“In this least commonplace, and yet most comprehensive of works of travel, we find everything we have previously learnt of that comparatively unworked mine of history, art, poetry, and nature, Spain, as well as a great deal which is entirely novel. But the old is placed in a dazzling light of fancy, association, and suggestion, and the new is captivating. The skies of Spain shine, the wide-sweeping breezes blow, the solemn church music swells, the ancient grandeur, gravity, and dignity of the history and life of the country, the old Moorish magnificence, the splendid chivalry, the religious enthusiasm, the stern loyalty and narrow pride of the races of Arragon and Castile, all live again in the vivid pages of this book.”
The unusual success which was attending my “Walks in Rome,” and the many notes which I already possessed for a similar work in the neighbourhood, made me now devote my time to “Days near Rome,” and in January I left England to make Rome a centre from whence to revive my recollection of the towns I had already visited in the Campagna and its surrounding mountains, and to examine and sketch those I had not yet seen. Altogether, “Days near Rome” is the one of my books in the preparation of which I had the greatest enjoyment, and from which I have had least disappointment since its publication.[37] I was, however, terribly ill soon after my arrival at Rome, and nearly died there.
To Miss Leycester.
“Paris, Jan. 19, 1873.—I have felt most dolorous on the journey, and often repented having decided to come abroad: I so dread seeing Rome again. Still, as last year I added £252 to my income by small writings exclusive of the ‘Memorials,’ I must look upon it as a profession, and of course as such it is very pleasant. This morning I am cheered by George Sheffield’s pleasure at seeing me, and I am going to dine with the Comte and Comtesse de Clermont-Tonnerre.”
“Florence, Jan. 23.—All descriptions of ‘sensations’ in the Mont Cenis tunnel must be pure imagination. It is exactly like any other tunnel. I came all the way from Paris with two American ladies, one of them very handsome, but the sort of person who said, ‘I guess I am genteelly well satisfied’ when she had finished her dinner, and that she had read ‘Walks in Rome,’ which ‘was a very elegant book, a very elegant book indeed.’”
“81 Via della Croce, Rome, Jan. 27.—I left Florence on a still, mizzly morning. How familiar all the dear places seemed on the way, and yet how changed the feeling with which one saw them—Thrasymene, Perugia, Assisi, Spoleto—all so much to us, so woven into our lives, and I was thankful for the twilight obscurity before the steep of Fidenae rose beside us, and then the towers of the beloved city crested the hill, the hill down which my darling drove so often in her little carriage to the Ponte Salario and the Ponte Nomentano, drinking in the full beauty of the historic loveliness. On Saturday I removed to these rooms in the house of Voight, a German artist, much beloved by the Bunsens, and indeed married to his old still-existing Signora from their house. I think that the rooms will answer sufficiently, though, as the Voights have never let rooms before, there is a terrible amount of talking over everything I need. The whole family, of three generations, were called into council the first time I desired to have an egg for breakfast, and then it came in raw, and yesterday the scene was repeated. However, ‘pazienza.’
“On Sunday I went up first to the Pincio, and I cannot say—indeed no one could understand—all that that walk is to me, where day after day, for so many feeble winters, we helped my darling along; whence she looked down upon the windows so sacred to her in the San Sebastianello; where every shrub was familiar and commented upon, as not even those in the garden at Holmhurst have ever been. Nothing has been more our garden. It seemed almost sacrilege to see the changes, and they are not many. In the afternoon I went again with my old friend Stopford Sackville.