AUTHOR OF "SOUTH WIND," "THEY WENT," "TOGETHER," ETC. TO HIS FRIEND EDWARD HUTTON WHO PRINTED SOME OF THESE TRIVIALITIES IN THAT "ANGLO-ITALIAN REVIEW" WHICH DESERVED A BETTER FATE CONTENTS INTRODUCTION MENTONE LEVANTO SIENA PISA VIAREGGIO ( February ) VIAREGGIO ( May ) ROME OLEVANO VALMONTONE SANT' AGATA, SORRENTO ROME SORIANO ALATRI...

What ages ago it seems, that "Great War"! And what enthusiasts we were! What visionaries, to imagine that in such an hour of emergency a man might discover himself to be fitted for some work of national utility without that preliminary wire-pulling which was essential in humdrum times of peace! How we lingered in long queues, and stamped up and down, and sat about crowded, stuffy halls, waiting, only waiting, to be asked to do something for our country by any little guttersnipe who happened to h

Italiam petimus .... Discovered, in a local library--a genuine old maid's library: full of the trashiest novels--those two volumes of sketches by J. A. Symonds, and forthwith set to comparing the Mentone of his day with that of ours. What a transformation! The efforts of Dr. James Henry Bennet and friends, aided and abetted by the railway, have converted the idyllic fishing village into--something different. So vanishes another fair spot from earth. And I knew it. Yet some demon has deposited me

I have loafed into Levanto, on the recommendation of an Irish friend who, it would seem, had reasons of his own for sending me there. "Try Levanto," he said. "A little place below Genoa. Nice, kindly people. And sunshine all the time. Hotel Nazionale. Yes, yes! The food is all right. Quite all right. Now please do not let us start that subject----" We started it none the less, and at the end of the discussion he added: "You must go and see Mitchell there. I often stayed with him. Such a good fel

Driven from the Paradise of Levanto, I landed not on earth but--with one jump--in Hell. The Turks figure forth a Hell of ice and snow; this is my present abode; its name is Siena. Every one knows that this town lies on a hill, on three hills; the inference that it would be cold in January was fairly obvious; how cold, nobody could have guessed. The sun is invisible. Streets are deep in snow. Icicles hang from the windows. Worst of all, the hotels are unheated. Those English, you know,--they refu

After a glacial journey--those English! They will not even give us coal for steam-heating--I arrived here. It is warmer, appreciably warmer. Yet I leave to-morrow or next day. The streets of the town, the distant beach of San Rossore and its pine trees--they are fraught with sad memories; memories of an autumn month in the early nineties. A city of ghosts.... The old hotel had put on a new face; freshly decorated, it wears none the less a poverty-stricken air. My dinner was bad and insufficient.

Viareggio, dead at this season, is a rowdy place in summer; not rowdy, however, after the fashion of Margate. There is a suggestive difference between the two. The upper classes in both towns are of course irreproachable in externals--it is their uniformity of behaviour throughout the world which makes them so uninteresting from a spectacular point of view. A place does not receive its tone from them (save possibly Bournemouth) but from their inferiors; and here, in this matter of public decorum

Those Sirens! They have called me back, after nearly three months in Florence, to that village on the hill-top. Nothing but smiles up there. And never was Corsanico more charming, all drenched in sunlight and pranked out with fresh green. On this fourteenth of May, I said to myself, I am wont to attend a certain yearly festival far away, and there enjoy myself prodigiously. Yet--can it be possible?--I am even happier here. Seldom does the event surpass one's hopes. Later than usual, long after s

The railway station at Rome has put on a new face. Blown to the winds is that old dignity and sense of leisure. Bustle everywhere; soldiers in line, officers strutting about; feverish scurryings for tickets. A young baggage employé, who allowed me to effect a change of raiment in the inner recesses of his department, alone seemed to keep up the traditions of former days. He was unruffled and polite; he told me, incidentally, that he came from ----. That was odd, I said; I had often met persons b

I have loafed into Olevano. A thousand feet below my window, and far away, lies the gap between the Alban and Volscian hills; veiled in mists, the Pontine marches extend beyond, and further still--discernible only to the eye of faith--the Tyrrhenian. The profile of these Alban craters is of inimitable grace. It recalls Etna, as viewed from Taormina. How the mountain cleaves to earth, how reluctantly it quits the plain before swerving aloft in that noble line! Velletri's ramparts, twenty miles di

Back to Valmontone. At Zagarolo, where you touch the Rome-Naples line, I found there was no train to this place for several hours. A merchant of straw hats from Tuscany, a pert little fellow, was in the same predicament; he also had some business to transact at Valmontone. How get there? No conveyance being procurable on account of some local fair or festival, we decided to walk. A tiresome march, in the glow of morning. The hatter, after complaining more or less articulately for an hour, was re

Siren-Land revisited.... A delightful stroll, yesterday, with a wild youngster from the village of Torco--what joy to listen to analphabetics for a change: they are indubitably the salt of the earth--down that well-worn track to Crapolla, only to learn that my friend Garibaldi, the ancient fisherman, the genius loci , has died in the interval; thence by boat to the lonely beach of Recomone (sadly noting, as we passed, that the rock-doves at the Grotto delle Palumbe are now all extirpated), where

Here we are. That mysterious nocturnal incident peculiar to Rome has already occurred--sure sign that the nights are growing sultry. It happens about six times in the course of every year, during the hot season. You may read about it in the next morning's paper which records how some young man, often of good family and apparently in good health, was seen behaving in the most inexplicable fashion at the hour of about 2 a.m.; jumping, that is, in a state of Adamitic nudity, into some public founta

Amid clouds of dust you are whirled to Soriano, through the desert Campagna and past Mount Soracte, in a business-like tramway--different from that miserable Olevano affair which, being narrow gauge, can go but slowly and even then has a frolicsome habit of jumping off the rails every few days. From afar you look back upon the city; it lies so low as to be invisible; over its site hovers the dome of Saint Peter, like an iridescent bubble suspended in the sky. This region is unfamiliar to me. Sor

What brought me to Alatri? Memories of a conversation, by Tiber banks, with Fausto, who was born here and vaunted it to be the fairest city on earth. Rome was quite a passable place, but as to Alatri---- "You never saw such walls in all your life. They are not walls. They are precipices. And our water is colder than the Acqua Marcia." "Walls and water say little to me. But if the town produces other citizens like yourself----" "It does indeed! I am the least of the sons of Alatri." "Then it must