The spell of Italy (1909) (14784178145)

Identifier: spellofitaly00maso (find matches)
Title: The spell of Italy
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Mason, Caroline Atwater, 1853-1939
Subjects: Italy -- Description and travel
Publisher: Boston : L. C. Page & company
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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l these, the glories of the Baptistery andCampanile and the Loggia dei Lanzi, — where is setCellinis godlike Perseus, bronze or gold,(How name the metal, when the statue flingsIts soul so in your eyes?) with brow and swordSuperbly calm. And then San Marco, above all San Marco! Trulyit is to despair, and all this is not Florence. Florenceitself will still remain unwon, for we have still notcompanied with her Dante, her Buonarotti, hermightiest. To come here and have no time to broodover the Florence in which Beatrice walked, crownedand clothed with humility, while Dante looked andworshipped from afar, — the pity of it, oh, the pityof it! It is almost to cheat ones own soul to havebut that beggarly tourists fortnight to be teased totatters in by all this bewilderment of things mostprecious! What wonder that Florence is, like Venice, parexcellence the City of Forestieri, since here are moremasterpieces than are brought together in any cityof the world? What wonder that, as Mr. Arthur
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The City of Forestieri 269 Symons says, Florence is a woman praised so longthat she has become overconscious? Perhaps it isno wonder even that in Florence the last thing youshall see is Florentines, the last language you shallhear is ItaHan. Each freshly arrived ocean linerpours out its freight of sightseers, who hasten bythe hundred from Genoa and Naples to this touristsMecca, while massive Tedeschi and superior Inglesi,superknowing and superconscious, stream like aglacial flood southward through the passes of theAlps, seek out their wonted haunts, fall to on theiresoteric divination of Botticelli, and gaze at new-comers in cold dislike. Filia knew that it was in my heart to write a book,as other folks do, when they go to Italy. She hadregarded this enterprise respectfully, but when wereturned from our first Ramble (I think that is theusual word) in Florence, as we paced the Lung Arnopensione-wards in ambient heat that quivered andsnapped and splintered into needle-points from thepav