Meme zeme I am Give my love to Marianne and her sister, and Write soon. Ever most affectionately yours, P. B. S. In a brief Journal 1 kept at that time, I find a few pages in helley's handwriting, descriptive of the passage over the mountains of Lea Echelles: " March 28, Thursday. We travel towards the mountains, and begin to enter the valleys of the Alps. The country becomes covered again with verdure and cultivation, and white chateaux and senttered cottages among woods of old onk and walnut trees. The vines are here peculiarly pictur Xuanese lad been sen passport was a few days before, and ti suse treatment. We, nation I suppose, were su ever, were, after a bor i be submitted so the cens 4 Roussean, Voiture, ke of wardinia All such but After dinner weakeni a road cut through perf elevation, by Charies Erg The rocks, which cannot perpendicular height, sc each side, and almost she like that described in the rifts and caverns in the g tains with ice and snow ab waters within the cavern only to be scaled as he des the ocean nymphs. Under the dominion of the fertile valleys, bounded state of most frightful pove this ascent, were cut inte stories of the misery of the passion of the traveller. crawled out of a hole in th melting of the snows of abo bath. The country, as we desce as beautiful; though mark character than before: we a ** course I except the Alps themselves; but no sooner had we arrived at Italy, than the loveliness of the earth and the screnity of the sky made the greatest difference in my sensations. I depend on these things for life; for in the smoke of cities, and the tumult of human kind, and the chilling fogs and rain of our own country, I can hardly be said to live. With what delight did I hear the woman, who conducted us to see the triumphal arch of Augustus at Susa, speak the clear and complete language of Italy, though half unintelligible to me, after that nasal and abbreviated cacophony of the French! A ruined arch of magnificent proportions in the Greek taste, standing in a kind of road of green lawn, overgrown with violets and primroses, and in the midst of stupendous mountains, and a blonde woman, of light and graceful manners, something in the style of Fuseli's Eve, were the first things we met in Italy. This city is very agreeable. We went to the opera last night-which is a most splendid exhibition. The opera itself was not a favourite, and the singers very inferior to our own. But the ballet, or rather a kind of melodrame or pantomimic drama, was the most splendid spectacle I ever saw. We have no Miss Melanie here-in every other respect, Milan is unquestionably superior. The manner in which language is translated into gesture, the complete and full effect of the whole as illustrating the history in question, the unaffected selfpossession of each of the actors, even to the children, made this choral drama more impressive than I could have conceived possible. The story is Othello, and strange to say, it left no disagreeable impression. I write, but I am not in the humour to write, and you must expect longer, if not more entertaining, letters soon-that is, in a week or so-when I am a little recovered from my journey. Pray tell us all the news with regard to our own offspring, whom we left at nurse in England; as well as those of our friends. Mention Cobbett and politics too-and Hunt-to whom Mary is now writing and particularly your own plans and yourself. You shall hear more of me and my plans soon. My health is improved already-and my spirits something and I have many literary schemes, and one in particular-which I thirst to be settled that I may begin. I have ordered Ollier to send you some sheets &c., for revision. Adieu.-Always faithfully yours, P. B. S. LETTER III. To T.L. P Esq. Milan, April 20, 1818. MY DEAR P.-I had no conception that the distance between us, measured by time in respect of letters, was so great. I have but just received mine written from this city somewhat later than yours dated the 2nd-and when you will receive the same date, I cannot know. I am sorry to hear that you have been obliged to remain at Marlow; a certain degree of society being almost a necessity of life, particularly as we are not to see you this summer in Italy. But this, I suppose, must be as it is. I often revisit Marlow in thought. The curse of this life is, that whatever is once known, can never be unknown. You inhabit a spot, which before you inhabit it, is as indifferent to you as any other spot upon earth, and when, persuaded by some necessity, you think to leave it, you leave it not; it clings to you-and with memories of things, which, in your experience of them, gave no such arbutus islands of Killarney. It is long and winding among the mountains and the forests. narrow, and has the appearance of a mighty river We sailed from the town of Como to a tract of country called the Tremezina, and saw the various aspects presented by that part of the lake. The mountains between Como and that village, or rather cluster of villages, are covered on high with chesnut forests (the eating chesnuts, on which the inhabitants of the country subsist in time of scarcity), which sometimes descend to the very verge of the lake, overhanging it with their hoary branches. But usually the immediate border of and myrtle, and wild fig-trees, and olives which this shore is composed of laurel-trees, and bay, grow in the crevices of the rocks, and overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep glens, which are filled with the flashing light of the waterfalls. Other flowering shrubs, which I cannot name, grow there also. On high, the towers of village churches are seen white among the dark forests. Beyond, on the opposite shore, which faces the south, the mountains descend less precipitously to the lake, and although they are much higher; and some covered with perpetual snow, there intervenes between them and the lake a range of lower hills, which have glens and rifts opening to the other, such as I should fancy the alysacs of Ida or Parnassus. Here are plantations of olive, and orange, and lemon trees, which are now so loaded with fruit, that there is more fruit than leaves, and vineyards. This shore of the lake is one continued village, and the Milanese nobility have their villas here. The union of culture and the untameable profusion and loveliness of nature is here so close, that the line where they are divided can hardly be discovered. But the finest scenery is that of the Villa Pliniana; so called from a fountain which ebbs and flows every three hours, described by the younger Pliny, which is in the court-yard. This house, which was once a magni- | ficent palace, and is now half in ruins, we are! endeavouring to procure. It is built upon terraces raised from the bottom of the lake, together with its garden, at the foot of a semicircular precipice, overshadowed by profound forests of chesnut. The scene from the colonnade is the most extraordinary, at once, and the most lovely that eye ever beheld. On one side is the mountain, and immediately over you are clusters of cypress-trees of an astonishing height, which seem to pierce the sky. Above you, from among the clouds, as it were, descends a waterfall of immense size, broken by the woody rocks into a thousand channels to the lake. On the other side is seen the blue extent of the lake and the mountains, speckled with sails and spires. The apartments of the Pliniana are immensely large, but ill furnished and antique. The terraces, which overlook the lake, and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as deserve the epithet of Pythian, are most delightful. We staid at Como two days, and have now returned to Milan, waiting the issue of our negotiation about a house. Como is only six leagues from Milan, and its mountains are seen from the cathedral. The This cathedral is a most astonishing work of art. It is built of white marble, and cut into pinnacles of immense height, and the utmost delicacy of workmanship, and loaded with sculpture. effect of it, piercing the solid blue with those groups of dazzling spires, relieved by the serene depth of this Italian heaven, or by moonlight when the stars seem gathered among those clustered shapes, is beyond any thing I had imagined architecture capable of producing. The interior, though very sublime, is of a more earthly character, and with its stained glass and massy granite columns overloaded with antique figures, and the silver lamps, that burn for ever under the canopy of black cloth beside the braze the dome, give sepulchre. The those aisles, bei of day is dim and which I have c there. I have devote next year, to the subject of Tasso inspection is, if matie and poetica dramatic talent; but I have taken of a tragedy a could write. It Fazio, and better You tell me not from which, I con success. Who lives in my is to be done with that the situation should be tempted who is to be its ne our journey here h we are now living a Pension, which is price, and when we we have every rea experience somethin Italy. The finest the whitest and the English penny a pou bear a proportional luxuries, tea, &c., ar as usual, are cheate culous, if they have do not know a single until last night, has Byron, we hear, has at Venice; whether not know. The nu through this town is be in their own co Their conduct is whol here, though inoffen body and soul a mis hardly men; they loo shrivelled slaves, and seen a gleam of intelli man since I passed enslaved countries a men; but they have ti and mien which expres a mixture of the coquet Milan, April 30th, 1818. MY DEAR P.,-I write, simply to tell you, to direct your next letters, Poste Restante, Pisa. We have engaged a vetturino for that city, and leave Milan to-morrow morning. Our journey will occupy six or seven days. Pisa is not six miles from the Mediterranean, with which it communicates by the river Arno. We shall pass by Piacenza, Parma, Bologna, the Apennines, and Florence, and I will endeavour to tell you something of these celebrated places in my next letter; but I cannot promise much, for, though my health is much improved, my spirits are unequal, and seem to desert me when I attempt to write. Pisa, they say, is uninhabitable in the midst of summer-we shall do, therefore, what other people do, retire to Florence, or to the mountains. But I will write to you our plans from Pisa, when I shall understand them better myself. You may easily conjecture the motives which led us to forego the divine solitude of Como. To me, whose chief pleasure in life is the contemplation of nature, you may imagine how great is this loss. Let us hear from you once a fortnight. Do not forget those who do not forget you. Adieu.-Ever most sincerely yours, LETTER V. To T. L. P. Esq. Livorno, June 5, 1818. MY DEAR P.,--We have not heard from you since the middle of April-that is, we have received only one letter from you since our departure from *These impressions of Shelley, with regard to the Italians, formed in ignorance, and with precipitation, became altogether altered after a longer stay in Italy. He quickly discovered the extraordinary intelligence and genius of this wonderful people, amidst the ignorance in which they are carefully kept by their rulers, and the vices, fostered by a religious system, which these same rulers have used as their most successful engine. England. It necessarily follows that some accident has intercepted them. Address, in future, to the care of Mr. Gisborne, Livorno-and I shall receive them, though sometimes somewhat circuitously, yet always securely. We left Milan on the 1st of May, and travelled across the Apennines to Pisa. This part of the Apennine is far less beautiful than the Alps; the mountains are wide and wild, and the whole scenery broad and undetermined-the imagination cannot find a home in it. The plain of the Milanese, and that of Parma, is exquisitely beautiful—it is like one garden, or rather cultivated wilderness; because the corn and the meadow-grass grow under high and thick trees, festooned to one another by regular festoons of vines. On the seventh day we arrived at Pisa, where we remained three or four days. A large disagrecable city, almost without inhabitants. We then proceeded to this great and which, in a few days, we leave for the Bagni trading town, where we have remained a month, di Lucca, a kind of watering-place situated in the depth of the Apennines; the scenery surroundiug this village is very fine. We have made some acquaintance with a very amiable and accomplished lady, Mrs. Gisborne, who is the sole attraction in this most unattractive of cities. We had no idea of spending a month here, but she has made it even agreeable. We shall see something of Italian society at the Bagni di Lucca, where the most fashionable people resort. When you send my parcel-which, by-the-bye, I should request you to direct to Mr. GisborneI wish you could contrive to enclose the two last parts of Clarke's Travels, relating to Greece, and belonging to Hookham. You know I subscribe there still-and I have determined to take the Examiner here. You would, therefore, oblige me, by sending it weekly, after having read it yourself, to the same direction, and so clipped, as to make as little weight as possible. I write as if writing where perhaps my letter may never arrive. With every good wish from all of us, Believe me most sincerely yours, LETTER VI. To Mr. and Mrs. GISBORNE, (LEGHORN). You cannot know, as some friends in England do, to whom my silence is still more inexcusable, that this silence is no proof of forgetfulness or neglect. I have, in truth, nothing to say, but that I shall be happy to see you again, and renew our delightful walks, until the desire or the duty of seeing new things burries us away. We have spent a month here in our accustomed solitude, with the exception of one night at the Casino; and the choice society of all ages, which I took care to pack up in a large trunk before we left England, have revisited us here. I am employed just now, having little better to do, in translating into my faint and inefficient periods, the divine eloquence of Plato's Symposium; only as an exercise, or, perhaps, to give Mary some idea of the manners and feelings of the Athenians -so different on many subjects from that of any other community that ever existed. We have almost finished Ariosto-who is enter taining and graceful, and sometimes a poet. Forgive me, worshippers of a more equal and tolerant divinity in poetry, if Ariosto pleases me less than you. Where is the gentle seriousness, the delicate sensibility, th calm and sustained energy, without which true greatness cannot be? He is so cruel, too, in his descriptions; his most prized virtues are vices almost without disguise. He constantly vindicates and embellishes revenge in its grossest form; the most deadly superstition that ever infested the world. How different from the tender and solemn enthusiasm of Petrarch-or even the delicate moral sensibility of Tasso, though somewhat obscured by an assumed and artificial style. We read a good deal here-and we read little in Livorno. We have ridden, Mary and I, once only, to a place called Prato Fiorito, on the top of the mountains: the road, winding through forests, and over torrents, and on the verge of green ravines, affords scenery magnificently fine. cannot describe it to you, but bid you, though vainly, come and see. I take great delight in watching the changes of the atmosphere here, and the growth of the thunder showers with which the noon is often overshadowed, and which break and fade away towards evening into flocks of delicate clouds. Our fire-flies are fading away fast; but there is the planet Jupiter, who rises majestically over the rift in the forest-covered mountains to the south, and the pale summer lightning which is spread out every night, at intervals, over the sky. No doubt Providence has contrived these things, that, when the fire-flies go out, the low-flying owl may see her way home. Remember me kindly to the Machinista. With the sentiment of impatience until we see you again in the autumn, I am, yours most sincerely, P. B. SHELLEY. Bagni di Lucca, July 10th, 1818. I To W MY DEAR GO nothing of Italy habitation of dep the magnificent of the climate, a same with those Rome and Naple and if we were to our impressions, lived in Italy. I am exceedin propose of a bo our calumniated subject for Mary fear of being exc her reach, she wo order the works little skilled in E which it excites a duty to attain m of it which is indis Mary has just indeed, has attain of Italian. She been constantly o written little-exc in which I exerc producing anything Plato seems to me of all antiquity; w merit of the com throws on the inmo among the ancient in translating this, an Essay upon t in sentiment betwe with respect to the Two things giv letters. The res Malthus, and the election. If Minis totally inconceivabl in war, do you in Peace is all that a c England, seems to and leisure for att the universal evils o the peculiar system evils have been exa had health or spir |