It was not easy to quit the sweetly solemn place or
to resist the wish which I have here indulged, that
some kinsman or kinswoman of those whom the blossoms
and leaves are hiding would come to their rescue from
nature now cleiming an undue part in them, and obliterating
their very memories. One would not have a great
deal done, but only enough to save their names from
entire oblivion, and with the hope of this I have named
some of their names. It might not be too much
even for the United Kingdom and the United States,
though both very poor nations, to join in contributing
the sum necessary for the work. Or some millionaire
English duke, or some millionaire American manufacturer,
might make the outlay alone; I cannot expect any millionaire
author to provide a special fund for the care of the
tomb of Smollett.
OVER AT PISA
If the half-hour between Leghorn and Pisa had been
spent in any less lovely transit, I should still be
grieving for the loss of the thirty minutes which
might so much better have been given to either place.
But with the constant line of mountains enclosing
the landscape on the right, in all its variety of
tillage, pasture-land, vineyard, and orchard, and
the unchanging level which had once been the bed of
the sea, we were gainers in sort beyond the gift of
those cities. We had the company, great part
of the way, of more stone-pines than we had seen even
between Naples and Rome, here gathering into thick
woods, with the light beautiful beneath the spread
of their horizontal boughs, there grouped in classic
groves, and yonder straying off in twos and threes.
We had the canal that of old time made Pisa a port
of the Mediterranean, with Leghorn for her servant
on the shore (or, if it was not this canal, it was
another as straight and long), with a peasant walking
beside it, under a light-green umbrella, in the showers
which threatened our start but spared our arrival.
We had then the city, with its domes and towers, grown
full height out of the plain through which the Arno
curves in the stateliest crescent of all its course.
The day had turned finer than any other day I can
now think of in my whole life, and I was once more
in Pisa without the care for its history or art or
even novelty which had corroded my mind in former visits.
I had been there twice before—once in 1864,
when I had done its wonders with all the wonder they
merited, and again in 1883, when I had lived its memories
on the scene of its manifold and mighty experiences.
No distinct light from that learning vexed my present
vision, but an agreeable mist of association, nothing
certain, nothing tangible remaining, but only a gentle
vague involving everything, in which I could possess
my soul in peace. In this glimmer I recognized
a certain cabman as having been waiting there from
the dawn of time, with his dark-eyed little son, to
make me his willing captive at something above the
tariff rates, but destined by the same fate to serve
me well, and to part with me friends at the close
of the day for a franc more than the excess agreed
upon. It costs so small a sum to corrupt the common
carrier in Italy that I hold it wrong to fail of any
chance, and this driver had not only a horse of uncommon
qualities, but he spoke a beautiful Tuscan, and he
had his Pisa at his fingers’ ends.
