Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa | Page 2

returned to her, or best of all, perhaps, found her for the first time
in the spring at twenty-one or so, like a fair woman forlorn upon the
mountains, the Ariadne of our race who placed in our hand the golden
thread that led us out of the cavern of the savage to the sunlight and to
her. But though, indeed, I think all this may be clearer to those who
come to her in their first youth by the long white roads with a song on
their lips and a dream in their hearts--for the song is drowned by the
iron wheels that doubtless have their own music, and the dream is apt
to escape in the horror of the night imprisoned with your fellows; still,
as we are so quick to assure ourselves, there are other ways of coming
to Italy than on foot: in a motor-car, for instance, our own modern way,
ah! so much better than the train, and truly almost as good as walking.
For there is the start in the early morning, the sweet fresh air of the
fields and the hills, the long halt at midday at the old inn, or best of all
by the roadside, the afternoon full of serenity, that gradually passes into
excitement and eager expectancy as you approach some unknown town;
and every night you sleep in a new place, and every morning the joy of
the wanderer is yours. You never "find yourself" in any city, having
won to it through many adventures, nor ever are you too far away from
the place you lay at on the night before. And so, as you pass on and on
and on, till the road which at first had entranced you, wearies you,
terrifies you, relentlessly opening before you in a monstrous white vista,
and you who began by thinking little of distance find, as I have done,
that only the roads are endless, even for you too the endless way must
stop when it comes to the sea; and there you have won at last to Italy, at
Genoa.
If you come by Ventimiglia, starting early, all the afternoon that white
vision will rise before you like some heavenly city, very pure and full
of light, beckoning you even from a long way off across innumerable
and lovely bays, splendid upon the sea. While if you come from Turin,
it is only at sunset you will see her, suddenly in a cleft of the mountains,
the sun just gilding the Pharos before night comes over the sea, opening
like some great flower full of coolness and fragrance.

It was by sea that John Evelyn came to Genoa after many adventures;
and though we must be content to forego much of the surprise and
romance of an advent such as that, yet for us too there remain many
wonderful things which we may share with him. The waking at dawn,
for instance, for the first time in the South, with the noise in our ears of
the bells of the mules carrying merchandise to and from the ships in the
_Porto_; the sudden delight that we had not felt or realised, weary as
we were on the night before, at finding ourselves really at last in the
way of such things, the shouting of the muleteers, the songs of the
sailors getting their ships in gear for the seas, the blaze of sunlight, the
pleasant heat, the sense of everlasting summer. These things, and so
much more than these, abide for ever; the splendour of that ancient sea,
the gesture of the everlasting mountains, the calmness, joy, and serenity
of the soft sky.
Something like this is what I always feel on coming to that proud city
of palaces, a sort of assurance, a spirit of delight. And in spite of all
Tennyson may have thought to say, for me it is not the North but the
South that is bright "and true and tender." For in the North the sky is
seldom seen and is full of clouds, while here it stretches up to God.
And then, the South has been true to all her ancient faiths and works, to
the Catholic religion, for instance, and to agriculture, the old labour of
the corn and the wine and the oil, while we are gone after Luther and
what he leads to, and, forsaking the fields, have taken to minding
machines.
And so, in some dim way I cannot explain, to come to Italy is like
coming home, as though after a long journey one were to come
suddenly upon one's mistress at a corner of the lane in a shady place.
It is perhaps with some such joy in the heart as this that the fortunate
traveller will come