Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“ I consider the gardens and terraces and pleasure-grounds that adorn Dresden more beautiful than those of almost any other capital. The fault is ours, not theirs. The pleasure-grounds of a city ought to be, and in this case are, adapted to the seasons during which the inhabitants make use of them. But in the height of summer, Nature only in her free fresh beauty can afford enjoyment. We have no business to come here now in search of wood and stream and field, which alone can content our souls, athirst and wearied by the heat. ”

“ When I returned from Italy I had tried the diligence, and been knocked up, and obliged to abandon it after the first night; yet then I enjoyed perfect health. Now I complained, and with reason, of most painful sensations; yet the fatigue I endured seemed to take away weariness instead of occasioning it. I felt light of limb and in good spirits. On the shores of France I shook the dust of accumulated cares from off me; I forgot disappointments, and banished sorrow: weariness of body replaced beneficially weariness of soul—so much heavier, so much harder to bear. ”

“ Evening has come, and the moon, so often friendly to me, now at its full, rises over the city. Often, when here before, I looked on this scene, at this hour, or later, for often I expected S.'s return from Palazzo Mocenigo, till two or three in the morning; I watched the glancing of the oars of the gondolas, and heard the far song, and saw the palaces sleeping in the light of the moon, which veils by its deep shadows all that grieved the eye and heart in the decaying palaces of Venice. ”

“ Passing this extensive palace, we ascended the height on which the Hradschin is situated; old princely Prague, the native city of the savage Ziska, of the martyred Huss, and of generations of resolute, free, and noble citizens, lay beneath in sleepy decay. It is impossible not to ponder upon the world’s fate. Had the Prince Palatine been a hero; had Wallenstein, by birth a Bohemian, not fallen in his youth into the hands of the Jesuits; had he grown up as he was baptized, a Lutheran, would not Bohemia have been able to maintain its political and religious liberty? ”

“ There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter enchanted ground. We live in a palace; though an inn, such it is: and other palaces have been robbed of delicately-carved mouldings and elegant marbles, to decorate the staircase and doorways. You know the composition with which they floor the rooms here, resembling marble, and called everywhere in Italy Terrazi Veneziani: this polished uniform surface, whose colouring is agreeable to the eye, gives an air of elegance to the rooms ”

“ I could only follow the general sense, as they recite in Venetian; but the subject of the verse, high and heroic, the associations called up—the beauty of the spot—a sort of dignity in the gestures of the elder boatman, and nothing harsh, though it might be monotonous, in their chaunt—the whole thing gave me inexpressible pleasure—it was a Venetian scene, dressed in its best; and the imagination was wrapped in perfect enjoyment.
The weeks pass away, and we are soon, I am sorry to say, about to leave Venice. We have taken our sight-seeing quietly, and each day has had a novel pleasure. ”

“ It cannot be expected that Italy should be able to liberate itself in a time of lethargic peace like the present. And the attempts of the few who, from time to time, are driven by indignation and shame to take up arms, are but the occasion of tears and grief. They form a band of hidden and obscure victims, which each year that power devours that holds them in slavery. It may even be doubted whether an European commotion would give an occasion favourable to Italy. We must not forget that the people are demoralised and degenerate. ”

“ The life of a soldier in the Austrian service is so hard, ill-fed, and worse paid, that these poor wretches often hold out long; but they are forced, at last, to yield: nor is the punishment ill imagined, that he who sheds blood should be sent to deal in blood in the legal way. But the root of the evil still rests in the absence of education and civilisation; and one must pity the poor fellows, taken from their glorious mountains and sunny lake, and sent to herd among the sullen Austrians, far in the north, where the sound of their musical Italian shall never reach them more. ”

“ There is something singular in boiling metal, the sight of which gives a new idea to the mind, a new sensation to the soul. Boiling water, or other liquid, presents only an inanimate element, changed to the touch, not to the eye; but molten metal, red and fiery, takes a new appearance, and seems to have life—the heat appears to give it voluntary action, and the sense of its power of injury adds to the emotion with which it is regarded; as well as the fact that it takes and preserves the form into which it flows. In this every-day world a new sensation is a new delight. ”

“ From the side of this rock springs the Presbichthor—a natural arch of vast size, that spans a ravine. The face of the rock from which it springs is cut into terraces; and you climb higher and higher, from one to the other, and reach the summit of the arch. The scene is inconceivably wild. Earth looks rent, convulsed, shattered—isolated, disjointed mountains, rising abruptly from the plain, their sides clothed by firs, are spread around. The majestic arch forms an object of great beauty in the midst. There is an inn here for the refreshment of travellers. ”

“ For as painting cannot picture forth motion, so words are incapable of expressing commotion in the soul. It stirs, like passion, the very depths of our being; like love allied to ruin, yet happy in possession, it fills the soul with mingled agitation and calm. A portion of the cataract arches over the lowest platform, and the spray fell thickly on us, as standing on it and looking up, we saw wave, and rock, and cloud, and the clear heavens through its glittering ever-moving veil. ”

“ The culture, vines and Indian corn, have arrived at maturity, and the fields are alive with labourers, gathering in the last harvest and busied with the vintage. These gay varied fields on one hand, the picturesque and placid lake on the other; the majestic Alps before, and blue sky to dress all in cheerful and summer hues, impart every delight which this journey can have, but one—I cannot help repining that the horses’ heads are not turned the other way, and that I am not entering Italy instead of leaving it. ”

“ We must look on the state of society from a wholly different point of view—we must think of the hunger of the mind; of the nobler aspirations of the soul, held in check and blighted—of the tendency of man to improve, here held down—of the peculiar and surpassing gifts of genius appertaining to this people, who are crushed and trod under foot by the jealousy of government—to understand, with how dead and intolerable a weight King Log hangs round the necks of those among them, who regret the generous passions and civic virtues of bygone times. ”

“ Among acquaintance, in the every-day scenes of life, want of means brings with it mortification, to embitter still more the perpetual necessity of self-denial. In society you are weighed with others according to your extrinsic possessions; your income, your connexions, your position, make all the weight—you yourself are a mere feather in the scale. But what are these to me now? My home is the readiest means of conveyance I can command, or the inn at which I shall remain at night—my only acquaintance the companions of my wanderings—the single business of my life to enjoy the passing scene. ”

“ Besides all that Rome itself affords of delightful to the eye and imagination, I revisit it as the bourne of a pious pilgrimage. The treasures of my youth lie buried here.
The sky is bright—the air impregnated with the soft odours of spring—we take our books and wile away the morning among the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, or the Coliseum. From the shattered walls of the former, the view over the city and the Campagna is very beautiful. The Palatine is near at hand, and majestic ruins guide the eye to where the golden palace spreads its vast extent. ”

“ After loitering awhile, we ascended the bank by a convenient and wide flight of some eighty steps, and reached the villa Giulia, whose grounds look upon the lake of Lecco. It was all shut up, as we were late. We found our way however, across the promontory to a little harbour on the water’s edge. Surely on earth there is no pleasure (excepting that derived from moral good) so great as lingering, during the soft shades of an Italian evening, surrounded by all the beauty of an Italian landscape, sheltered by the pure radiance of an Italian sky—and then to skim the calm water towards one’s home ”

“ Every priest bids his penitents confess, not only their participation in any act or thought inimical to the church or to the government—not only to denounce father, husband, or child, who might trust to them the secret of their lives—but to reveal every little circumstance that may tend to discover the lovers of liberty. Can it be wondered that men who wished to regenerate their country in the face of so penetrating, so almost omnipotent a power, should cloak themselves in impenetrable secrecy, and strive to check the influence by counter-terrors,—equally awful? ”

“ The early Carbonari were men who were actuated by deep-rooted love of their country, and detestation of the vice, ignorance, and slavery into which Italy had fallen; they entertained the belief that means terrible and unflinching could alone regenerate a people sunk in superstition and slavery. The triumph of the Carbonari was the proclamation of the constitutional government at Naples. But even then the sect was no longer the same. It had transgressed against the great and permanent moral laws by which society ought to be governed; it had been guilty of crimes—now it sunk into feebleness. ”

“ I feel, though usually I prefer statuary to painting, and there are some statues—and particularly an ancient bronze of a boy praying, that I have regarded with delight; still my mind was full before, the rest can but overflow. The gallery of Berlin will, I fear, become a vague, though glorious dream, for the most part, leaving distinct only a few images that can never be effaced. ”

“ Fault has been found with the artificial structure of the gardens of Isola Bella; but it must be remembered that its shape is so conical, that without the assistance of these terraces the soil would be washed into the lake. It is acknowledged that Italian taste in gardening is not our taste; but with the wild mountain paths so near, and scenery impending over on such a scale, that man’s art vanishes among it, as the path of a boat on the sea, one the less objects to a little nook of ground—one’s immediate habitation—being adorned with artificial embellishments. ”

“ We met many barges towed up the stream by horses up to their middles in the cold foggy river. The hills grew higher and steeper—broken into precipice and peak—crowned by ruined towers and castles. To a certain degree, it might be called a miniature Rhine; yet it had a peculiar character of its own, more still, more secluded than the nobler river. There were no country seats; no large towns nor cities; but the villages, each with its spire, and overlooked by a ruined tower on a neighbouring height, succeeded to each other frequently. ”

“ Perhaps more than any people, as I see them now, the French require the restraint of good manners. They are desirous of pleasing, it is true; but their amour propre is so sensitive, and their tempers so quick, that they are easily betrayed into anger and vehemence. I am more sorry, on another score. The blessing which the world now needs is the steady progress of civilisation: freedom, by degrees, it will have, I believe. Meanwhile, as the fruits of liberty, we wish to perceive the tendency of the low to rise to the level of the high—not the high to be dragged down to the low. ”

“ To a passing stranger, the Duomo comprises so much of Milan. It is chiefly the outside, with its multitudinous and snow-white pinnacles, that arrests the attention and charms the eye; a moonlight hour passed in the Piazza del Duomo—now beneath the black shadow of the building, then emerging into the clear white light—and looking up to see the marble spires point glittering to the sky, is a pleasure never to be forgotten. ”

“ How sad a thing is human society: yet it is comforting, even where we find the laws by which it is said to be held together—but which ought rather to be likened to an iron yoke, pressing it down and depriving it of its native strength and elasticity—yet, I say, it warms my heart when I find the individuals that compose a population, poor, humble, ignorant, misguided, yet endowed with some of the brightest gifts of our nature, and bearing in their faces the stamp of intelligence and feeling. ”