One page used particularly to attract my boyish attention.It was headed by a naive little drawing of the carriage at an Italian inn door, and described how, after the dangers and discomforts of an Alpine pass, they descended by sunny slopes into Lombardy.Oh! the rapture that breathes from those simple pages! The vintage scenes, the mid-day halt for luncheon eaten in the open air, the afternoon start, the front seat of the carriage heaped with purple grapes, used to fire my youthful imagination and now recalls Madame de Stael's line on perfect happiness: "To be young! to be in love! to be in Italy!"Do people enjoy Europe as much now? I doubt it! It has become too much a matter of course, a necessary part of the routine of life.
Much of the bloom is brushed from foreign scenes by descriptive books and photographs, that St.Mark's or Mt.Blanc has become as familiar to a child's eye as the house he lives in, and in consequence the reality now instead of being a revelation is often a disappointment.