Tuscan Studies and Sketches (Paperback)

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. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ...with its surging crowd of priests and processions; vendors of cakes, sweets, and cigars; girls with mass books and rosaries in one hand, fruit in the other; weeping mourners, and jesting young men; bereaved mothers and wives bewailing for those who are hidden from them by the cruel marble slab; and light-hearted girls with all their thoughts warm for the hopes of the future love. Life and death, and death and life, contrasted side by side in a hundred different guises. And down below the hill of the dead, beautiful Florence, with the bridge-spanned Arno flowing amidst its towers and palaces. And that, too, speaks of death and life--a nation has died, and a new nation is growing to strength and power. And farther off are the mountains, veiled in golden mist, which seem to speak of the everlasting. CHAPTER III. Ht the Baths. HE Italians like to take their pleasures as they do their penances, in a concentrated form. They bring a mass of social gaieties to a strong focus, surfeit themselves with balls, concerts, "Fieri," and "Corsi" for a few weeks, and call it " carnival." They crowd all the penances and fastings and sermons into the Lenten season, and then take no more thought till next year. On the same principle, ladies receive all their calls on one day of the week, and live in homely solitude in their peignoirs for the next six days. Sea-bathing subjected to a like process becomes compressed into the short space of two months, when i as many ephemeral dissipations as possible are crowded together on the seashore. Not an Italian who can afford his yearly sojourn at the baths, even if it be only a fortnight, will miss it; but not one would dream of taking it in June or September, when he might obtain greater benefit at half the expense. No To...