LETTERS FROM ITALY. BY J. T. HEADLEY. LONDON: WILEY AND PUTNAM, 6, WATERLOO-PLACE. 1845. [ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL.] PREFACE. THE accompanying Letters were not originally written with the intention of being published in a book, and very probably would have been worse written if they had been. In passing through Italy, one is constantly subjected to sudden and great transitions of feeling. The "classic land" and the "home of the Cæsars," have so long been a portion of the scholar's dreams, and so brightly colored with his own feelings, that the very matter-of-fact objects that stare him in the face, when he is expecting some hallowed monument of the past, will often quite upset his gravity, and compel him to laugh, where he thought to have been serious and reflective. It has been my effort in these Letters to give a faithful transcript of my feelings, in all these sudden transitions. To some there may often appear too much lightness and frivolity. For ourselves, we like to have a man give himself in his travels-we wish to hear him soliloquizing—and we read his book not to learn that he can be, or is, a very serious and profound man, but to know how things struck him—that is, travel with him. Amid the new and exciting scenes that constantly meet travellers, in perhaps a hurried passage over a country, they cannot, and do not, have the views and feelings so often given, for appearance' sake, as their honest ones. |