins to make headway against the current. There is nothing in the whole world of senseless matter, so like a breathing creature as a ship! The energy of her motion, the beauty of her shape and contrivance, and the ease with which she is managed by the one mind upon her quarter-deck, to whose voice she is as obedient as the courser to the rein, inspire me with daily admiration. ”

“ Beneath us lay a map of a hundred valleys, all bathed and glowing in unclouded light, and on the limit of the horizon, far off as the eye could span, lay a long sparkling line of water, like a silver frame around the landscape. It was our first view of the Adriatic. We looked at it with the singular and indefinable emotion with which one always sees a celebrated water for the first time—a sensation, it seems to me, which is like that of no other addition to our knowledge. The Mediterranean at Marseilles, the Arno at Florence, the Seine at Paris, affected me in the same way. ”

“ Men and manners are so nearly alike over the world, and the same annoyances disturb so certainly, wherever we are, the gratification of seeing and conversing with our living fellow-beings, that it is only by the mingled illusion of fancy and memory, by getting apart, and peopling the deserted palace or the sombre ruin from the pages of a book, that we ever realise the anticipated pleasure of standing on celebrated ground. The eye, the curiosity, are both disappointed, and the voice of a common companion reduces the most romantic ruin to a heap of stone. ”

“ The last days of March have come, clothed in sunshine and summer. The grass is tall in the Campagna, the fruit-trees are in blossom, the roses and myrtles are in full flower, the shrubs are in full leaf, the whole country about breathes of June. We left Rome this morning on an excursion to the "Fountain of Egeria." A more heavenly day never broke. The gigantic baths of Caracalla turned us aside once more, and we stopped for an hour in the shade of their romantic arches, admiring the works, while we execrated the character of their ferocious builder. ”

“ On every sloping hill-side, in every rural nook, in the court of the splendid mosque, stands a dark necropolis, a small city of the dead, shadowed so thickly by the close growing cypresses, that the light of heaven penetrates but dimly. You can have no conception of the beauty it adds to the landscape. And then from the bosom of each, a slender minaret shoots into the sky as if pointing out the flight of the departed spirit, and if you enter within its religious darkness, you find a taste and elegance unknown in more civilised countries ”

“ The next morning, after toiling up a considerable ascent, we suddenly rounded the shoulder of a mountain, and found ourselves at the edge of a long glen, walled up at one extremity by a precipice with an old town upon its brow, and a waterfall pouring off at its side, and opening away at the other into a broad, gently-sloped valley, cultivated like a garden as far as the eye could distinguish. I think I have seen an engraving of it in the Landscape Annual. Taken together, it is positively the most beautiful view I ever saw, from the road edge, as you wind up into the town of Acquapendente. ”

“ I threw open the southern window, and looked back toward the marshes of Lombardy, and if I did not say the poetical thing, it was because
"It is the silent grief that cuts the heart-strings."
In sober sadness, one may well regret any country where his life has been filled fuller than elsewhere of sunshine and gladness; and such, by a thousand enchantments, has Italy been to me. Its climate is life in my nostrils, its hills and valleys are the poetry of such things, and its marbles, pictures, and palaces, beset the soul like the very necessities of existence. You can exist elsewhere, but oh! ”