“ Only one palace is of granite, and but one church, St. Isaac’s, of marble.
The energy which has reared such a city out of a bog in less than two centuries betokens the one-man energy which its founder inspired and illustrated. Still, St. Petersburg, as a look from an elevation will show, unless it be approached as we approached it, by the gulf and river, is a vast plain, if not a swamp. The Neva saves it. It is a splendid river, and makes its delta where the city stands. It is a city of islands, connected by beautiful bridges. Red granite faces the banks and makes the quays solid structures. ”

“ Every one of the three hundred thousand inhabitants who crowd Vienna and its interminable suburbs seems to reckon it a duty to make his life a commentary. They are more devoted friends of joviality, pleasure, and good living, and more bitter enemies of everything like care or thinking,—a more eating, drinking, good-natured, ill-educated, hospitable, and laughing people,—than any other of Germany, or, perhaps, of Europe. Their climate and soil, the corn and wine with which Heaven has blessed them, exempt them from any very anxious degree of thought about their own wants ”

“ These were two beautiful Russian boys, brothers, of the ages of nine and seven, with whom we voyaged on the Mediterranean and formed an acquaintance which has been continued in Florence. In all my life I never saw such enchanting little fellows,—simple, natural, frank, and free, yet perfect gentlemen in air and expression, displaying, with the utmost ease, grace and polish of manner, tact, wit, and savoir-faire truly astonishing. They always came to our carriage at the Cascine, and, lounging on the steps, chatted to us in French between the pieces of music. ”

“ For the first time in ten years the depths of Etna had been stirred, and I thanked God for my detention at Malta, and the singular hazard of travel which had brought me here, to his very base, to witness a scene the impression of which I shall never lose to my dying day. Although the eruption may continue, and the mountain pour forth fiercer fires and broader tides of lava, I cannot but think that the first upheaval, which lets out the long-imprisoned forces, will not be equalled in grandeur by any later spectacle. ”

“ To guide a carriage through these crowded, encumbered, disorderly, narrow streets, without either occasioning or sustaining damage, is, perhaps, the highest achievement of the coach-driving art. Our own knights of the whip, with all their scientific and systematic excellencies, must here yield the palm to the practical superiority of their Austrian brethren. Nothing can equal the dexterity with which a Vienna coachman winds himself, and winds himself rapidly, through every little aperture, and, above all, at the sharp turns of the streets. People on foot, indeed, must look about them ”

“ The tops of the houses—cornices—are lined with marble figures larger than life; the pediments are alive with men, women, children, and horses, in high relief; and along the sidewalks are sitting and standing celebrities in stone, whose very pedestals contain enough to employ the admiration for weeks; and yet this is but the approach to the famous street that, beginning at the castle of the Kaiser, ends in the Brandenburg Gate,—I am merely within the Garden of Eden, with long vistas of prospective bliss extending interminably before. ”

“ Let her wear the richest silk ever spun in Italy, and the haughtiest Hungarian hat, with its aigrette of a dove’s wing, your Venetian lady of blue blood is not distinguishable, except by what she has upon her neck. And this is a gold chain, of apparently countless links, beautifully brilliant, with that reddish tinge which has so often been the perplexity of painters, though Titian mastered it, as he did everything else; and falling from the throat is gathered in a coil at the waist, where, the larger and heavier the knot, the higher the patent of social splendor. ”

“ Paris, pleasure capital of the world, the ideal cosmopolitan city, a thousand different delights for a thousand different tastes, is as fascinating to the scholar and bookworm as to the tourist and the belle of fashion. The weary old world would die of melancholy if the light of gay Paris were to go out. Lutetia, as the Romans called the ancient town, is still the merry child in the family of nations. Fortune gave it favors without stint. Emperors and kings delighted to adorn it with a lavishness equalled by the lasting splendor of their gifts. ”

“ But for me the main charm of the walk is not the sight of this noisy torrent, but the superb view of Riva that I get on my way back upon issuing from one of the tunnels. The eye, accustomed for a moment to the darkness, is all the more sensitive to the rich soft light which bathes the mountains and the town. A gentle breeze ripples the lake, and the brightly-painted houses that fringe the beach are seen indistinctly in the water, where they look like a line of waving banners. ”

“ In every moment of spare time sailors, women, and children are busy washing, sweeping, polishing every part with infinite care and pains; and when their little vessel makes its exit from the port, all fresh and shining like a holiday-coach, they all stand on the poop and accept with dignity the mute compliments which they gather from the glances of the spectators along the canals.
From canal to canal, and from bridge to bridge, I finally reached the dyke of the Boompjes upon the Meuse, where boils and bubbles all the life of the great commercial city. ”

“ Prim parterres, where masses of brilliant flowers bloom all the year round, are enclosed by walks along which orange-trees and myrtles have been bent and trimmed into whimsical patterns. There are dark and winding alleys of cedars where at every turn some surprise is planned. Here is a grotto made of shells,—there an obelisk, or a mosaic column, or a horse of bronze, or a fountain of clear water in which the attendant tritons and nymphs would doubtless disport were they not petrified into marble. ”

“ The steamer puts off, and soon separates me from the landscape that has been my delight for three days,—the blue bay with its verdant banks, the softly-shaded hills which enclose it, the snow-covered chain of the Simplon in the background. As we approach the southern end of the lake a colossal bronze statue of San Carlo Borromeo on the summit of a hill near Arona comes into sight. From head to foot the saint measures little less than eighty feet, and the pedestal on which he stands adds to his height half as much more. ”

“ In its long day Paris has suffered most of the ills that civic life is heir to. Its people have been subject to political maladies from time to time, that have endangered its very existence. A strange career, a blend of demoniac fury and light-hearted gaiety, yesterday its streets flowing with citizen and royal blood, to-day they echo with jubilant laughter, to-morrow—? The wheel is more likely to revolve than to stand long still. Paris alone among the great capitals of the world prefers change to stability, which is only another expression of her happy, mercurial temperament. ”

“ The water, however, mingles so intricately with the land that it is impossible to go many steps without coming upon a bridge and a canal,—not the canal of the artist, all blue except where richer tints are reflected by the architecture on either side, but narrow, crooked, overhung by ugly houses, and rather less sweet to the nostrils than becomes a city famous for its love of violets. ”

“ The Matterhorn seems to dominate the whole district of Zermatt like a pervading spirit. It is difficult to lose sight of it. Through rifts in the pine-wood, over grassy bluffs, [Pg 121] from the depths of dark ravines, from one’s chamber window, the giant peak is seen piercing the blue air above. The play of light and shadow upon it as the hours roll by is in itself a study. Facing the earliest beams, as the sun rises out of a tossing ocean of Alpine peaks, it stands proudly up, a pinnacle of burnished gold with scarce a speck of shade to dim its lustre. ”

“ A run through its history must be the first item in the programme of the traveller who wishes to take with him his best pair of eyes. Then he will find the old gray stones turn into glass to let him see into the hidden glory behind. The lesser charms of the pretty city are palpable to any child. Yet it is impossible to look at the building or monument that first catches the eye without a flash-light of mere newspaper lore casting a momentary shadow, or glare, over it. ”

“ Here rise giant boulders of granite, crested with spreading pines,—own brothers, perhaps, of the block dragged hence eighty years ago from which the greatest of Russian rulers still looks down upon the city that bears his name; there, bluffs of wooded hill rear themselves above the surrounding sea of foliage, and at times the roadside is dotted with the little wooden huts of the natives, whence wooden-faced women, turbaned with colored handkerchiefs, and white-headed children, in nothing but a short night-gown with a warm lining of dirt, stare wonderingly at us as we go striding past. ”

“ Here a fountain, perfectly formed with Ionic and Doric columns, was reflecting a thousand prismatic hues from the diamond-like stalactites which had attached themselves to its crest. There a huge obelisk, which, if of stone, might have come from ancient Thebes, lay half buried beneath a pile of fleecy snow. Farther on we came to what might have been a Roman temple or vast hall in the palace of a Cæsar, where many half-hidden pillars and monuments erected their tapering summits above the piles of the débris. ”

“ Catania presented a lovely picture as we drew near its harbor. Planted at the very foot of Etna, it has a background such as neither Naples nor Genoa can boast. The hills next the sea are covered with gardens and orchards, sprinkled with little villages and the country-places of the nobles,—a rich, cultured landscape, which gradually merges into the forests of oak and chestnut that girdle the waist of the great volcano. But all the wealth of southern vegetation cannot hide the footsteps of that Ruin, which from time to time visits the soil. ”

“ Amsterdam after Paris may suggest water after wine. A watery city it is and water is excellent at times, if not always. The water streets of the Dutch capital are, sometimes, if not always, inky, and ink of an odor best described by prefixing a couple of consonants. Yet old Amsterdam is full of charm, though not of the Parisian kinds. Its quaint houses have a general look of being turned end-on to the street, their ornamental gables make a sky-line suggestive of a lady’s lace collar. Many of them have a projecting crane with rope and pulley, giving a warehouse appearance to private dwellings. ”

“ In one direction there is a drawbridge raised, and looking like a gigantic swing provided for the diversion of the people who live in those preposterous houses; and in another there is a windmill, tall as a steeple and black as an antique tower, moving its arms like a monstrous firework. On every side, finally, among the houses, above the roofs, between the distant trees, are seen masts of vessels, flags, and sails and rigging, reminding us that we are surrounded by water, and that the city is a seaport. ”

“ In the moment of our arrival the doors were shut, and on the outside appeared Reato, the archbishop, preceded by banners and torches, and followed by all his train of priests, with crucifixes and censers, who were making three times, in procession, the tour of the cathedral, chanting with loud voices, and glittering in sumptuous vestments, covered by gold, silver, and precious stones. The snow had not melted so rapidly in the Kremlin as in the streets of the city, and this magnificent procession was therefore constrained to move upon planks over the deep mud which surrounded the cathedral. ”