From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

by Henry M. Field

CHAPTER XXI.

IN THE VALE OF THE ARNO.

Florence, September 27th.

We are getting more into the heart of Italy as we come farther south. In the old Roman days the country watered by the Po was not a part of Italy; it was Cisalpine Gaul. This we leave behind as we turn southward from Genoa. The road runs along the shore of the Mediterranean; it is a continuation of the Riviera as far as Spezzia, where we leave the sea and strike inland to Pisa, one of the Mediæval cities, which in its best days was a rival of Genoa, and which has still some memorials of its former grandeur. Here we spent a night, and the next morning visited the famous Leaning Tower, and the Cathedral and Baptistery, and the Campo Santo (filled with earth brought from Jerusalem in fifty-three ships, that the faithful might be buried in holy ground), and then pursued our way along the Valley of the Arno to Florence.

And now the inspiration of the country, the genius loci, comes upon us more and more. We are in Tuscany, one of the most beautiful portions of the whole peninsula. We are favored by the season of the year. Before we came abroad I consulted some of my travelled friends as to the best time of the year to visit Italy. Most tourists come here in the winter. Rome especially is not thought to be safe till late in the autumn. But Dr. Bellows told me that, so far from waiting for cold weather, he thought Italy could be seen in its full beauty only in an earlier month, when the country was still clothed with vegetation. Certainly it is better to see it in its summer bloom, or in the ripeness of autumn, than when the land is stripped, when the mountains are bleak and bare, when there is not a leaf on the vine or the fig-tree, and only naked branches shiver in the wintry wind. We have come at a season when the earth has still its glory on. The vineyards are full of the riches of the year; the peasants are now gathering the grapes, and we have witnessed that most picturesque Italian scene, the vintage. Dark forests clothe the slopes of the Apennines. At this season there is a soft, hazy atmosphere, like that of our Indian summer, which gives a kind of purple tint to the Italian landscapes. The skies are fair, but not more fair than that heaven of blue which bends over many a beloved spot in America. Nor is the vegetation richer, nor are the landscapes more lovely, than in our own dear vales of Berkshire. Even the Arno at this season, like most of the other rivers of Italy, is a dried up bed with only a rivulet of muddy water running through it. Later in the autumn, when the rains descend; or in the spring, when the snows melt upon the mountains, it is swollen to such a height that it often overflows its banks, and the full stream rushes like a torrent. But at present the mighty Arno, of which poets have sung so much, is not so large as the Housatonic, nor half so beautiful as that silver stream, on whose banks the meadows are always fresh and green, and where the waters are pure and sparkling that ripple over its pebbled bed.

But the position of Florence is certainly one of infinite beauty, lying in a valley, surrounded by mountains. The approach to it by a railroad, when one gets his first view from a level, is much less picturesque than in the old days when we travelled by vettura, and came to it over the Apennines, and after a long day's journey reached the top of a distant hill, from which we saw Florence afar off, sitting like a queen in the Valley of the Arno, the setting sun reflected from the Duomo and the Campanile, and from all its domes and towers.

In this Valley of Paradise we have spent a week, visiting the galleries of pictures, and making excursions to Fiesolé and other points of view on the surrounding hills, from which to look down on as fair a scene as ever smiled beneath an Italian sun.

Florence is in many respects the most attractive place in Italy, as it unites the charms of art with those of modern life; as it exists not only in the dead past, but in the living present. It is a large, thriving, prosperous city, and has become a great resort of English and Americans, who gather here in the winter months, and form a most agreeable society. There are a number of American sculptors and painters, whose works are well known on the other side of the Atlantic. Some of their studios we visited, and saw abundant evidence, that with all our intensely practical life, the elements of taste and beauty, and of a genius for art, are not wanting in our countrymen.

Florence has had a material growth within a few years, from being for a time the capital of the new kingdom of Italy. When Tuscany was added to Sardinia, the capital was removed from Turin to Florence as a more central city, and the presence of the Court and the Parliament gave a new life to its streets. Now the Court is removed to Rome, but the impulse still remains, and in the large squares which have been opened, and the new buildings which are going up, one sees the signs of life and progress. To be sure, there is not only growing but groaning, for the taxes are fearfully high here, as everywhere in Italy. The country is bearing burdens as heavy as if it were in a state of war. If only Italy were the first country in Europe to reduce her armaments, she could soon lighten the load upon her people.