



Produced by Eric Eldred






[Illustration: 01 GLIMPSE OUTSIDE OF MODERN ROME]


ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS

By W. D. Howells

ILLUSTRATED





  HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  Copyright, 1908, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
  Copyright, 1908, by THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION.
  Published October, 1908.




CONTENTS


I. UP AND DOWN MADEIRA

II. TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN

III. ASHORE AT GENOA

IV. NAPLES AND HER JOYFUL NOISE

V. POMPEII REVISITED

VI. ROMAN HOLIDAYS

VII. A WEEK AT LEGHORN

VIII. OVER AT PISA

IX.. BACK AT GENOA

X. EDEN AFTER THE FALL





ROMAN HOLIDAYS AND OTHERS




I. UP AND DOWN MADEIRA.


No drop-curtain, at any theatre I have seen, was ever so richly
imagined, with misty tops and shadowy clefts and frowning cliffs and
gloomy valleys and long, plunging cataracts, as the actual landscape of
Madeira, when we drew nearer and nearer to it, at the close of a tearful
afternoon of mid-January. The scenery of drop-curtains is often very
boldly beautiful, but here Nature, if she had taken a hint from art, had
certainly bettered her instruction. During the waits between acts at the
theatre, while studying the magnificent painting beyond the trouble of
the orchestra, I have been most impressed by the splendid variety which
the artist had got into his picture, where the spacious frame lent
itself to his passion for saying everything; but I remembered his
thronging fancies as meagre and scanty in the presence of the stupendous
reality before me. I have, for instance, not even mentioned the sea,
which swept smoother and smoother in toward the feet of those precipices
and grew more and more trans-lucently purple and yellow and green, while
half a score of cascades shot straight down their fronts in shafts of
snowy foam, and over their pachydermatous shoulders streamed and hung
long reaches of gray vines or mosses. To the view from the sea the
island is all, with its changing capes and promontories and bays and
inlets, one immeasurable mountain; and on the afternoon of our approach
it was bestridden by a steadfast rainbow, of which we could only see one
leg indeed, but that very stout and athletic.

There were breadths of dark woodland aloft on this mountain, and
terraced vineyards lower down; and on the shelving plateaus yet farther
from the heights that lost themselves in the clouds there were scattered
white cottages; on little levels close to the sea there were set white
villas. These, as the ship coquetted with the vagaries of the shore,
thickened more and more, until after rounding a prodigious headland we
found ourselves in face of the charming little city of Funchal: long
horizontal lines of red roofs, ivory and pink and salmon walls, evenly
fenestrated, with an ancient fortress giving the modern look of things a
proper mediaeval touch. Large hotels, with the air of palaces, crowned
the upland vantages; there were bell-towers of churches, and in one
place there was a wide splotch of vivid color from the red of the
densely flowering creeper on the side of some favored house. There was
an acceptable expanse of warm brown near the quay from the withered but
unfailing leaves of a sycamore-shaded promenade, and in the fine
roadstead where we anchored there lay other steamers and a lead-
Portuguese war-ship. I am not a painter, but I think that here are the
materials of a water-color which almost any one else could paint. In the
hands of a scene-painter they would yield a really unrivalled
drop-curtain. I stick to the notion of this because when the beautiful
goes too far, as it certainly does at Madeira, it leaves you not only
sated but vindictive; you wish to mock it.

The afternoon saddened more and more, and one could not take an interest
in the islanders who came out in little cockles and proposed to dive for
shillings and sixpences, though quarters and dimes would do. The
company's tender also came out, and numbers of passengers went ash