File:Italian hours (1909) (14592872207).jpg

Identifier: cu31924028396004 (find matches)
Title: Italian hours
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: James, Henry, 1843-1916 Pennell, Joseph, 1857-1926, illus
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin company
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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r frown expires inthe teeming softness of the great vale of Umbria. To lie aloftthere on the grass, with silver-grey ramparts at ones back andthe warm rushing wind in ones ears, and watch the beautifulplain mellow into the tones of twilight, was as exquisite a formof repose as ever fell to a tired tourists lot. Perugia too has an ancient stronghold, which one must speakof in earnest as that unconscious humorist the classic Americantraveller is supposed invariably to speak of the Colosseum: itwill be a very handsome building when its finished. Even Peru-gia is going the way of all Italy — straightening out her streets,preparing her ruins, laying her venerable ghosts. The castle isbeing completely remis a neuf—a Massachusetts schoolhousecouldnt cultivate a smarter ideal. There are shops in thebasement and fresh putty on all the windows; so that the onlything proper to a castle it has kept is its magnificent positionand range, which you may enjoy from the broad platform where ( 330 )
Text Appearing After Image:
PERUGIA. A CHAIN OF CITIES the Perugini assemble at eventide. Perugia is chiefly known tofame as the city of Raphaels master; but it has a still higher claimto renown and ought to figure in the gazetteer of fond memoryas the little City of the infinite View. The small dusky, crookedplace tries by a hundred prompt pretensions, immediate contor-tions, rich mantling flushes and other ingenuities, to waylay yourattention and keep it at home; but your consciousness, alert anduneasy from the first moment, is all abroad even when your backis turned to the vast alternative or when fifty house-walls concealit, and you are for ever rushing up by-streets and peeping roundcorners in the hope of another glimpse or reach of it. As it stretchesaway before you in that eminent indifference to limits which isat the same time at every step an eminent homage to style, it isaltogether too free and fair for compasses and terms. You canonly say, and rest upon it, that you prefer it to any other visiblefruit

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