Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-04-16
A DeIishtful Visit TO Tivoli-The Appear.
ance and Capacity of the Italians.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, in the last number
of the New York Independent, thus relates
her impressions of day passed at TivOli,
near Rome:
Tivoli is representative Italian village,
with streets dirtier than the back alleys of
New York at their dirtiest hour in the day,
and smelling so that ones hand instinctively
goes up to ones nose at the thought. So far
as we have observed, the rooms that open
upon the street have no means, either of light
or ventilation, other than the door; when
that is open there is light and air, when it is
| shut there is none. At the doors Of these
dark dens were seated quite gossipy and So
cal groups of men, women, and children,
knitting, chattering, tending babies, and
sewing in all domesticity, right in the face OF
the dirt and filth Of the narrowest streets.
We saw a woman dangling fat black-eyed
baby by pocket-handkerchief under its arm,
| who was grabbing downward with its dirty
fat hands after filthy cabbage stump. One
child, in fit of temper, was lying fiat on its
face in the dirt, Kicking and screaming,
while parents and elder children appeared
unitedly to expostulate.
The Italians are an amiable, good-humored
people, and amid all the dirt, and filth, and
| disgusting sights and smells of their streets,
you see no drunken men, no quarreling and
| lighting, such AS appal one in Glasgow, Edin-
| burgh, or London. The women and children
looked too well fed, the clothes though
coarse, were patched and mended, and amply
sufficient for purposes of bodily protection,
and almost every woman wore In her ears
massive gold earrings. Spite too of un-
cleanliness and foul air, they are fine look
ing race. Everybody begs-father, mother,
children, down to the baby in arms, who is
taught as first accomplishment to whimpeT
and put out its tat hands in an impressive
manner; and frequently our way was beset
by boys and girls that neither filth nor rags
could disfgure- fine, clear, bronze cheeks,
such active limbs, such curling black hair
and, above all, such glorious eyes, dark and
starry with such velvet depths Of softness
Verify, if one ever gets tired of hearing of
Sunday-schools, and tracts, and Bible-classes
in America, where there is sort of spiritual
surfeit of good things, let them come and see
these children that grow up without them.
If they had the third, or even the hundredth
part of the chance that our American boys
and girls get, what splendid men and women
they might make. Ours are stuffed and
these are starved, and as they hung round the
carriage and begged, my soul yearned to take
them bodily and put them down in a land
where school-house doors are open freely to
every child. Certsin are we that we should
soon hear of talent and genius developing
among these Italian children. But beside
the children, professed beggars OF every de-
gree crowded round, showing the sores and
deformities which were their stock in trade;
and we descended at our hotel door in q
flock of tatered scarecrows that reminded
one of ravens. We made our way through
them all to the ruined temple of the Sybil, that
stands on the edge of the beautiful gorge
down which dashes one Of the loveliest cas-
cades in the world For italy, the paved
space around the little temple was literally
| Il tbot MI nf
without risings of the stomach, which is
more than one can say for most show places
Soon our table was spread; and in view o.
the clouds of rainbow spray, and of the sill
very, olive-crowned banks, we sat and took
merry lunch. Then for the scramble down
long, winding path, fringed with myrtle
and interlaced with ivy and gemmed with
fary-like beauty-through long grottoeE
out of whose arched windows we saw pic.
lures of beauty.
Our way brought us at last to the very
bottom of the gorge, where the maiden'I
hair mods from the rocks, and ferns anC
water-loving plants are refreshed with {
never-ceasing dew from the spray. Here thu
/ cascade leaps with hollow sound down int
an abyss Of weird, fantastic-shaped rocks
over whose edge we fingered, talking ant
! watching two white doves that fitted in ant
out. Then the party ascending took donkey
: TO make the circuit of all the finest points o
view, for the cascade is less one than a net
work of cascades, and CLEANS in thousan
] fairy shapes in the sunshine. Of all beauti
full places, Tivoli in soft spring day is tn
= most dream-like. We departed earlier tha
. we would because we meant to visit the ruin
of Adrian's Villa, lower down, tis
At about FIVE o'clock VIC wound slowl
down the mountain slope through grove q
4 ancient gnarled olives, whose silver leave