all that there represent the
exquisitely grouped and colored masses of building, or solitary
specimens of noble time-tinted masonry and architecture, that every
half-fortress farmhouse in the plain, or hamlet or convent on the
hill-side, present in this paradise of painters.

I must confess to you, however, that the _populousness_ of this
landscape is not agreeable to me. Absolute loneliness and the absence of
every trace of human existence was such a striking feature of the
American scenery that I am fond of, where it was possible in some
directions to ride several miles without meeting man or woman or seeing
their dwellings, that the impossibility of getting out of sight of human
presence or human habitation is sometimes irksome to me here.

It is true that this scenery is often wildly sublime in its character;
nevertheless, it is overlooked in almost every direction by villas,
monasteries, or villages, and if one escapes from these (as, indeed, I
only suppose I _may_, for I have not yet been able to do so), one
stumbles among the ruins and gigantic remains of the great race that has
departed, and recollections of men, their works and ways, pursue one
everywhere, and surround one with the vestiges of the humanity of bygone
centuries.

In the woods of Massachusetts wild-cats panthers, and bears are yet
occasionally to be met with, and the absence of the human element,
whether present or past, gives a character of unsympathizing savageness
to the scenery; while here it has so saturated the very soil with its
former existence that where there is nobody there are millions of
ghosts, and that, if the sense of solitude is almost precluded, there is
an abiding and depressing one of desolate desertion.

The personal danger which I am told attends walking alone about the
woods and hills here rather impairs my enjoyment of the lovely
country....

How lamentably foolish human beings are in their intercourse with each
other, to be sure, whether they love or hate, or whatever they do!...

The epistle of yours that I am now answering I received only this
morning, and, owing no one else a previous debt, sat down instantly to
discharge my debt to you. Am I honest? am I just? If I am not, show me
how I am not; if I am, why, hold your tongue.

The climate of Rome disagreed with me more than any climate of which I
have yet had experience. I had a perpetual consciousness of my bilious
tendencies, and when the sirocco blew I found