made me suffer ever since we
arrived.

* * * * *

_Lucca._--Had I never visited Italy I think I should never have
understood the word _picturesque_. In England we apply it generally to
rural objects or natural scenery, for nothing else in England _can_
deserve the epithet. Civilization, cleanliness, and comfort are
excellent things, but they are sworn enemies to the picturesque: they
have banished it gradually from our towns, and habitations, into
remote countries, and little nooks and corners, where we are obliged
to hunt after it to find it; but in Italy the picturesque is every
where, in every variety of form; it meets us at every turn, in town
and in country, at all times and seasons; the commonest objects of
every-day life here become picturesque, and assume from a thousand
causes a certain character of poetical interest it cannot have
elsewhere. In England, when travelling in some distant county, we see
perhaps a craggy hill, a thatched cottage, a mill on a winding stream,
a rosy milkmaid, or a smock-frocked labourer whistling after his
plough, and we exclaim "How picturesque!" Travelling in Italy we see a
piny mountain, a little dilapidated village on its declivity, the
ruined temple of Jupiter or Apollo on its summit; a peasant with a
bunch of roses hanging from his hat, and singing to his guitar, or a
cotadina in her white veil and scarlet petticoat, and we exclaim "How
picturesque!" but how different! Again--a tidy drill or a hay-cart,
with a team of fine horses, is a very useful, valuable, civilized
machine; but a grape-waggon reeling under its load of purple clusters,
and drawn by a pair of oxen in their clumsy, ill-contrived harness,
and bowing their patient heads to the earth, is much more picturesque.
A spinning wheel is very convenient it must be allowed, but the
distaff and spindle are much more picturesque. A snug English villa
with its shaven lawn, its neat shrubbery, and its park, is a
delightful thing--an Italian villa is probably far less _comfortable_,
but with its vineyards, its gardens, its fountains, and statutes, is
far more picturesque. A laundry-maid at her wash-tub, immersed in
soap-suds, is a vulgar idea, though our clothes may be the better for
it. I shall never forget the group of women I saw at Terracina washing
their linen in a bubbling brook as clear as crystal, which rushed from
the mountains to the sea--there were twenty of them at least grouped
wit