Italian scenery seems to me laid out by a landscape-gardener.
Its beauty is absolutely conventional. Nobody will blame you if you
admire it. To rave over it is like going to church--it is the proper
thing to do. People will raise their eyebrows if you don't, and watch
what you eat, and speculate on your ancestry, and wonder about your
politics.
The beauty of Italy is so proper and Church of England that you are
looked upon as a dissenter if you do not rhapsodize about it. But it
disappoints me to feel obliged to follow the multitude like a flock of
sheep and to take the dust of those feeble-minded tourists who have
preceded me and set the pace. There is nothing in the scenery of all
Italy to shock your love of beauty from the staid to the original.
There is nothing to give your sensitive soul little shivers of
surprise. There is nothing to make you hesitate for fear you ought not
to admire; you _know_ you ought. You feel obliged to do so because
everybody has done it before you, and you will be thought queer if you
don't. There is a gentle, pretty-pretty haze of romance over Italian
scenery which is like reading fairy-tales after having devoured
Carlyle.
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