Life of Frances Power Cobbe, as told by herself / with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson

by Frances Power Cobbe

First. A totally fresh conception of the glory and beauty of Nature. When crossing the Channel I fell into talk with a charming old lady and told her how I was looking forward to seeing the great pictures and buildings of Italy. “Ah,” she said, “but there is Italian Nature to be seen also. Do not miss it, looking only at works of art. I go to Italy to see it much more than the galleries and churches.” I was very much astonished at this remark, but I came home after some months spent in a villa on Bellosguardo entirely converted to her view. Travellers there are who weary their feet and strain their eyes till they can no longer see or receive impressions from the miles of painted canvas, the regiments of statues, and the streets of palaces and churches wherewith Italy abounds; yet have never spent a day riding over the desolate Campagna with the far off Apennines closing the horizon, or enjoyed nights of paradise, sitting amid the cypresses and the garlanded vines, with the stars overhead, the nightingales singing, and the fireflies darting around among the Rose de Maggio. Such travellers may come back to England proud of having verified every line of Murray on the spot, yet they have failed to “see Italy” altogether. Never shall I forget the revelation of loveliness of the Ægean and Ionian seas, of the lower slopes of Lebanon, and of the Acropolis of Athens, seen, as I saw it first, at sunrise. But when my heaviest journeys were done and I paused and rested in Villa Niccolini, with Florence below and the Val d’ Arno before me, I felt as if the beauty of the world, as I then and there saw it, were joy enough for a lifetime. The old lines (I know not whose they are) kept ringing in my ears.—

“And they shall summer high in bliss

Upon the hills of God.”

I shall quote here some verses which I wrote at that time, as they described the scene in which I lived and revelled.

THE FESTA OF THE WORLD.

A Princess came to a southern strand,

Over a summer sea;

And the sky smiled down on the laughing land,

For that land was Italy.

The fruit trees bent their laden boughs