Portraits of places

The following papers originally appeared in the _Century_, the _Atlantic Monthly_, the _Galaxy_ Magazine, in that of Lippincott, and in the _New York Tribune_ and _The Nation_....

Even at first, when the vexatious sense of the city of the Doges having been reduced to earning its living as a curiosity-shop was in its keenness, there was a great deal of ent...

The churches of Venice are rich in pictures, and many a masterpiece lurks in the unaccommodating gloom of side-chapels and sacristies. Many a noble work is perched behind the du...

Turin is not a city to make, in vulgar parlance, a fuss about, and I pay an extravagant tribute to subjective emotion in speaking of it as ancient. But if the place is not so pe...

On leaving Genoa I repaired to Spezia, chiefly with a view of accomplishing a sentimental pilgrimage, which I, in fact, achieved, in the most agreeable conditions. The Gulf of S...

One may read a great many pages of Mr. Ruskin without getting a hint of this delightful truth; a hint of the not unimportant fact that art, after all, is made for us, and not we...

The brightness always seems to begin while you are still out in the channel, when you fairly begin to see the French coast. You pass into a region of intenser light--a zone of c...

As you draw near to Rheims the vineyards become sparser, and finally disappear, a fact not to be regretted, for there is something incongruous in the juxtaposition of champagne...

So I mused, as I strolled in the afternoon along the charming old city-wall at Laon; and if my meditations seem pretentious or fallacious, I must say in justice that I had been...

Although, besides its cathedral, Chartres has no very rare architectural treasures, the place is pictorial, in a shabby, third-rate, poverty-stricken degree, and my observations...

Like most of the French watering-places, the place has a limited past. Twenty years ago it was but a cluster of fishing-huts. A group of artists and literary people were its fir...

It was another picked day--you see how freely I pick them--when I went to breakfast at Saint-Jouin, chez la belle Ernestine. The beautiful Ernestine is as hospitable as she is f...

Going to call on the peasants was as charming an affair as a chapter in one of George Sand's rural tales. I went one Sunday morning with my hostess, who knew them well and enjoy...

It may be said of the English, as is said of the council of war in Sheridan's farce of _The Critic_ by one of the spectators of the rehearsal, that when they do agree, their una...

The capacity of an Englishwoman for being handsome strikes me as absolutely unlimited, and even if (I repeat) it is in the luxurious class that it is most freely exercised, yet...

These majestic conditions have not been combined in my own metropolitan sojourn, and I have received an impression that in London it would be rather difficult for a person not h...

Taking note of all this, I arrived at a far-away angle in the wall of the park, where a little postern door stood ajar. I pushed the door open, and found myself, by a picturesqu...

After the great race had been run I quitted my perch and spent the rest of the afternoon in wandering about that grassy concave I have mentioned. It was amusing and picturesque;...

After a while it grew too dark for lawn-tennis; but while the twilight was still mildly brilliant I wandered away, out of the grounds of the charming parsonage, and turned into...

To Broughton Castle, the first seen in this beautiful group, I must do no more than allude; but this is not because I failed to think it, as I think every house I see, the most...

A friend of mine, an American, who knew this country, had told me not to fail, while I was in the neighbourhood, to go to S---- and two or three other places. "Edward IV. and El...

It was probably a mistake to stop at Portsmouth. I had done so, however, in obedience to a familiar theory that seaport-towns abound in local colour, in curious types, in the qu...

I have spoken of the rigour of the time in the lower walks of English life; and it is not out of place to say that among those happier people who stand above the reach of materi...

The sentimental tourist makes images in advance; they grow up in his mind by a logic of their own. He finds himself thinking of an unknown, unseen place, as having such and such...

The season at Newport has an obstinate life. September has fairly begun, but as yet there is small visible diminution in the steady stream--the splendid, stupid stream--of carri...

If the windows tell of French dominion, of course larger matters testify with greater eloquence. In a place so small as Quebec, the bloom of novelty of course rubs off; but when...

Though hereabouts so much is great, distances are small, and a ramble of two or three hours enables you to gaze hither and thither from a dozen standpoints. The one you are like...