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Travelling Notes in France, Italy and Switzerland of an Invalid [j. Strang].
Travelling Notes in France Italy and Switzerland of an Invalid - j. Strang Author:John Strang General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1863 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: LETTER III. BURGUNDY, MOUNT CENIS, AND TURIN. Turin, 19tk June, 1863. When I last addressed you I was on the eve of leaving Paris, and now I have fairly got across the Alps, with the satisfactory feeling that I am once more freely breathing in " Das land wo die citronen blauen;" or, in the better-understood words of our own vulgate, in " The land where the orange trees blossom." But how different is the condition of Italy now from that when Goethe penned his well-known lyric, or when I first beheld, forty-six years ago, from the hill above Domo d'Ossola, the distant outstretching plains of Lombardy. At that period the bloody war which had so long desolated Europe, and so frequently turned the fair fields of Italy into a battle-field, had just closed, and the people, after making great efforts to gain freedom and happiness, found themselves parcelled out to meet the various demands which would-be rulers and effete monarchs made, and Machiavelian diplomatists fixed at the Congress of Vienna. The glorious land of ancientliberty, and of souvenir -- regardless of the patriotic aspirations of her own poets, Filicaija and Fantoni -- had been heartlessly given over to the stranger, or to those who were willing to obey the dictates of the slaves of the double-headed eagle. Italy was then, as it has but too frequently been before, " Sempre il premio della vittoria;" always the reward of victory to him who could gain it, fully realizing the poet's sad reflection on his country, when he said -- " Or druda or serva dei stranieri genti!" At that time, also, there were but too many separate and antagonistic...« less