The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1877-03-01

Special Correspondence of the Detroit Free Pre- SO
For centuries the fair Peninsula OF Italy
has been land much loved By tourists of all
nations. 1t has been the favorite and fertile
tn enc of pens and pencils almost innumer-
a Bile. 1t mountains, and villages, and coasts
and streams, and sunsets, and siroccos; its
churches, and palaces. and galleries, and mu
seums, and statues, and pictures, and ruinsy
haye been praised and sung and described
and criticised, in dead languages and modern
tongues, in prose and verse, from Horace and
Virgil and Catulus down to Shelley and
Beckford and Byron ard Dickens and Hill
lard and Howells and Hurlbnrt. There was
Addison, father OF English prose compost
ton. whose ponderous Voyage in Italy" in
huge folio snd obsolete type, looms mp at
this moment before nv smemory's eyes all
bristling with apt quotations in Greek and
Latin text, so plenteously bestrewn, that the
reader quite iancies himself on the school
bench again and sees the master coming
down to greet his false constituting with por-
tentions rod. And there is Madame Corinne;
de Stael, so sentimental, and Hallam SO pre-
else, and Dumas go senss,ous and imagna-
tive, and Wcstmacott 30 artistic, and Rogers
so poetical, and De Mile so frisky. What
| that can or ought to be said upon the subject
| has been left unsaid9 Is there q single blade
or grain Of the harvest dropped by. the reap
ers along the roadside that las not carefully
been cleaned? And when the great MASTER
| have exhausted the realms OF fancy and imag
| nation and sentiment and reminiscence and
history and tradition and fable aud legend
and description, then have Murray aud Bad
ekr and Appleton and Harper ct i'd omne &C.
mus taken up the wondrous tale that left.
nothing untold as to prodesta and albergas'
and hotels and yetturini and railways and
prices and what to see and what to leave UNI
/ seen. Go to your own collection of books or
| to the nearest circulation library and you can
| get half Jozen books written by expert
| hands that brought time, training and study
| to the task, treating in mastery style the
| very objects and topics that arrest the atteD-
ton o. the tourist, engfoss the pen Of the ain
billions letter-writer, and captivate the fancy
Of the reader at home And am | going
to set up my farthing rtish-light alongside
these chandeliers? or put my views and ideas
into type in opposition to or comparison with
these magnates? Tellln.,, thrice told tales u
neither profitable nor an amusing occups
ton. If you had any such idea you had best
write at once to the Tyner Of the the Italian
postoffices, and tell him to forward you 10
more letters endorsed in my calligraphy.
have always rather faneied the current oil
thought of the typical American tourist girls
who when Mark Twain inquired il they had
been in Rome, replied, "Rome. Rome? Was
not that the place where we saw girl sit
ting on the shady steps of a chnrch, and
combing such lovely poodle?" Now had
Mark pressed his queries he might have sruci
an unopened vein; he might not have learn
ed much about churches, but he might have
learned good deal about dogs; he coult
have read in many books about the church
and its affairs and chapels and aisles and pic
lures guide-books and Tours and Notes
would have tol ! him all there was to be toll
!. about this but here was a chance TO learI
| something Of the Italians fondness for nj