330 MORE POT-POURRI 



' The old days of Italian travel are beginning to pass 

 out of recollection — the happy old days, when, with 

 slow-trotting horses and jangling bells, we lived for 

 weeks in our vetturino carriage as in a house, and made 

 ourselves thoroughly comfortable there ; halting at mid- 

 day for luncheon, with pleasant hours for wandering 

 over unknown towns and gathering flowers and making 

 discoveries in the churches and convents near our 

 resting-place. All that we then saw remains impressed 

 on our recollection as a series of beautiful pictures set 

 in a framework of the homelike associations of a quiet 

 life, which was gUded by all that Italian loveliness alone 

 can bestow of its own tender beauty. The slow 

 approach to each long -heard -of but unseen city — 

 gradually leading up, as the surrroundings of all cities 

 do, to its own peculiar characteristics — gave a very 

 different feeling towards it from that which is produced 

 by rushing into a railway station.' 



This is all perfectly true ; but when we think that 

 hundreds can now see and enjoy the great cities of Italy, 

 which in old days was only the privilege of the idle, the 

 rich, and the few, we can without regret give up the 

 more romantic methods of travelling of bygone days. 



The only book I had with me, given me before I left 

 for Florence, was called 'Earthwork out of Tuscany,' 

 being ' impressions and translations ' of Maurice Hew- 

 lett (J. M. Dent & Co., 1895). It describes Florence, 

 not as I saw it, but in autumn and early winter, the 

 usual tourist time. It is very modern in tone, and 

 although slightly affected, yet the enthusiasm and 

 delight in Italy are as great as, or even greater than, 

 those of writers of a past generation. His preface, 

 which he calls ' Proem,' is an apologia for writing at all 

 on such well-known ground, for he feels his book must 

 risk the charge of being ' a richauffd of Paul Bourget 



