and, above all, a sense of freedom from responsibility.  For him who has escaped thither there is no longer any tyranny of public opinion; its fetters drop from his limbs when he touches that consecrated shore, and he rejoices in the recovery of his own individuality.  He is no longer met at every turn with “Under which king, bezonian?  Speak, or die!” He is not forced to take one side or the other about table-tipping, or the merits of General Blank, or the constitutionality of anarchy.  He has found an Eden where he need not hide his natural self in the livery of any opinion, and may be as happy as Adam, if he be wise enough to keep clear of the apple of High Art.  This may be very weak, but it is also very agreeable to certain temperaments; and to be weak is to be miserable only where it is a duty to be strong.

Coming from a country where everything seems shifting like a quicksand, where men shed their homes as snakes their skins, where you may meet a three-story house, or even a church, on the highway, bitten by the universal gad-fly of bettering its position, where we have known a tree to be cut down merely because “it had got to be so old,” the sense of permanence, unchangeableness, and repose which Italy gives us is delightful.  The oft-repeated non e piu come era prima may be true enough of Rome politically, but it is not true of it in most other respects.  To be sure, gas and railroads have got in at last; but one may still read by a lucerna and travel by vettura, if he like, using Alberti as a guide-book, and putting up at the Bearas a certain keen-eyed Gascon did three centuries ago.

Mr. Story has taken Italy with due deliberation, having lived there now some fifteen years.  He has thus been enabled to let things come to him, instead of running after them; and his sensations have had time to ripen slowly toward the true moment of projection, without being shaken and hurried, or huddled one atop of the other.  We doubt if the picturesque can be profitably done by the job, for in aesthetics the proverb that half a loaf is better than no bread does not hold.  An Italian festa, we suspect, if you make it a matter of business, will turn its business-side to you, and you will go away without having been admitted to the delightful confidence of its innocent gayety and unpremeditated charm.  Tourists must often have remarked, in making an excursion to a ruin or bit of picturesque scenery, that what chance threw in to boot was by far the best part of their bargain, for the most beautiful experiences come not by observation.  The crumbling temple lured them forth, but it was only to see a sunset or to hear a nightingale.