has put forth a profuse array of blossoms, and the walks murmur with bees
like our orchards in spring. As I look along the declivities of the
Appenines, I see the raw earth every day more visible between the ranks of
olive-trees and the well-pruned maples which support the vines.

If I have found my expectations of Italian scenery, in some respects,
below the reality, in other respects they have been disappointed. The
forms of the mountains are wonderfully picturesque, and their effect is
heightened by the rich atmosphere through which they are seen, and by the
buildings, imposing from their architecture or venerable from time, which
crown the eminences. But if the hand of man has done something to
embellish this region, it has done more to deform it. Not a tree is
suffered to retain its natural shape, not a brook to flow in its natural
channel. An exterminating war is carried on against the natural herbage of
the soil. The country is without woods and green fields; and to him who
views the vale of the Arno "from the top of Fiesole," or any of the
neighboring heights, grand as he will allow the circle of the mountains to
be, and magnificent the edifices with which the region is adorned, it
appears, at any time after midsummer, a huge valley of dust, planted with
low rows of the pallid and thin-leaved olive, or the more dwarfish maple
on which the vines are trained. The simplicity of nature, so far as can be
done, is destroyed; there is no fine sweep of forest, no broad expanse of
meadow or pasture ground, no ancient and towering trees clustered about
the villas, no rows of natural shrubbery following the course of the
brooks and rivers. The streams, which are often but the beds of torrents
dry during the summer, are confined in straight channels by stone walls
and embankments; the slopes are broken up and disfigured by terraces; and
the trees are kept down by constant pruning and lopping, until half way up
the sides of the Appenines, where the limit of cultivation is reached,
and thence to the summit is a barren steep of rock, without herbage or