"Any one who reads one of those older Italian romances, feels himself irresistibly attracted by the free breath of adventure which pervades it; I know, indeed, that in our respectable society where every one carries his passport in his pocket book, this adventuresomeness cannot find a place; it is proscribed, and I do not see either how it can be otherwise in our condition as citizens.
"All the same, it meets the untrammelled wanderer here and there; it wears a mask before its face, but it gazes fiercely and seductively through that mask.
"I have often meditated as to wherein the charm of those fleeting meetings consists, which in no case lay claim to any endurance; it is the charm of freedom and want of fetters. There is something oppressive to the mind in this consciousness of durability, in order to reconcile oneself to it deeper reflections are needed about the necessity that fetters man's life, and the pride of a sense of duty reconciles us to the constraint of the unalterable.
"But adventure arouses affections and feelings, and touches strings, which are sure to exist in human nature; never does the blood flow more lightly and freely through our veins; never does our mental life develop more ozone than in these tempests of passion, quickly as they pass away again in the sky. Also, if that enduring bond and that nobility of feeling is wanting, which only true love of the soul is capable of giving, yet something remains that ennobles the fleeting transport of passion, the rapture about beauty which is so closely united to love, but which has paled and must be repudiated in our circumstances.
"But where do these homes of adventure lie more than in the masked land of Italy? Are we not thrilled with those spirits of revelry which in the Venetian Carnival of that glorious maestro spring and dance upon the strings, and seem to be beside themselves in wild exhilaration?
"Here upon the Rialto, there upon the market place, mysterious glances beckon to us, seductive pressure of the hand invites us. This is a proud beauty of the people, who at other times wears the fazzoletto, that is a lady of position who seeks a cicisbeo. And upon the Roman Corso, when the long row of carriages drives down the street, we stand upon the carriage step and a delicate hand presses a bouquet into ours. Here adventure has risen and increased until it became crime, and gazed ominously and fatally at us out of the soft eyes of a Lucrezia Borgia and a Beatrice Cenci.
"But what heaven also in the land of Boccaccio, what rapture in the air, what charm in the aroma of the perfumes, which are set free by the day's glowing sun, which the evening's breeze wafts over the meadows, above the marble floors in the villas and in their sleeping chambers! There one must be a pedant, like the man from Arpinum, to think and to write of duty in a Tusculum; we other men follow Horace's example, wreath our heads with roses, take a wine bowl in our hands, and a beautiful Lydia in our arms.
"Enjoy the moment! Thus preaches Hesperia, and he who wreathes himself with its wildly growing myrtles does not remember the myrtle of German hot-houses, with which the bride adorns herself for life. I know Florence, that city of flowers, Rome the city of ruins; noisy Naples, where the tide of men, and the beating of the ocean's waves blend their roar, and whose single cyclopean eye is fire-belching Vesuvius. Yet nowhere did I feel so much at home as on the upper Italian lakes; and in spite of all the charms of Lago di Como, that splendid divided radiant mirror, which is most beautiful at that point whence one can overlook both its separate arms of water which twine themselves around the villa-clad heights; despite the loveliness of Lago di Garda, and its northerly port, above all others I have enshrined Lago Maggiore in my heart and spent two years of my life upon its shores. I know all the Swiss and Italian towns on its borders; but I lingered most fondly in Stresa, because from it a quick passage by boat bore me to the jewels of the lake, the Boromean islands.
"It was one beautiful summer's evening that I stood upon the topmost terrace of the Isola Bella; the lake glistened in the evening's crimson splendour; varied lights danced in the winding cypress walks, in the concealed shell-grottoes, and played upon the statues and obelisks of the uppermost terrace. The sister isles, the towns on the shores, the vine-surrounded villa-clad hills lay on the opposite side in a softer sheen. Sasso Ferrato, with its rocky walls, rose up defiantly in the lake; as if bathed in a red-hot glow, stood the ice-armour of the snowy peaks which guard the Alpine passes, which here lead down to the lake of Geneva, yonder to that of the four Cantons. Picturesquely the fiery red of the sinking sun contrasted with the glorious green of the Lago.
"How often people have blamed the baroque taste, the green roccoco of this Isola Bella! And yet, why should one not place a jewel in a brilliant artistic setting? This Isola Bella is the most beautiful belvidere on the lake; why should that belvidere not be splendidly decorated? The art which is lavished upon that small spot of earth does not detract from that vast nature which encloses it with her gigantic Alps! And then there is something soothing in these hiding places amongst the trees, these shell-grottoes--they invite one to quiet talk, to silent happiness; and how full is the heart, when the magic of this glorious nature, these evening lights, those perfumes flowing from a hundred flower calex--the whole of that fervidly-breathing life has inspired us!