International Weekly Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science Volume 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 - Various 2 стр.

"The greatest comfort I experienced," he says, "in Italy was living in the same neighborhood, and thinking, as I went about, of Boccaccio. Boccaccio's father had a house at Maiano, supposed to have been situated at the Fiesolan extremity of the hamlet. That merry-hearted writer was so fond of the place that he has not only laid the two scenes of the 'Decameron' on each side of it, with the valley which his company resorted to in the middle, but has made the two little streams which embrace Maiano, the Affrico and the Mensola, the hero and the heroine of his 'Nimphale Fiesolano.' The scene of another of his works is on the banks of the Margnone, a river a little distant; and the 'Decameron' is full of the neighboring villages. Out of the windows of one side of our house we saw the turret of the Villa Gherardi, to which, according to his biographers, his 'joyous company' resorted in the first instance. A house belonging to the Macchiavelli was near, a little to the left; and farther to the left, among the blue hills, was the white village, Settignano, where Michael Angelo was born. The house is still in possession of the family. From our windows on the other side we saw, close to us, the Fiesole of antiquity and of Milton, the site of the Boccaccio-house before mentioned; still closer, the Decameron's Valley of Ladies at our feet; and we looked over toward the quarter of the Mignone and of a house of Dante, and in the distance beheld the mountains of Pistria. Lastly, from the terrace in front, Florence lay clear and cathedraled before us, with the scene of Redi's Bacchus rising on the other side of it, and the villa of Arcetri, famous for Galileo. Hazlitt, who came to see me there, beheld the scene around us with the admiration natural to a lover of old folios and great names, and confessed, in the language of Burns, that it was a sight to enrich the eyes.

"My daily walk was to Fiesole, through a path skirted with wild myrtle and cyclamen; and I stopped at the door of the Doccia, and sate on the pretty melancholy platform behind it, reading, or looking down to Florence."

This is all very charming, yet hear what the author says further:

"Some people, when they return from Italy, say it has no wood, and some a great deal. The fact is, that many parts of it, Tuscany included, has no wood to speak of: it wants larger trees interspersed with the small ones, in the manner of our hedge-row elms. A tree of a reasonable height is a god-send. The olives are low and hazy-looking, like dry sallows. You have plenty of these; but to an Englishman, looking from a height, they appear little better than brushwood. Then there are no meadows, no proper green fields in June; nothing of that luxurious combination of green and russet, of grass, wild flowers, and woods, over which a lover of nature can stroll for hours, with a foot as fresh as the stag's; unmixed with chalk-dust, and an eternal public path, and able to lie down, if he will, and sleep in clover. In shortsaving, alas! a finer sky and a drier atmospherewe have the best part of Italy in books; and this we can enjoy in England. Give me Tuscany in Middlesex or Berkshire, and the Valley of Ladies between Jack Straw's Castle and Harrow.... To me, Italy had a certain hard taste in the mouth: its mountains were too bare, its outlines too sharp, its lanes too stony, its voices too loud, its long summer too dusty. I longed to bathe myself in the grassy balm of my native fields."

As a whole these volumes are full of interest and variety. They introduce us to numerous famous people, and leave us with a most agreeable impression of their author.

THE MORMONS

THOMAS L. KANE, of Philadelphia, distinguished himself very honorably a year or two ago by the vindication of the Mormons against calumnies to which they had been subjected in the Western States, and by appeals for their relief from the sufferings induced by unlooked-for exposure in their exodus to California. We are indebted to him for an interesting discourse upon the subject, delivered before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. He concludes this performance with the following observations, which we believe to be altogether just. Mr. KANE is a man of sagacity and integrity, and his opportunities for the formation of a wise opinion upon this subject were such as very few have possessed:

"I have gone over the work I assigned myself when I accepted your Committee's invitation, as fully as I could do without trespassing too largely upon your courteous patience. But I should do wrong to conclude my lecture without declaring in succinct and definite terms, the opinions I have formed and entertain of the Mormon people. The libels, of which they have been made the subject, make this a simple act of justice. Perhaps, too, my opinion, even with those who know me as you do, will better answer its end following after the narrative I have given.

"I have spoken to you of a people; whose industry had made them rich, and gathered around them all the comforts, and not a few of the luxuries of refined life; expelled by lawless force into the wilderness; seeking an untried home far away from the scenes which their previous life had endeared to them; moving onward, destitute, hunger-sickened, and sinking with disease; bearing along with them their wives and children, the aged, and the poor, and the decrepid; renewing daily on their march, the offices of devotion, the ties of family, and friendship, and charity; sharing necessities, and braving dangers together, cheerful in the midst of want and trial, and persevering until they triumphed. I have told, or tried to tell you, of men, who when menaced by famine, and in the midst of pestilence, with every energy taxed by the urgency of the hour, were building roads and bridges, laying out villages, and planting cornfields, for the stranger who might come after them, their kinsman only by a common humanity, and peradventure a common suffering,of men, who have renewed their prosperity in the homes they have founded in the desert,and who, in their new built city, walled round by mountains like a fortress, are extending pious hospitalities to the destitute emigrants from our frontier lines,of men who, far removed from the restraints of law, obeyed it from choice, or found in the recesses of their religion, something not inconsistent with human laws, but far more controlling; and who are now soliciting from the government of the United States, not indemnity,for the appeal would be hopeless, and they know itnot protection, for they now have no need of it,but that identity of political institutions and that community of laws with the rest of us, which was confessedly their birthright when they were driven beyond our borders.

"I said I would give you the opinion I formed of the Mormons: you may deduce it for yourselves from these facts. But I will add that I have not yet heard the single charge against them as a community, against their habitual purity of life, their integrity of dealing, their toleration of religious differences in opinion, their regard for the laws, or their devotion to the constitutional government under which we live, that I do not from my own observation, or the testimony of others, know to be unfounded."

Original Poetry

THE BRIDE'S REVERIE

TO . By Mrs. R.B.K

"I said I would give you the opinion I formed of the Mormons: you may deduce it for yourselves from these facts. But I will add that I have not yet heard the single charge against them as a community, against their habitual purity of life, their integrity of dealing, their toleration of religious differences in opinion, their regard for the laws, or their devotion to the constitutional government under which we live, that I do not from my own observation, or the testimony of others, know to be unfounded."

Original Poetry

THE BRIDE'S REVERIE

TO . By Mrs. R.B.K

Original Correspondence

RAMBLES IN THE PENINSULA

My Dear FriendMy companion, Mr. Ronalds, left this morning in the diligence for Madrid, and I am, therefore, for the first time since I have been in Europe alonethe only citizen of the United States at present in this ancient Moorish city: alone, I may almost say, in the midst of paradise. Yet the beauties of nature will not compensate for the solitude of the heart, which is continually yearning after sympathy; we wish for something beyond the pleasures of the eye, and I would that you were with me. I would take you up to me Alhambra, and descant to you for hours upon its perfections and its romantic history. To me this wondrous pile has become familiar; I have seen it at all hours of the day, and have visited it in the enchantment of moonlight; and never will pass from my memory the pleasant hours I have spent within its sacred precincts; I shall remember them and those who shared them with meforever. A few days since we made up a party and rode out to the famous town of Santa Fe, in the delightful Vega, about eight miles away. We were all dressed in the gay costume of Andalusia, and presented, as you may imagine, a picturesque appearance; my companions were lively fellows, and we had a great deal of sport on the way. Santa Fe is now a dilapidated place, but its associations make it well deserving a visit. It was built by Ferdinand, during the memorable siege of Grenada; it was here that Boabdil signed the capitulation of his city; and it was from this spot, too, that Columbus was dispatched on his mission of discovering a new world. The rich and fertile Vega, as we rode with the speed of the wind over it, seemed to me like a fairy landso luxuriant the vegetationso rich the meadows and fields of waving grainso exquisite the variety of cottages, and villages, and groves, dotting so vast a plainso pure and transparent the atmosphere, that the most distant objects are as clearly defined as those nearest us. Imagine so lovely a landscapethirty miles in length by twenty-five in width, surrounded by tremendous mountains,those of the Sierra Nevada, rising back of Grenada to the height of thirteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, their summits covered by a dazzling mantle of snow: imagine this, and you will have some faint idea of this beautiful Eden of Spain. It is worth a long pilgrimage to gaze but for one moment upon it, particularly from the Torre de la Vela of the Alhambra, whence I have beheld it, both in the bright, gay sunshine, and through the solemnly beautiful night, illumined by the stars and moon.

The walks and gardens of Grenada are exceedingly beautiful. The principal promenade is called (and very appropriately) El Salon. It is of considerable extentabout eighty feet in width, with regular lines of lofty elms on either side, the bending branches of which nearly meet in an arch overhead. At both extremities of this charming avenue is a large and handsome fountain of ever-flowing water. The ground of the walk is hardslightly curved; and as smooth and clean as the floor of a ball-room, where convenient seats of stone, tastefully arranged beneath the shade of the spreading trees, seem to invite one to meditation and repose. Outside of this lovely promenade, are blooming gardens, teeming with roses and other flowers, which fill the air with fragrance, while through them on one side runs the river Darre, and on the other the Xeniegentle streams, whose waters unite their melodious rippling to the chorus of nightingales, ever singing above their pleasant banks. But description is tiresome, especially when one is attempting to present something beyond his power, so I shall not fatigue you with it any longer: besides, a worthy English curate, now my only companion in this wretched hotel, is boring me so incessantly with conversation that I find it difficult to collect any thoughts to put on paper. I wish he was already in heaven, as, surely, he well deserves to be.