Author: William James Miller

Publisher: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO

Published: 2015-01-23

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13:

Example in this ebook The health of my wife having rendered it advisable to spend a winter in the South of France, I made arrangements to accompany her, and we left home in October 1876. After a short stay at Cannes and three months in Mentone, with marked improvement, we made a tour of four months in Italy, and then passing the remainder of the summer of 1877 in Switzerland, and the autumn chiefly in Biarritz and Pau, we spent a second winter in the Riviera, principally in Mentone, returning to England viâ Turin in May 1878. We had visited so many places, and seen so much while thus travelling during our first year, that it occurred to me, during our second sojourn at Mentone, to write out some notes of what had come within our knowledge which might prove both useful and interesting to others, and particularly to those who desired to winter in the Riviera. The field, however, was large, and to bring observation into reasonable compass I could only present general views—indications merely—of what we had seen; and, indeed, more than this I could scarcely have ventured upon, because I had not travelled with any idea of writing on the subject, and the notes I had kept were therefore scanty, although sufficient, with a vivid recollection of so much calculated to impress, to enable me to describe, as far as description is perhaps desirable. We saw much, and might have seen more within the time, but it was necessary to avoid fatigue. The descriptions contained in the following pages are therefore to be regarded not as finished pictures, but rather as the scenes of a moving panorama, exhibiting in succession views of the more salient points in the various places to which the reader will be taken, and depicted according to the fashion of such scenes, too roughly to bear close inspection or minute criticism. When people were compelled to travel slowly, they could take with them, and had time to read and digest full narratives of all they were about to see. It was by no means impossible to carry in the lumbering carriage, or to read during the leisurely journey, a whole library of such voluminous and now forgotten books as the Modern Traveller. But the rapidity of railway travelling has changed even the character of the guide-book, which, with more copious and complete information, has been so clipped and condensed, been made so concisely and methodically useful,—such a veritable multum in parvo,—that every other virtue is forgotten, and to take up a volume of Bædeker in order to beguile an hour, or even to obtain a general notion of a place, would be one of those freaks of which wise men are not readily guilty. To be continue in this ebook