Neith Boyce

“ The path to Corsena skirts the hill crowned by Lugliano, the picturesque jewel of the whole region; and then penetrates a long narrow valley, solitary and looking quite untouched, with its woods and little plats of turf and wild flowers among the rocks. Yet in reality the peasant thrift noted by Montaigne still uses every available bit of ground and water. ”

“ It was at Lucca that Heine, after a sixteen-mile walk from Bagni, met on a festival day his two friends—Francesca and the Irish lady, Matilda. One can see the very tombstones, with their figures carved by della Quercia, on which Matilda made jokes, till Heinrich told her that a pretty woman without religion was like a flower without perfume. ”

“ And here is an exact picture of what it is like to-day.
"We have taken a sort of eagle's nest in this place—the highest house of the highest of the three villages which are called Bagni di Lucca, and which lie at the heart of a hundred mountains sung to continually by a rushing mountain stream. The sound of the river and of the cicale is all the noise we hear. Austrian drums and carriage-wheels cannot vex us, God be thanked for it. The silence is full of joy and consolation. ...
"The air of the place seems to penetrate the heart, and not the lungs alone; it draws you, raises you, excites you. ”

“ Moreover, Francesca's upper lip was short, not long like an Englishwoman's. "She often," says Heinrich, "leaped up dancing as she spoke, and it is possible that dancing was her most natural language. And my heart danced ever with her, executing the most difficult pas. ... And if I, dear reader, cannot tell thee what love really is, I can at least describe with the utmost accuracy how a man behaves and how he feels when he is enamored among the Apennines. For he then behaves like a fool; he dances on rocks and hills, believing that the whole world dances with him." ”

“ A woman in an upper window is winnowing her tiny harvest, tossing it in a basket while the wind carries away the chaff. The babies in the street are carrying their bunches of stalks, and by the bordering wall an old woman is picking up the grains that have fallen in the dust.
Heine discovered a remarkable fact about this neighborhood of Lucca, when he was writing at the Baths the third book of his "Reisebilder." ”

“ Mountain air without its keenness—sheathed in Italian sunshine—think what that must be! And the beauty and the solitude—for with a few paces we get free of the habitations of men—all is delightful to me. ”

“ Now, as in the sixteenth century, and who knows how much earlier, the hills, wherever possible, are cultivated and planted to the very top. "Each gradation of every hill," as the philosopher observed, "is surrounded on the outer edge by a circle of vines, within which you see another circle of green corn; and the slope above this is covered with fruit trees till you come to another circle of vines. And each little pocket of soil on the hill-side or along the brook grows its trifle of wheat." ”

“ A letter to Peacock in July is worth quoting in full for its vivid picture of the poet al fresco, in the delicious environment of Bagni.
"Our life here is as unvaried by external events as if we were at Marlow," he writes "We have been over to the Casino, where I cannot say there is anything remarkable, the women being far removed from anything which the most liberal annotator would interpret into beauty or grace, and apparently possessing no intellectual excellence to compensate the deficiency. ”

“ As it is—except in the dark—there can be no peril. The atmosphere here, unlike that of the rest of Italy, is diversified with clouds, which grow in the middle of the day, and sometimes bring thunder and lightning and hail, and decrease toward the evening, leaving only those finely woven veils of vapor which we see in English skies, and flocks of fleecy and slowly moving clouds which all vanish before sunset ”

“ The reason for this economy is connected with the fact that the population consists almost entirely of women and babies. In spite of its smiling look of plenty, its luxuriance of olive, fig, and garlanding vine, the country is bitterly poor. The women and children can easily till the soil, thin on these rocky slopes ”

“ I assure you it is well that it is so, for the dances, especially the waltz, are so exquisitely beautiful that it would be a little dangerous to the newly unfrozen senses and imagination of us migrators from the neighborhood of the pole. ”

“ However, these women and children—whose multitude really presents a serious problem—seem active, cheerful, and even prosperous. In mid-July they are all busy gathering in, from nook and corner, the wheat. ”

“ In the spring of 1818, Shelley and his wife, Mary, with their two children, and Claire Clairmont with Allegra, her daughter and Byron's, travelled into Italy together. Allegra, then two years old, was to be conveyed to her father at Venice, and Shelley was the intermediary between the hysterical Miss Clairmont and Lord Byron, who firmly refused to see or communicate directly with her. ”