joyment.

Grand, solemn, and dark was the whole landscape around. The gigantic
pine-forests, on the pointed crags, seemed almost like little tufts of
heather, colored by the surrounding clouds. It began to snow, a cold
wind blew and roared as though it were seeking a bride.

"Augh!" sighed he, "were we only on the other side the Alps, then we
should have summer, and I could get my letters of credit cashed. The
anxiety I feel about them prevents me enjoying Switzerland. Were I but
on the other side!"

And so saying he was on the other side in Italy, between Florence and
Rome. Lake Thracymene, illumined by the evening sun, lay like flaming
gold between the dark-blue mountain-ridges; here, where Hannibal
defeated Flaminius, the rivers now held each other in their green
embraces; lovely, half-naked children tended a herd of black swine,
beneath a group of fragrant laurel-trees, hard by the road-side.
Could we render this inimitable picture properly, then would everybody
exclaim, "Beautiful, unparalleled Italy!" But neither the young Divine
said so, nor anyone of his grumbling companions in the coach of the
vetturino.

The poisonous flies and gnats swarmed around by thousands; in vain one
waved myrtle-branches about like mad; the audacious insect population
did not cease to sting; nor was there a single person in the
well-crammed carriage whose face was not swollen and sore from their
ravenous bites. The poor horses, tortured almost to death, suffered most
from this truly Egyptian plague; the flies alighted upon them in large
disgusting swarms; and if the coachman got down and scraped them off,
hardly a minute elapsed before they were there again. The sun now set: a
freezing cold, though of short duration pervaded the whole creation;
it was like a horrid gust coming from a burial-vault on a warm summer's
day--but all around the mountains retained that wonderful green tone
which we see in some old pictures, and which, should we not have seen a
similar play of color in the South, we declare at once to be unnatural.
It was a glorious prospect; but the stomach was empty, the body tired;
all that the heart cared and longed for was good night-quarters; yet
how would they be? For these one looked much more anxiously than for the
charms of nature, which every where were so profusely displayed.

The road led through an olive-grove, and here the solitary inn was
situated. Ten or twelve crippled-beggars had encamped outside. The