Italian hours . i-dered and brocaded according to their period, and held feteschampetres and floral games on the greensward, beneath themouldering hemicycle. And the Medici were great people! Butwhat remains of it all now is a mere tone in the air, a faint sighin the breeze, a vague expression in things, a passive — or callit rather, perhaps, to be fair, a shyly, pathetically responsive —accessibility to the yearning guess. Call it much or call it little,the ineflfaceability of this deep stain of experience, it is the inter-est of old places and the bribe to the brooding analyst. Time hasdevou


Italian hours . i-dered and brocaded according to their period, and held feteschampetres and floral games on the greensward, beneath themouldering hemicycle. And the Medici were great people! Butwhat remains of it all now is a mere tone in the air, a faint sighin the breeze, a vague expression in things, a passive — or callit rather, perhaps, to be fair, a shyly, pathetically responsive —accessibility to the yearning guess. Call it much or call it little,the ineflfaceability of this deep stain of experience, it is the inter-est of old places and the bribe to the brooding analyst. Time hasdevoured the doers and their doings, but there still hangs aboutsome effect of their passage. We can lay out parks on virginsoil, and cause them to bristle with the most expensive importa-tions, but we unfortunately cant scatter abroad again this seedof the eventual human soul of a place — that comes but in itstime and takes too long to grow. There is nothing like it whenit has come. TUSCAN CITIES TUSCAN CITIES. |HE cities I refer to are Leghorn, Pisa,Lucca and Pistoia, among which I havebeen spending the last few days. Themost striking fact as to Leghorn, it mustbe conceded at the outset, is that, beingin Tuscany, it should be so scantilyTuscan. The traveller curious in localcolour must content himself with thedeep blue expanse of the Mediterranean. The streets, awayfrom the docks, are modern, genteel and rectangular; Liverpoolmight acknowledge them if it were nt for their clean-coloured,sun-bleached stucco. They are the offspring of the new industrywhich is death to the old idleness. Of interesting architecture,fruit of the old idleness or at least of the old leisure, Leghorn issingularly It has neither a church worth ones atten-tion, nor a municipal palace, nor a museum, and it may claimthe distinction, unique in Italy, of being the city of no a shabby corner near the docks stands a statue of one of theelder Grand Dukes of Tuscany, appealing to poste


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