Nathaniel Parker Willis

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Brera is a noble palace, occupied by the public galleries of statuary and painting. I felt on leaving Florence that I could give pictures a very long holyday. To live on them, as one does in Italy, is like dining from morn till night. The famous Guercino, is at Milan, however, the "Hagar," which Byron talks of so enthusiastically, and I once more surrendered myself to a cicerone. The picture catches your eye on your first entrance. There is that harmony and effect in the color that mark a masterpiece, even in a passing glance. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is really melancholy to go through Italy, and see how her people are suffering, and her nobles starving under oppression.
We crossed the Appenines in two of the finest days that ever shone, and descending through clouds and mist to the Tuscan frontier, entered the lovely valley of the Arno, sparkling in the sunshine, with all its palaces and spires, as beautiful as ever. I am at Florence once more, and parting from the delightful party with whom I have travelled for two months. I start for Rome to-morrow, in company with five artists. ”

“ The Tuileries are certainly very magnificent, and, to walk across from the Seine to the Rue Rivoli, and look up the endless walks and under the long perfect arches cut through the trees, may give one a very pretty surprise for once—but a winding lane is a better place to enjoy the loveliness of green leaves, and a single New England elm, letting down its slender branches to the ground in the inimitable grace of nature, has, to my eye, more beauty than all the clipped vistas from the king's palace to the Arc de l'Etoile, the Champs Elysées inclusive. ”

“ The Simplon, which you pass in a day, divides two nations, each other's physical and moral antipodes. The handsome, picturesque, lazy, unprincipled Italian, is left in the morning in his own dirty and exorbitant inn; and, on the evening of the same day, having crossed but a chain of mountains, you find yourself in a clean auberge, nestled in the bosom of a Swiss valley, another language spoken around you, and in the midst of a people, who seem to require the virtues they possess to compensate them for more than their share of uncomeliness. ”

“ There was a heavy mist upon the water, and we could not see across, but it looked like as quiet and pleasant a shore as might be found in the world—the woods wild, and of uncommonly rich foliage for Italy, and the slopes of the hills beautiful. Saving the road, and here and there a house with no sign of an inhabitant, there can scarcely be a lonelier wilderness in America. We stopped two hours at an inn on its banks, and whether it was the air, or the influence of the perfect stillness about us, my companions went to sleep, and I could scarce resist my own drowsiness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the right of the long gallery, as you enter, stands the bust of the "Young Augustus"—a kind of beautiful, angelic likeness of Napoleon, as Napoleon might have been in his youth. It is a boy, but with a serene dignity about the forehead and lips, that makes him visibly a boy-emperor—born for his throne, and conscious of his right to it. There is nothing in marble more perfect, and I never saw anything which made me realize that the Romans of history and poetry were men—nothing which brought them so familiarly to my mind, as the feeling for beauty shown in this infantine bust. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is strange how such high walls shut out the world. The court of the Louvre is in the very centre of the busiest quarter of Paris, thousands of persons passing and repassing constantly at the extremity of the long arched entrances, and yet, standing on the pavement of that lonely court, no living creature in sight but the motionless grenadiers at either gate, the noises without coming 45 to your ear in a subdued murmur, like the wind on the sea, and nothing visible above but the sky, resting like a ceiling on the lofty walls, the impression of utter solitude is irresistible. ”

“ 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! ”

“ As we approached the door of the church, the full moon, about three hours risen, poured broadly under the arch of the portico, inundating the whole front of the lofty dome with a flood of light, such as falls only on Italy. There seemed to be no atmosphere between. Daylight is scarce more intense. The immense square, with its slender obelisk and embracing crescents of colonnade, lay spread out as definitely to the eye as at noon, and the two famous fountains shot up their clear waters to the sky, the moonlight streamed through the spray, and every drop as visible and bright as a diamond. ”

“ To see his maimed followers, creeping along the corridors, clothed and fed by the bounty he left, in a place devoted to his soldiers alone, their old comrades about them, and all glowing with one feeling of devotion to his memory, to speak to them, to hear their stories of—"L'Empereur" it is better than a thousand histories to make one feel the glory of "the great captain." The interior of the dome is vast, and of a splendid style of architecture, and out from one of its sides extends a superb chapel, hung all round with the tattered flags taken in his victories alone. ”

“ If there is a spot in the world that could wean one from his native home, it is Florence! "Florence the fair," they call her! I have passed four of the seven months I have been in Italy, here—and I think I shall pass here as great a proportion of the rest of my life. There is nothing that can contribute to comfort and pleasure, that is not within the reach of the smallest means in Florence. I never saw a place where wealth made less distinction. The choicest galleries of art in the world, are open to all comers. The palace of the monarch may be entered and visited, and enjoyed by all. ”

“ And pleased they seemed to be—for there were hundreds of dark-haired and well-made men, with faces and forms for heroes, standing and keeping time with the well-played instruments, as peacefully as if there were no such thing as liberty, and no meaning in the foreign uniforms crowding them from their own pavement. And there were the women of Placenza, nodding from the balconies to the white mustaches and padded coats strutting below, and you would never dream Italy thought herself wronged, watching the exchange of courtesies between her dark-eyed daughters and these fair-haired coxcombs. ”

“ It was a sunset without a cloud; but at the horizon the sky was dyed of a deep orange, which softened away toward the zenith almost imperceptibly, the whole west like a wall of burning gold. The mingled softness and splendor of these skies is indescribable. Everything is touched with the same hue. A mild, yellow glow is all over the canals and buildings. The air seems filled with glittering golden dust, and the lines of the architecture, and the outlines of the distant islands, and the whole landscape about you is mellowed and enriched with a new and glorious light. ”

“ With us it is nature only, here it is almost all art. Our rivers are lovely, because the outline of the shore is graceful, and particularly because the vegetation is luxuriant. The hills are green, the foliage deep and lavish, the rocks grown over with vines or moss, the mountains in the distance covered with pines and other forest-trees; everything is wild, and nothing looks bare or sterile. The rivers of France are crowned on every height with ruins, and in the bosom of every valley lies a cluster of picturesque stone cottages ”

“ The palace of the Duke is the prettiest I ever saw. There is not a room in it you could not live in—and no feeling is less common than this in visiting palaces. It is furnished with splendor, too—but with such an eye to comfort, such taste and elegance, that you would respect the prince's affections that should order such a one. The Duke of Lucca, however, is never at home. He is a young man of twenty-eight or thirty, and spends his time and money in travelling, as caprice takes him. ”

“ I took my leave of this true poet after half a day passed in his company, with the impression that he makes upon every one—of a man whose sincerity and kind-heartedness were the most prominent traits in his character. Simple in his language and feelings, a fond father, an affectionate husband, businessman of the closest habits of industry—one reads his strange imaginations, and passionate, high-wrought, and even sublimated poetry, and is in doubt at which most to wonder—the man as he is, or the poet as we know him in his books. ”

“ Two streets diverge before you, as far away as you can see into the heart of the city, a magnificent fountain sends up its waters in the centre, the façades of two handsome churches face you as you enter, and on the right and left are gardens and palaces of princely splendor. Gay and sumptuous equipages cross it in every direction, driving out to the villa Borghese, and up to the Pincian mount, the splendid troops of the Pope are on guard, and the busy and stirring population of modern Rome swell out to its limit like the ebb and flow of the sea. ”

“ I have seen more extensive ones, but never one that comprehended more beauty and interest. Lyons lies at the foot, with the Saone winding through its bosom in abrupt curves; the Rhone comes down from the north on the other side of the range of mountains, and meeting the Saone in a broad stream below the town, they stretch off to the south, through a diversified landscape; the Alps rise from the east like the edges of a thunder-cloud, and the mountains of Savoy fill up the interval to the Rhone. All about the foot of the monument lie gardens, of exquisite cultivation ”

“ I am a great lover of out-of-doors, and I have ransacked Paris thoroughly. I know it all from its broad faubourgs to its obscurest cul de sac. I have hunted with antiquaries for coins and old armor; with lovers of adventure for the amusing and odd; with the curious for traces of history; with the romantic for the picturesque. Paris is a world for research. It contains more odd places, I believe, more odd people, and every way more material for uncommon amusement, than any other city in the universe. One might live a life of novelty without crossing the barrier. ”

“ I was drawn by the agreeable odor of the incense to the paling of the high altar. The censers were flung by unseen hands from the doors of the sacristy at the sides, and an unseen chorus of 351 boys in the choir behind, broke in occasionally with the high-keyed chant that echoes with its wild melody from every arch and corner of these immense churches. It seems running upon the highest note that the ear can bear, and yet nothing could be more musical. A man knelt on the pavement near me, with two coarse baskets beside him, and the traces of long and dirty travel from his heels to his hips. ”

“ Bolsena.—we walked in advance of the vetturino along the borders of this lovely and beautiful lake till we are tired. Our artists have taken off their coats with the heat, and sit, a quarter of a mile further on, pointing in every direction at these unparalleled views. The water is as still as a mirror, with a soft mist on its face, and the water-fowl in thousands are diving and floating within gunshot of us. An afternoon in June could not be more summer-like, and this, to a lover of soft climate, is no trifling pleasure. ”

“ It is Sunday, and the morning has been of a heavenly, summer, sunny calmness, such as is seen often in Italy, and once in a year, perhaps, in New England. It is a kind of atmosphere, that, to breathe is to be grateful and happy. We have been to the Armenian island—a little gem on the bosom of the Lagune, a mile from Venice, where stands the monastery, to which place Lord Byron went daily to study and translate with the fathers. There is just room upon it for a church, a convent, and a little garden. ”

“ It is the lounging place of military men particularly; and every evening from six to midnight, it is thronged by every class of gayly dressed people, officers off duty, soldiers, polytechnic scholars, ladies, and strangers of every costume and complexion, promenading to and fro in the light of the cafés and the dazzling shops, sheltered completely from the weather, and enjoying, without expense or ceremony, a scene more brilliant than the most splendid ball-room in Paris. We lounged up and down the long echoing pavement an hour. ”