Unvisited Places of Old Europe (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. 1913. Excerpt: ... tals alone remain; but a host of figures still, stand grouped in gardens or extend along old avenues. Smiling or dancing, posing in stateliness, or eternally pouring libations--gods and goddesses, nymphs and heroes, loves and graces, marred, broken, yellowed, lichened--they are doing patiently on their pedestals for the peasants what in old days they did for patricians; and in all this is a grim and theatrical impressiveness, as of broken-down actors and actresses representing the glories of the olden time. Numbers of the villas have not only the charm of general association with the pride of former days, but have definite legends or history clinging about the great rooms and the window-seats and the charming alcoves. There are tiny canals running up to private landing-places, and loggias from which the procession of boats and horses was watched by languid ladies and from which the snowy Alps are seen, gleaming austere and cold above the steaming plain. One house, not far from Malcontenta, is honored because it stands upon the site of an earlier one t which Dante for a time occupied. Dante wrote of the Brenta, too, but the time of his residence there was before the era of Venetian occupancy. One must look needfully if he would see every one of the still existent villas, for there are defaced and cheaply stuccoed houses which might hastily be passed by without interest, but which are shown in the ancient prints as the villas of this or that great family whose name is in the Golden Book. The Italians love to stucco any building, old or new; and, so far as apparent age is concerned, a touch of stucco makes all buildings kin. Less interesting, except as illustrative of human nature, are the few garish houses, comparatively modern, put up by pretentious folk w...