The International Weekly Miscellany - Volume I, No. 2 | Page 4

of
Shelley's friendship, by death, immediately on his arrival; and of the
friendship of Byron, through incompatibilities of taste, and the jealous
officiousness of Byron's friends, amongst whom Moore bore a
prominent part. Mr. Hunt published a volume on the subject soon after
his return to England, which occasioned him a great deal of ill-will. To
this publication he now refers with expressions of much regret, and
with the calmness which has been produced by time. But it cannot be
denied that he endured most mortifying and irritating provocations,
which never could have taken place had Shelley lived. We are glad that
he has had an opportunity of leaving a generous and forgiving record of

this remarkable portion of his life; and certainly nothing can be more
delightful than his present account of it:--
"The greatest comfort I experienced," he says, "in Italy was living in
the same neighborhood, and thinking, as I went about, of Boccaccio.
Boccaccio's father had a house at Maiano, supposed to have been
situated at the Fiesolan extremity of the hamlet. That merry-hearted
writer was so fond of the place that he has not only laid the two scenes
of the 'Decameron' on each side of it, with the valley which his
company resorted to in the middle, but has made the two little streams
which embrace Maiano, the Affrico and the Mensola, the hero and the
heroine of his 'Nimphale Fiesolano.' The scene of another of his works
is on the banks of the Margnone, a river a little distant; and the
'Decameron' is full of the neighboring villages. Out of the windows of
one side of our house we saw the turret of the Villa Gherardi, to which,
according to his biographers, his 'joyous company' resorted in the first
instance. A house belonging to the Macchiavelli was near, a little to the
left; and farther to the left, among the blue hills, was the white village,
Settignano, where Michael Angelo was born. The house is still in
possession of the family. From our windows on the other side we saw,
close to us, the Fiesole of antiquity and of Milton, the site of the
Boccaccio-house before mentioned; still closer, the Decameron's
Valley of Ladies at our feet; and we looked over toward the quarter of
the Mignone and of a house of Dante, and in the distance beheld the
mountains of Pistria. Lastly, from the terrace in front, Florence lay
clear and cathedraled before us, with the scene of Redi's Bacchus rising
on the other side of it, and the villa of Arcetri, famous for Galileo.
Hazlitt, who came to see me there, beheld the scene around us with the
admiration natural to a lover of old folios and great names, and
confessed, in the language of Burns, that it was a sight to enrich the
eyes.
"My daily walk was to Fiesole, through a path skirted with wild myrtle
and cyclamen; and I stopped at the door of the Doccia, and sate on the
pretty melancholy platform behind it, reading, or looking down to
Florence."

This is all very charming, yet hear what the author says further:--
"Some people, when they return from Italy, say it has no wood, and
some a great deal. The fact is, that many parts of it, Tuscany included,
has no wood to speak of: it wants larger trees interspersed with the
small ones, in the manner of our hedge-row elms. A tree of a
reasonable height is a god-send. The olives are low and hazy-looking,
like dry sallows. You have plenty of these; but to an Englishman,
looking from a height, they appear little better than brushwood. Then
there are no meadows, no proper green fields in June; nothing of that
luxurious combination of green and russet, of grass, wild flowers, and
woods, over which a lover of nature can stroll for hours, with a foot as
fresh as the stag's; unmixed with chalk-dust, and an eternal public path,
and able to lie down, if he will, and sleep in clover. In short--saving,
alas! a finer sky and a drier atmosphere--we have the best part of Italy
in books; and this we can enjoy in England. Give me Tuscany in
Middlesex or Berkshire, and the Valley of Ladies between Jack Straw's
Castle and Harrow.... To me, Italy had a certain hard taste in the mouth:
its mountains were too bare, its outlines too sharp, its lanes too stony,
its voices too loud, its long summer too dusty. I longed to bathe myself
in the grassy balm of my native fields."
As a whole these volumes are full of interest and variety. They
introduce us to numerous famous people, and leave us with a most
agreeable impression of their author.
* * * * *
THE MORMONS.
THOMAS L.