escape from the tumult of the gay city. . . . We set out in chilly and cheerless weather, which seems resolved to stay by us. We made but half a day's journey to Fontainebleau, seven and a half posts (a post is about five miles). Here I bore in my mind that we had, in this place seventeen years ago, heard the cannon announce the birth of a Son of France; he was called the Child of Miracle. It will require a greater miracle to place him on the throne of his fathers. On the first of this month we first came to an object, both new to us, and having an historical interest—a grand triumphal arch erected in honour of the victories of that arch Whig-Radical Marius, and a sadly-dilapidated Roman theatre. But the next day presented a far more congenial object in the Vaucluse of Petrarch. We left our carriage in the venerable and decayed ex-papal city of Avignon and were driven to the poet's asylum and haunt. This famous spot is a naked valley at the end of which, under a rock, like Malham cove, rushes out a stream of great beauty; and lofty and wild rocks give an earnest and even savage character to the scene. But it is treeless and nearly grassless, and I therefore could not fancy it the residence by choice of the writer of the first perfect sonnets, sonnets pre-eminently soft, and sweet even to effeminacy. St. John the Baptist, on the contrary, might have dwelt there, but he could not have found wild honey, for there can be no bees where there are no flowers. Next morning we rambled about Avignon, were amused by the display of national and professional character in the Invalides, where the Government have allowed the veterans of the French army to erect a wooden pyramidal monument in honour of Buonaparte. Indeed the walls of the garden are covered with inscriptions triumphantly recording the conquests and victories of the French. And under this title is found the battle of Waterloo!!! On the same day we proceeded to Nismes, seeing by the way the most beautiful aqueduct the Romans have left us, called the Pont du Gard. As the vicinity of N. has the very finest Roman aqueduct, so the city itself has a very fine temple, and ample remains of a noble amphitheatre. Few places in Italy combine so much to gratify the learned architect. And as far as antiquities are concerned, an unlearned traveller's curiosity might well be satisfied. As if, however, to try the superior power of nature over art, two little girls had cunningly placed themselves before one of the entrances into the Arènes, and were plucking the wings of a dead bird. Their beautiful eyes so fascinated the poet that had we been on our homeward not outward bound voyage, and could I have been bribed to assist in the atrocious theft, I believe he might have been wrought on to seize the little innocents, not indeed like an ogre, to feed on them, but with the more laudable purpose of improving the Westmoreland breed. Jesting apart, as far as the obtaining a distinct notion of Ancient Art in Architecture belongs to the motive and inducement for a tour into Italy, the journey may be considered to have attained its purpose." Wordsworth to his Wife. 66 Toulon, 8th April. ... I will just mention what pleased me most,-the day at Vaucluse, where I was enchanted with the power and beauty of the stream, and the wildness and grandeur of the rocks, and several minor beauties which Mr. R. has not noticed, and which I should have particularised, but for this blinding cold. I was much pleased with Nismes, with Marseilles, but most of all, with the drive between Marseilles and Toulon, which is singularly romantic and varied. From a height above Toulon, as we approached, we had a noble view of the purple waters of the Mediterranean, purple no doubt from the state of the atmosphere; for at Marseilles, where we first saw it, the colour was not different from the sea of our own island. At Nismes the evening was calm, the atmosphere unusually clear, and the air warm, not from its own temperature, but from the effect of the sun. I there first observed the stars, as appearing brighter and at a greater variety of depths, i.e. advancing one before the other more than they do with us. One of the few promises of summer, which we have had, is the peach-blossom abundantly scattered over some parts of the country, and very beautiful, especially when neighboured by the cypress, a tree that is plentiful in this part of the south of France. . Wordsworth to his Sister. MY DEAREST SISTER, "[NICE,] April 10th. Thus far we have rather seemed to be flying from the spring than approaching it. Yesterday we came from a place called Luc to Cannes. It snowed, it hailed, it rained, it blew, and lucky it is for you, notwithstanding the beauty of the country, that you are not with us. . . . The olive groves, when they first made their appearance, looked no better than pollard willows of bushy size; but they are now become trees, oftener a good deal larger than our largest hollies, though I have seen none so large as our best birch-trees. They suffice to give a sylvan character to the whole country, which was long wanting. Orange-trees also now occur frequently, in plots; and on entering this town, we first saw them with the fruit on. ... At Cannes we saw the Villa which, with a taste sufficiently odd, the owner of Brougham Hall is building there. Beautiful and splendid as the situation is, I should much prefer Brougham Hall, with its Lowther woods and two flowing streams, clear and never dry. Imagine to yourself a deeply indented bay like that, on the right hand lofty mountains, and the left horn, ground sinking down into a low point of land, so as almost to meet an island, upon which stands a fortress, famous as being the place where the Man of the Masque de fer was confined. Such is the general description of the bay of Cannes. The town lies behind the projection, under which I have placed a cross; that projection is of rock, and adorned with the ruins of a castle, with a church still in use, and also with some decayed buildings of a religious kind. Lord B.'s villa stands upon olive and orange groves that slope down to the Mediterranean, distant about a quarter of a mile or less, a narrow beach of yellow and smooth sand being interposed. Broken ground runs behind the house, scattered over with olive and other fruit trees, also some pines; but the frost had sadly nipped the oranges, and their leaves were scattered pretty thick under the trees, If the dry channels of the ravines worn by the occasional floods were constantly filled with pure foaming water, and the rocks were of less crumbling material-they are a sort of sandstone-this situation would be enviable, and yet still it would want our oaks and birches, etc., as it does actually want the chestnut and walnut trees, that adorn, as you know well, many parts of the north of Italy and Switzerland. Do not think I say too much of Cannes, when I tell you, that beyond the left or eastern horn of this bay, and near the road leading to Antibes, which, as the map will show, is the next town on the road leading from Cannes to Nice, Buonaparte disembarked from the island of Elba. The postillion pointed out the spot. Antibes is the frontier town of France." Wordsworth to his Sister. "Rome, 27th April. Though I have seen the Coliseum, the Pantheon, and all the other boasted things, nothing has in the least approached the impressions I received from the inside of St. Peter's. I have been enchanted with the beauty of the scenery in innumerable places, though almost in full as many there is a deplorable want of beauty in the surface, where the forms are fine. Speaking of the Apennines in contradistinction to the maritime Alps, for one scarcely can say where one begins and the other ends, I should say that as far as I have seen, they VOL. III. T are both in beauty and grandeur immeasurably inferior, often lumpish in their forms, and oftener still, harsh, arid, and ugly on their surface. Besides, these mountains have an ill habit of sending down torrents so rapidly that the rivers are perpetually changing their beds; and in consequence the valleys, which ought to be green and fertile, are overspread with sand and gravel. But why find fault when much that I have seen is so enchanting! We had scarcely been two hours in Rome, when we walked up to the Pincian hill, near our hotel. The sun was just set, but the western sky glowed beautifully. A great part of the city of modern Rome lay below us, and St. Peter's rose on the opposite side; and, for dear Sir George Beaumont's sake, I will mention that at no great distance from the dome of the Church on the line of the glowing horizon, was seen one of those broadtopped pines, looking like a little cloud in the sky, with a slender stalk to connect it with its native earth. I mention this because a friend of Mr. Robinson's whom we had just accidentally met, told us that this very tree which I admired so much had been paid for by our dear friend, that it might stand as long as nature might allow. " Wordsworth to his Wife and Sister. "May 6. Several times I have been at St. Peter's, have heard Mass before the Pope in the Sistine Chapel, and after that seen him pronounce the benediction upon the people from a balcony in front of St. Peter's, and seen his Holiness scatter bits of paper from aloft upon the multitude, indulgences, I suppose. The Monte Mario commands the most magnificent view of modern Rome, the Tiber, and the surrounding country. Upon this elevation I stood under the pine, redeemed by Sir G. Beaumont, of which I spoke in my former letter. I touched |