Italian Travel Sketches

ff for a time from most of our habitual concerns, which may not only be as harmless as healthy dreams, but, as refreshing diversions of the spirit from customary affairs, may be distinctly recreative and beneficial. Of such are the happy obsessions into which some of us fall when travelling in a new country. We are laid hold of and filled for the time by what feeds and expands the soul. Whether that which lays its enchantment upon us is the peasant- life of Norway, the architecture of some old Flemish town, or the art of Venice or Florence, the self roves out into new paths, enlarging itself by a development of fresh ideas and fresh sympathies. Under the spell of such a new revelation, perception, imagination, and reflective thought acquire a new bent. Our present surroundings become for us our adopted world, and our old familiar one seems to recede into the dimness of a memory. A spell that amounts to this engrossing and dreamlike transportation of self to a new world is more than an ordinary fascination. In Italy, for example, we maybe fascinated again and again by a passing sight, such as a mother crooning over a child, a pair of cypresses piercing the glory of sunset, or a head in a Florentine picture, and yet never reach the more lasting and profound subjection of a mind obsessed. Such momentary fascinations may, to be sure, by contributing vivid impressions, minister to the growth of an obsession; yet even when they occur with some frequency they do not i... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.