File:The spell of Italy (1909) (14781827954).jpg

Identifier: spellofitaly00maso (find matches)
Title: The spell of Italy
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Mason, Caroline Atwater, 1853-1939
Subjects: Italy -- Description and travel
Publisher: Boston : L. C. Page & company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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Yes, there werethe Alps! All was here of which we had heard. Wesaw castles and gray old towers emerging from gloomyforests and groves of olive; saw at the shore suchwealth of laurel, wistaria, and palm, such thicketsof bamboo, such arcades of oleander, such orangeand lemon groves as even Sorrento had not shownus; saw white villas borne aloft on their velvetyterraces, shining in the sun. We sighed for the loveliness, the almost too perfectloveliness; yet I think in my own heart the namelesspang of realization was stronger than I ever knewit, — the pain in the discovery that Como, so longa dream, was after all a thing of earth and water,rock and tree; a region where men built their habi-tations and their landing-stages, sailed their uglyexcursion boats, and put up signs of their dull hostel-ries. I am sure I had secretly expected to be con-veyed by a species of phantom barque (quite cer-tainly spelled with the q u el) akin to that unsca-worthy craft in the old engravings of The Voyage
Text Appearing After Image:
BEATRICE deSTE, LEONARDO, (?) BIBLIOTECA AMBROSIANA. In the North 323 of Life, with a white-robed angel blowing on aheadand lights which certainly never were on sea orland gleaming on the starboard bow. It was notuntil I had lived several weeks on Lake Como thatI won back again my old sense of it as a region ofcelestial enchantment. Which goes to show that onecan hear too much of a place. After several weeks in residence, I am prepared tosay that, according to my best belief, there is noth-ing on earth more beautiful than Lake Como withits shores. Our abiding place was Tremezzo, as Mr,McCrackan says in his ItaHan Lakes (a mostvaluable guide, by the way, to the whole LakeRegion), * little more than a sunny archway withvillas attached. He goes on to describe the strange,indescribable little place as follows: Take a handful of houses made of stone andmortar, tint them with the usual colour-scheme of anItalian lake front, then dispose them in a line alongand over the water, build out some

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