It is not an imaginary man of letters who starts on a trip in obedience to a doctor's orders. It is Alfredo Panzini, exhausted from many labors. He goes wherever his fancy takes him, to Vicenza, Bologna, Pisa, Venice, and it is with the literary memories of these places that he is chiefly concerned. At Pisa it is Leopardi, Shelley, and Byron; at Vicenza, Fogazzaro; but at Bologna the memories become more personal. Here he sat at the feet of Carducci and learned to love and respect him; here his budding fancies first showed indications of blooming; here he first essayed amatory flights. He chances upon an old flame of his student days leading the old life in the old home, except that she had taken to writing poems and insists on having his opinion of them. His account of how he succeeded in meeting her wishes and still maintained his self-respect is a masterpiece of ingenuousness. The least thing suffices to start a train of thought and reflection or to decide his next tarrying-place. The volume ends with an interesting account of a visit to the birthplace of Pascoli, the socialist and idealist poet of the Romagna. In his "Piccole Storie del Mondo Grande" he describes a pilgrimage to the country of Leopardi, and to Umbria. It is filled with little anecdotes of literary immortals who wandered there, and of references that are more significant to Italians than to foreigners, and through it all there is a strange, melancholy humor which is quite characteristic of Panzini. The two novels which he has written show that he has the art of the story-teller in narration, sequence, and constructiveness, but they lack what the dramatists call action. "Io Cerco Moglie" ("I Seek a Wife") is his best work. Ginetto Sconer, who oozes prosperity and self-satisfaction, proceeds in a businesslike way to select a wife. He consults a pastry-cook and a doctor, to the great glee of the reader. He sees women in three categories: those who presume to disturb the dreams of anchorites and are still men's pleasure and despair; the aristocratic blue-stocking; and the domestic paragon. He had not contemplated marrying a blue-stocking or even aspiring to blue blood, but when he meets Countess Ghiselda he realizes that ambition expands with amatory awakement. Her freedom is handicapped by the attentions of a Futuristic poet whose intellectual productions and antics are amusing to every one save Cavaliere Sconer. He has peeps into spiritual and emotional vistas, but he yields finally to the flesh-box and woos the daughter of the woman who places a caramel in the mouth of her husband every morning before he goes to his office. Signor Panzini knows the present-day Borghese, their thoughts, their virtues, their absurdities, and their charm, and he has depicted them in this book in the most interesting way.