Loitering in Pleasant Paths

WE were at Naples and Pompeii in the winter, and again in the spring. The Romans aver that most of the foreigners who die in their city with fever, contract the disease in Naple...

ON Christmas-Day, we went, _via_ the Coliseum, for a long drive in the Campagna. The black cross, at the foot of which many prayers have been said for many ages, has disappeared...

THE Castle of Chillon is a whitey-gray pile, with towers of varying heights and black, pointed roofs, like extinguishers, clustering about the central and tallest. The lake wash...

FLORENCE in May is a very different place from Florence in November. Still it rained every day, or night, of the month we passed there; showers that made the earth greener, the...

I LAUGHED once on the route from Dover to Calais. The fact deserves to be jotted down as an “Incident of Travel.” For the boat was crowded, the wind brisk, and we had a “choppin...

The denizens of the region give the first sound of _a_ to the name of the quiet river—as in _fate_. I do not undertake to decide whether they, or we are correct. Their derelicti...

OUR German experiences, sadly curtailed as to time by Boy’s sickness, scarcely deserve the title of “loiterings.” We passed two days in Strasburg; as many in Baden-Baden, a day...

WE had seen the _Carnevale_ at Rome, and the wild confusion of the _moccoletti_, which is its finale; _festas_, in Venice, Milan, and almost every other Italian town where we ha...

THE guide-books say that the visitor to the palace of Versailles is admitted, should he desire it, to five different court-yards. We cared for but one—the _cour d’honneur_ whose...

WHEN we left Naples in January the snow lay whitely upon the scarred poll of Vesuvius. Yet, as we drove to the station, we were beset by boys and girls running between the wheel...

JUST outside of the Ostian Gate is the pyramid of Caius Cestius—Tribune, Prætor and Priest, who died thirty years before Christ was born, and left a fortune to be expended in gl...

It is an interesting rookery to look at—and to leave. Stuffiness and extortion were words that borrowed new and pregnant meaning from our sojourn in what we were recommended to...

LEAMINGTON is in, and of itself, the pleasantest and stupidest town in England. It is a good place in which to sleep and eat and leave the children when the older members of the...

IN one week we had been twice to Westminster Abbey, once to the Tower; had seen St. Paul’s, Hyde Park, Tussaud’s Wax Works, Mr. Spurgeon, the New Houses of Parliament, Billingsg...

THERE is music by the best bands in Rome upon the Pincian Hill on Sabbath afternoons. Sitting at the window of our tiny library, affecting to read or write, my eyes wandered con...

THE church and convent of S. Onofrio crown the steepest slope of the Janiculan. Our _cocchieri_ always insisted, more or less strenuously, that we should alight at the bottom of...

“The one place on the Continent that bored me!” I once heard a young lady declare at an American watering-place;—a sentiment heartily seconded by several others. “You can do eve...

I WAS sorry to leave the hotel, the name of which I withhold for reasons that will be obvious presently. Not that it was in itself a pleasant caravansary, although eminently res...

“DO NOT go to Rome!” friends at home had implored by letter and word of mouth, prior to our sailing from the other side. English acquaintances and friends caught up the cry. In...

PHOTOGRAPHS, casts and carvings of the Lucerne Lion are well-nigh as plentiful as copies of the Beatrice of the Palazzo Barberini. All—even the best of these—fall lamentably sho...

I HAVE alluded to the intense blaze of the sun upon the day of our tryst with the newly-arrived travelers. Until then we had not suffered from heat in Switzerland. Our _pension_...

In the Piazza Barberini is the Fountain of the Triton by Bernini, one of the least objectionable of his minor works. A chubby, sonsie fellow is the young Triton, embrowned by wi...

IF the English autumn be sad, and the English spring be sour, the smiling beauty of the English summer should expel the memory of gloom and acerbity from the mind of the tourist...

SUNDAY in London: For the first time since our arrival in the city we saw it under what passes in that latitude and language for sunshine. For ten days we had dwelt beneath a cu...

WE never decided whether it was to our advantage or disappointment that we all re-read the novel of that name before visiting Kenilworth. It is certain that we came away saying...

I HAVE recorded the Traveled American girl’s experience in the Venice we mourned at leaving after eight days’ sojourn. In the parlor of the Hôtel Brun, in Bologna, we met the Av...

THE house in which Calvin lived and died has never been photographed. “Madame does not reflect how narrow is the street!” pleaded the picture-dealer to whom I expressed my surpr...

great suffering and peril to the invalid of their company,—a report duly conveyed to us, coupled with a warning against similar temerity. _Now_—upon the 20th—we were a fixed fac...

THE only really hot weather we felt in the British Isles fell to our lot at Brighton. The fashionable world was “up in London.” The metropolis is always “up,” go where you will....

MR. SPURGEON and his Tabernacle are “down” in guide-books among the lions of the metropolis. But, in engaging a carriage to take us to the Tabernacle on Sabbath morning, we had...

THE sail of nine miles up the lake to Coppet, the residence, for so long, of Madame de Staël, is one of the pleasantest short excursions enjoined by custom upon the traveler soj...

We were detained ten days in Milan, waiting for letters and to collect luggage. Coolness was not to be had in the city except in the Cathedral, and among the streams, fountains...