BY CHARLES DICKENS WITH 8 ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARCUS STONE, R.A. LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL, Ltd. 1913 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 the Pass of the Simplon into Switzerland 284 To Rome by Pisa and Siena 297 Rome 308 A Rapid Diorama 345...

If the readers of this volume will be so kind as to take their credentials for the different places which are the subject of its author’s reminiscences, from the Author himself, perhaps they may visit them, in fancy, the more agreeably, and with a better understanding of what they are to expect. Many books have been written upon Italy, affording many means of studying the history of that interesting country, and the innumerable associations entwined about it.  I make but little reference to that

On a fine Sunday morning in the Midsummer time and weather of eighteen hundred and forty-four, it was, my good friend, when—don’t be alarmed; not when two travellers might have been observed slowly making their way over that picturesque and broken ground by which the first chapter of a Middle Aged novel is usually attained—but when an English travelling-carriage of considerable proportions, fresh from the shady halls of the Pantechnicon near Belgrave Square, London, was observed (by a very small

Chalons is a fair resting-place, in right of its good inn on the bank of the river, and the little steamboats, gay with green and red paint, that come and go upon it: which make up a pleasant and refreshing scene, after the dusty roads.  But, unless you would like to dwell on an enormous plain, with jagged rows of irregular poplars on it, that look in the distance like so many combs with broken teeth: and unless you would like to pass your life without the possibility of going up-hill, or going

Goblin , having shown les oubliettes , felt that her great coup was struck.  She let the door fall with a crash, and stood upon it with her arms a-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously. When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, under the outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a little history of the building.  Her cabaret, a dark, low room, lighted by small windows, sunk in the thick wall—in the softened light, and with its forge-like chimney; its little counter by the door, with bottles,

The first impressions of such a place as Albaro , the suburb of Genoa, where I am now, as my American friends would say, ‘located,’ can hardly fail, I should imagine, to be mournful and disappointing.  It requires a little time and use to overcome the feeling of depression consequent, at first, on so much ruin and neglect.  Novelty, pleasant to most people, is particularly delightful, I think, to me.  I am not easily dispirited when I have the means of pursuing my own fancies and occupations; an

I strolled away from Genoa on the 6th of November, bound for a good many places (England among them), but first for Piacenza; for which town I started in the coupé of a machine something like a travelling caravan, in company with the brave Courier, and a lady with a large dog, who howled dolefully, at intervals, all night.  It was very wet, and very cold; very dark, and very dismal; we travelled at the rate of barely four miles an hour, and stopped nowhere for refreshment.  At ten o’clock next m

There was such a very smart official in attendance at the Cemetery where the little Cicerone had buried his children, that when the little Cicerone suggested to me, in a whisper, that there would be no offence in presenting this officer, in return for some slight extra service, with a couple of pauls (about tenpence, English money), I looked incredulously at his cocked hat, wash-leather gloves, well-made uniform, and dazzling buttons, and rebuked the little Cicerone with a grave shake of the hea

I had been travelling, for some days; resting very little in the night, and never in the day.  The rapid and unbroken succession of novelties that had passed before me, came back like half-formed dreams; and a crowd of objects wandered in the greatest confusion through my mind, as I travelled on, by a solitary road.  At intervals, some one among them would stop, as it were, in its restless flitting to and fro, and enable me to look at it, quite steadily, and behold it in full distinctness.  Afte

There is nothing in Italy, more beautiful to me, than the coast-road between Genoa and Spezzia.  On one side: sometimes far below, sometimes nearly on a level with the road, and often skirted by broken rocks of many shapes: there is the free blue sea, with here and there a picturesque felucca gliding slowly on; on the other side are lofty hills, ravines besprinkled with white cottages, patches of dark olive woods, country churches with their light open towers, and country houses gaily painted. 

We entered the Eternal City, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, on the thirtieth of January, by the Porta del Popolo, and came immediately—it was a dark, muddy day, and there had been heavy rain—on the skirts of the Carnival.  We did not, then, know that we were only looking at the fag end of the masks, who were driving slowly round and round the Piazza until they could find a promising opportunity for falling into the stream of carriages, and getting, in good time, into the thick of the fe

We are bound for Naples!  And we cross the threshold of the Eternal City at yonder gate, the Gate of San Giovanni Laterano, where the two last objects that attract the notice of a departing visitor, and the two first objects that attract the notice of an arriving one, are a proud church and a decaying ruin—good emblems of Rome. Our way lies over the Campagna, which looks more solemn on a bright blue day like this, than beneath a darker sky; the great extent of ruin being plainer to the eye: and