Italy Volume 2

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

449

text excerpt

It is a delightful thing to roll along the banks of the Brenta, from Padua to Fusina, on a fine, bright, sunny holiday morning! not one cloud to shadow the living scene—not one image to sadden or to sink the buoyant spirits and exhilarated feelings—the canal to the right lying through a laughing, lovely, fertile champaign; where fields and vineyards will yield and bloom, and suns will shine and ripen, though fifty Emperors of Austria ruled the soil with heads of lead and rods of iron!—the elegant marble villas to the left, with their Palladian façades, their green verandas, and parterres of orange-trees, inducing the belief that they are still lorded by the Foscarini and the Bembi of the great and free days of Republican Venice! The barca-corriera—the gondola (first seen)—the ponderous barchiello, heavily freighted, glide, pass, and repass, and all to the tune of the "Carnival of Venice," which the traveller has borrowed from the opera at Paris, and hums in symphony during the whole of the delicious little journey! But most delightful of all are the groups that strew the way, with their festive habits and festive faces; the women all pretty, the men all gaillard—the sounds all lisping, and the laugh all melody!

excerpt from 'Italy Volume 2' pp. 449 (219 words)

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1516537606843