Category: Travel Writing

Pictures from Italy

The Reader’s Passport 215 Going through France 218 Lyons, the Rhone, and the Goblin of Avignon 225 Avignon to Genoa 233 Genoa and its Neighbourhood 238 To Parma, Modena, and Bologna 264 Through Bologna and Ferrara 272 An Italian Dream 277 By Verona, Mantua, and Milan, across t...

Chapters

1. Chapter 1

The Reader’s Passport 215 Going through France 218 Lyons, the Rhone, and the Goblin of Avignon 225 Avignon to Genoa 233 Genoa and its Neighbourhood 238 To Parma, Modena, and Bol...

2. Chapter 2

It is market morning. The market is held in the little square outside in front of the cathedral. It is crowded with men and women, in blue, in red, in green, in white; with canv...

3. Chapter 3

‘An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew of Pierre de Lude, the Pope’s legate, seriously insulted some distinguished ladies of Avignon, whose relations, in revenge,...

4. Chapter 4

Doors had lost their hinges, and were holding on by their latches; windows were broken, painted plaster had peeled off, and was lying about in clods; fowls and cats had so taken...

5. Chapter 5

It is not unusual to see, lying on the edge of the tank at these times, or on another flat stone, an unfortunate baby, tightly swathed up, arms and legs and all, in an enormous...

6. Chapter 6

It was a very hot day indeed. We were unshaved, unwashed, undressed, unfed, and could hardly enjoy the absurdity of lying blistering in a lazy harbour, with the town looking on...

7. Chapter 7

The decayed and mutilated paintings with which this church is covered, have, to my thinking, a remarkably mournful and depressing influence. It is miserable to see great works o...

8. Chapter 8

At one moment, I was standing again, before the brown old rugged churches of Modena. As I recognised the curious pillars with grim monsters for their bases, I seemed to see them...

9. Chapter 9

An equestrian troop had been there, a short time before—the same troop, I dare say, that appeared to the old lady in the church at Modena—and had scooped out a little ring at on...

10. Chapter 10

Taking to our wheels again, soon afterwards, we began rapidly to descend; passing under everlasting glaciers, by means of arched galleries, hung with clusters of dripping icicle...

11. Chapter 11

Not so Leghorn (made illustrious by SMOLLETT’S grave), which is a thriving, business-like, matter-of-fact place, where idleness is shouldered out of the way by commerce. The reg...

12. Chapter 12

Upon the green carpet itself, and gathered round the altar, was a perfect army of cardinals and priests, in red, gold, purple, violet, white, and fine linen. Stragglers from the...

13. Chapter 13

Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had, probably, been brought from London in about nine or ten days. Eighteen hundred years ago, the Roman legions under Claudius, protested a...

14. Chapter 14

There are no fixed times for the administration of justice, or its execution, in this unaccountable country; and he had been in prison ever since. On the Friday, as he was dinin...

15. Chapter 15

Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into the moon once more, the fountain of Trevi, welling from a hundred jets, and rolling over mimic rocks, is silvery to the e...

16. Chapter 16

The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon; and then, for twenty minutes or half an hour, the whole castle was one incessant sheet of fire, and labyrinth of blazing wh...

17. Chapter 17

The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell the interest of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascination. The looking, from either ruined city, into the neighbou...

18. Chapter 18

‘He speaks like us!’ says the porter: ‘quite as plainly.’ Quite as plainly, Porter. Nothing could be more expressive than his reception of the peasants who are entering the gate...