The Englishman in Italy 'his Italian has come to England

in the spirit rather than in the flesh : he has come with the justice and government of Caesar, with the Christianity of St. Augustine, with the piety' and learning of Lanfranc and Anselm, with the intellectual exhilaration of :the Renaissance, with examples of barqaue_ architecture for St. Paul's, or Stowe or Blenheim, with Pthe fame of Tassorand-j Arioato,. of Petrarch, Dante, Ovid, Horace, Virgil. With 1/41i great resjviti' of . political wisdom the guild system of Fascismo, the coming of the spirit Of Italy is . an invitation to 'return the visit. The hill of Harrow apd the whole "of -Eton. give the English boy -a first fitinfliarity_ with the landscapes of Virgil of which he has already caught a glifnpse_ in Macaulayi Cliturnnus and Cortona, the yellow Tiber, the Tarpeian rock, Ostia, Janiculinn, Soracte, " the green steeps, whence Anio leaps In floods of snow-whits foam," became clear to him among foreign scenes, and Tennyson makes poignant memories still clearer " What slender campanili grew

By bays,Ahe peacock's neck in hue. . . . . .

Or tower or high hill-convent seen, A light amid its, olives green ; Or olive-hOary cape in ocean, Or rosy blossom in hot ravine " ;

or again,..

" Foich-pillars on the lion resting, And sombre old colonnaded isles " ;

or yet again, in theltalkin Alps above Como or Maggiore : " A thousand shadowy-pencilled valleys 'And- snowy dells in golden air." • Keats, Byron, Shelley had anticipated the train, and their sojourns in Italy afe'records, in Shelley's case,. of Italian seas and winds and light, in Byron's of artistic masterpieces and famous centres. Browning lived in Italy to enrich packed volumes with vivid descriptions of Italian life and scenes, -whetheglii4he -villa, or-the city, . What is lovelier than his picture of the summer moonrise over Florence in " One Word More " ?

Contemporary with Browning was Arnold, who sketched us in his apostrophe to Clough Thy broad lucent Arno-vale, For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep Their morningless and unawakened sleep, , Under the flowery oleanders pale."

Contemporary too was Longfellow, who left us some lineki that have been too soon forgotten, and among them the view of Florence from the slope* leading to Fiesole :

" Below him through the lovely valley flowed,

The river Arno like a winding road.- And-from its banks were lifted high in air, The spires and towers of Florence called''the Fair."

For our poets have loved the Italian cities not less than the Italian landscape, and Byron himself has given us the best guide to then that yet exists, the best accompaniment to the comprehensive precision of the neat-minded man of Leipzig, who organized Englishmen, and Indeed men of all countries, to collaborate in. the masterpieces he prepared foi them all ;

but Byron was no explorer ; 'he expitiated on only the famous scenes.

Not less admired by Englishinen tlian Rome is Venice : Venice, a scene that fascinated 'Shakespeare, and "which from many intimate_ 'touches he appeared to have visited : Venice praised by Coryat in his crudities : Venice celebratell by Shelley and by Byron s " rich Venice riotous and human," as a poet of our own times knew it, Herbert Trench.

But it is not alone in Rollie, Mere-nee, Venice, not in Siena, Lucca, and Assisi, not in Perugia, Verona, or Vicenza, though they are all as lovely as their names, that we see the Italy our own age has discovered. It is the little towns like Pienza and Foligno, and above all the hill towns; Volterra, San Gemignano, Cortona, Lodi, Anticoli those hill towns which made Trench long to wake " at the hour of dawning in May in. ItilY" and to explore the valley of the Magra from PontremOli to Aula

and the violet sea, seeing ever : .

' The little hill cities rock-hewn and mellowing, Festooned from summit to "summit where still Sublime Murmur her temples, lovelier in ,their,yellowing, Than in the dawn of time."

and where what Wordsworth called 'the serene accords of

Italy give the Englishman a respite from the winds' iniquity in the English spring. But Italy's chief allurement is her masterpieces of art and architecture : it is our own debacle which has learnt to admire baroque and the seventeenth century, but Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo are the centre of a tradition of masterpieces which leads from the time of the Etruscans to

our own,,

" At Florence, too, what golden,hours In those long galleries wore ours ! "

for still the Englishman in Italy deepens the impression of Byron. He, in the intervals of his amorous adventures, sometimes among them, drank in the grand tradition from what he called

"the eternal source of Rome's imperial will " and summed up the whole debt of our culture to Italy in saying that looking on her monuments and scenes his soul was lit up with full flashes from the lights 'of, ages. But that light is the light of.dawn : and the Italy of to-day adds to the charm of -her culture. the exuberance of her youth.

She is now the America of Europe. R. 'Gonnox-Gronot.