Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1827. Excerpt:... CHAP. IV. LEGHORN. It had been Lord Vanderville's original intention to return by Leghorn; but independent of that very consideration being one which in the calculation of chances was most likely to carry him there, he was glad of an opportunity to travel a new road, and one not so generally known to English tourists. When he and Captain Neville left Florence, it was one of the most beautiful mornings which even imagination could picture as appropriate to February in Italy. Their road lay thiougVx tine lesser vale of the Arno, proverbially one of tle richest which its luxuriant landscapes can offer, and now clad, as it was, with the varied Itxwes of spring, it presented an emblem of fulness and fertility seldom equalled. To their right, the river wound almost parallel to the road; and though its banks are too low to offer much picturesque scenery, yet in its different turnings it every now and then caught a gleam of light which gave brilliancy and variety to the scene: beyond it the Apennines still towered in an amphitheatre of various gradations both of height and distance, and occasionally some of their lesser ramifications crept down into the vale, and broke the uniformity, that even from its richness would otherwise have produced satiety; whilst their less fertile brethren, which circle round Sienna, now lost their rugged barrenness in the haze of distance, and only formed a blue and broken boundary to the horizon on the left. Nor were the minuter and detailed beauties which pressed on the immediate notice of the passengers, less striking than the bolder features of the more distant landscape. The dark and glossy leaf of the clustering orange-trees, with their golden fruit and perfumed flowers, contrasted their rich and massive beauty with the feather...