A View of Society and Manners in Italy, Volume 1 (of 2): With Anecdotes Relating to some Eminent CharactersMoore, John
History
A View of Society and Manners in Italy, Volume 1 (of 2): With Anecdotes Relating to some Eminent Characters
Moore, John
Italy -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Italy -- Social life and customs -- Early works to 1800
What is called a regular course with an Antiquarian, generally takes up
about six weeks; employing three hours a-day, you may, in that time,
visit all the churches, palaces, villas, and ruins, worth seeing, in or
near Rome. But after having made this course, however distinctly every
thing may have been explained by the Antiquarian, if you do not visit the
most interesting again and again, and reflect on them at more leisure,
your labour will be of little use; for the objects are so various, and
those you see on one day, so apt to be effaced by, or confounded with,
those you behold on another, that you must carry away a very faint and
indistinct recollection of any. Many travellers have experienced the
truth of this observation.
One young English gentleman, who happens not to be violently smitten with
the charms of virtù, and scorns to affect what he does not feel, thought
that two or three hours a-day, for a month or six weeks together, was
rather too much time to bestow on a pursuit in which he felt no pleasure,
and saw very little utility. The only advantage which, in his opinion,
the greater part of us reaped from our six weeks tour, was, that we
_could say_, we had seen a great many fine things which he had not seen.
This was a superiority which he could not brook, and which he resolved
we should not long enjoy. Being fully convinced, that the business might
be, with a little exertion, dispatched in a very short space of time,
he prevailed on a proper person to attend him; ordered a post-chaise
and four horses to be ready early in the morning, and driving through
churches, palaces, villas, and ruins, with all possible expedition, he
fairly saw, in two days, all that we had beheld during our crawling
course of six weeks. I found afterwards, by the list he kept of what he
had seen, that we had not the advantage of him in a single picture, or
the most mutilated remnant of a statue.
I do not propose this young gentleman’s plan, as the very best possible;
but of this I am certain, that he can give as satisfactory an account of
the curiosities of Rome, as some people of my acquaintance who viewed
them with _equal_ sensibility, and at a great deal more leisure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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