Professor Hoffmann on the Scenery of Italy. 371 



has been often depicted by enthusiastic travellers, amateurs 

 and artists. Whoever has been accustomed, from his being 

 a wanderer like myself, to satiate his eyes with the prospect 

 of magnificent mountain scenery, where limpid streams, tower- 

 ing forests, and green meadows, unite their eloquence to in- 

 spire him with an indescribalile serenity of feeling, amounting 

 even in some cases to rapturous emotions ; will often be inclined 

 to give the preference to the enjoyments of our native country 

 over all the luxuries of Italy. For although I cannot coincide 

 with the insensibility of the hypochondriacal traveller, who as- 

 serted that he could only distinguish two characteristic trees on 

 the Italian soil, the wide-spreading pine and the tall cypress ; 

 yet I have rarely felt that inward complacency in the contem- 

 plation of the beauties of nature, which has been described by 

 so many travellers. How often are we not reminded of our dis- 

 tance from Germany, and of our proximity to Africa, particu- 

 larly in the mountainous districts of Italy, by an aspect of ari- 

 dity which characterises the vegetation, by the total want of wa- 

 ter, and the absence of those green glades which everywhere 

 abound in our native mountains ! When at last we chance to 

 light on a green patch, to relieve the eye from the monotonous 

 aspect of bare rocky cliffs, or to refresh our thirst, but ill 

 quenched by the fresh rain or insipid cistern- water, then we are 

 told that we must not remain here, as the scourge of the mala- 

 ria forbids sleep to the unseasoned traveller, and the bloated and 

 pale visages which surround us, speak much more eloquently 

 than the warnings of the co7iducteur ^ or the melancholy aspect 

 of numerous deserted and half-ruined houses, which are so cha- 

 racteristic of this country, full of the remains of fallen grandeur. 

 Such were a few of my sensations when I travelled with my 

 friend Repetti through the lonely hills of the Maremma Toscana. 

 They continued the same at the aspectof the sun-burnt Compagna 

 di Roma, and during my wanderings in the valleys of the Tese^ 

 rone and the Turano ; and my numerous courses through the 

 woody region of Etna, have hardly yet been able to reconcile me to 

 the deficiencies of the Italian landscape. The traveller will cer- 

 tainly be disagreeably disappointed, if he interprets literally the 

 words of the celebrated Ferrara, (in his Guida dei vwgg'itort iri 

 Sicilta), " that there are situations in the woody region worthy 



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