New Italian sketches
New Italian sketches
This volume of New Italian Sketches has been made up from two books published in England and America under the titles of "Sketches and Studies in Italy" and "Italian Byways." It forms in some respects a companion volume to my "Sketches in Italy" already published in the Tauchnitz Collection of British Authors. But it is quite independent of that other book, and is in no sense a continuation of it. In making the selection, I have however followed the same principles of choice. That is to say, I have included only those studies of places, rather than of literature or history, which may suit the needs of travellers in Italy.
Book Excerpt
oloured leaves. It then takes to the open fields, bordered with tall reeds waving from the foss on either hand, where grapes are hanging to the vines. The country-folk allow their vines to climb into the olives, and these golden festoons are a great ornament to the grey branches. The berries on the trees are still quite green, and it is a good olive season. Leaving the main road, we pass a villa of the Malaspini, shrouded in immense thickets of sweet bay and ilex, forming a grove for the Nymphs or Pan. Here may you see just such clean stems and lucid foliage as Gian Bellini painted, inch by inch, in his Peter Martyr picture. The place is neglected now; the semicircular seats of white Carrara marble are stained with green mosses, the altars chipped, the fountains choked with bay leaves; and the rose trees, escaped from what were once trim garden alleys, have gone wandering a-riot into country hedges. There is no demarcation between the great man's villa and the neighbouring farms. From this point the path rise
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