This became more remarkably the case, as we entered the territories of Maria-Louisa (the little States of Parma and Placentia) when, for two whole days, we literally travelled through an uninterrupted succession of cornfields, vineyards and orchards, all in the highest state of cultivation, with the hedges neatly clipped into a kind of trellis-work, and the vines hanging in festoons from tree to tree, or clinging "with marriageable arms"¹ round the branches of each regularly planted and friendly support. It was more like passing through a number of orchard-plots or garden-grounds in the neighbourhood of some great city (such as London) than making a journey through a wide and extensive tract of country. Not a common came in sight, nor a single foot of waste or indifferent ground. It became tedious at last from the richness, the neatness, and the uniformity ; for the whole was worked up to an ideal model, and so exactly a counterpart of itself, that it was like looking out of a window at the same identical spot, instead of passing on to new objects every instant. We were saturated even with beauty and comfort, and were disposed to repeat the wish "To-morrow to fresh fields and pastures new."² A white square villa, or better sort of farm-house, sometimes stared on us from the end of a long, strait avenue of poplars, standing in ostentatious, unadorned nakedness, and in a stiff, meagre, and very singular taste. What is the cause of the predilection of the Italians for straight lines and unsheltered walls ? Is it for the sake of security or vanity ? The desire of seeing everything or of being seen by every one? The only thing that broke the uniformity of the scene, or gave an appearance of wretchedness or neglect to the country, was the number of dry beds of the torrents of melted snow and ice that came down from the mountains in the breaking up of the winter, and that stretched their wide, comfortless, unprofitable length across these valleys in their progress to the Adriatic. Some of them were half a mile in breadth, and had stately bridges over them, with innumerable arches (the work, it seems, of Maria Louisa) some of which we crossed over, others we rode under. We approached the first of them by moonlight, arid the effect of the long, white, glimmering, sepulchral arches was as ghastly then as it is dreary in the day-time. There is something almost preternatural in the sensation they excite, particularly when your nerves have been agitated and harassed during several days' journey, and you are disposed to startle at everything in a questionable shape. You do not know what to make of them. They seem like the skeletons of bridges over the dry bones and dusty relics of rivers. It is as if some mighty concussion of the earth had swept away the water, and left the bridge standing in stiffened horror over it. It is a new species of desolation, as flat, dull, disheartening, and hopeless as can be imagined. Mr. Crabbe should travel post to Italy on purpose to describe it, and to add it to his list of prosaic horrors. While here, he might also try his hand upon an Italian vintage, and if he does not squeeze the juice and spirit out of it, and leave nothing but the husk and stalks, I am much mistaken. As we groped our way under the stony ribs of the first of these structures that we came to, one of the arches within which the moonlight fell, presented a momentary appearance of a woman in a white dress and hood, stooping to gather stones. I wish I had the petrific pencil of the ingenious artist above-named, that I might imbody this flitting shadow in a permanent form.
Notes:
1. From John Milton's Paradise Lost
2. From John Milton's poem Lycidas
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