Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete by Nathaniel Hawthorne
page 43 of 504 (08%)
awaited us, after our return on board the boat.

We set sail for Leghorn before dark, and I retired early, feeling still
more ill from my cold than the night before. The next morning we were in
the crowded port of Leghorn. We all went ashore, with some idea of
taking the rail for Pisa, which is within an hour's distance, and might
have been seen in time for our departure with the steamer. But a
necessary visit to a banker's, and afterwards some unnecessary
formalities about our passports, kept us wandering through the streets
nearly all day; and we saw nothing in the slightest degree interesting,
except the tomb of Smollett, in the burial-place attached to the English
Chapel. It is surrounded by an iron railing, and marked by a slender
obelisk of white marble, the pattern of which is many times repeated over
surrounding graves.

We went into a Jewish synagogue,--the interior cased in marbles, and
surrounded with galleries, resting upon arches above arches. There were
lights burning at the altar, and it looked very like a Christian church;
but it was dirty, and had an odor not of sanctity.

In Leghorn, as everywhere else, we were chilled to the heart, except when
the sunshine fell directly upon us; and we returned to the steamer with a
feeling as if we were getting back to our home; for this life of
wandering makes a three days' residence in one place seem like home.

We found several new passengers on board, and among others a monk, in a
long brown frock of woollen cloth, with an immense cape, and a little
black covering over his tonsure. He was a tall figure, with a gray
beard, and might have walked, just as he stood, out of a picture by one
of the old masters. This holy person addressed me very affably in
DigitalOcean Referral Badge