Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I by Hester Lynch Piozzi
page 142 of 281 (50%)
page 142 of 281 (50%)
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with rapture, quitted with regret: seat of enchantment! head-quarters of
pleasure, farewell! Leave us as we ought to be, Leave the Britons rough and free. It was on the twenty-first of May then that we returned up the Brenta in a barge to _Padua_, stopping from time to time to give refreshment to our conductors and their horse, which draws on the side, as one sees them at Richmond; where the banks are scarcely more beautifully adorned by art, than here by nature; though the Brenta is a much narrower river than the Thames at Richmond, and its villas, so justly celebrated, far less frequent. The sublimity of their architecture however, the magnificence of their orangeries, the happy construction of the cool arcades, and general air of festivity which breathes upon the banks of this truly _wizard stream_, planted with _dancing_, not _weeping_ willows, to which on a bright evening the lads and lasses run for shelter from the sun beams, Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri[T]; [Footnote T: While tripping to the wood my wanton hies, She wishes to be seen before she flies. ] are I suppose peculiar to itself, and best described by Monsieur de Voltaire, whose Pococurante the Venetian senator in Candide that |
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