Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car

sociation of great names, little that appeals to one in a personal sense. One admires what Ruskin, Hare or Symonds tells one to admire, gets a smattering of the romantic history of th

ok, and they have thus been able to view many of the beauties and charms of the countrysi

s as possible in places little celebrated in popular annals, a better way of knowing Italy

grim castles of Ancona, of Rimini and Ravenna, and of the classic charms of Taormina or of Sarazza they know considerably less; and still l

and the automobile traveller of to-day may confidently assert that he has come to know the

as been), or as a honeymoon trip, but the reason for its making is always the same; the fact that Italy is a so

in no way spoiled because of modern means of travel. Many a hitherto unexploited locality, with as wo

the making of more travel books on Italy than on all other continental countries combined. There are some who affect only "old masters" or literary shrines, others who crave

lies the secret of pleasurable travel for all classes. The automobilist should bear this in mind and not eat up the roadway through ?milia at sixty miles an hour simply because it is possible. There are things to see en route, though none of your spee

like every day. He who hurried his daughter away from the dim outlined aisles of Milan's Gothic wonder to see the new electric light works and the model tramway station was one of these, bu

d monuments exist; where these unfamiliar histories and legends may be heard, and how they may all be arrived at, absorbed and digested. The people of the countryside, too, are usually more interesting than those of the towns. One has only to compare the Italian peasant and his picturesque

. The mere recollection of a few names and dates will enable the automobilist to classify his impressions on the

An English crusading knight in the same century "took in" Italy en route to the Holy Land, entering the country via Chambéry and Aiguebelle-the most delightful gateway even to-day. Automobilists should work this itinerary out on some diagrammatic road map. Martin Luther, "with some business to transact with the Pope's Vicar," passed through Milan, Pavia, Bologna and Florence on his way to Rome, and Rabela

ainted in the latter city by Paul Veronese, as tourists to-day carry away wine glasses with th

those who say that Shakespeare got his local

traveller, and so was Petrach. Horace and Virgil took their viewpoints from the Roman capital, but they p

n follow his journeyings northward by easy stages to Siena and Arezzo, to the Alps, to Padua, on the Aemilian Way, h

follow in the footsteps of Jeanne d'Arc, of Dante Alighieri, or of Petrarch and his Laura-though their ways were widely divergent-or of Henri IV, Fran?ois I, or Charles V, would add

Georges Sand. It was a most romantic trip, as the world knows. De Musset even had to ask his mother's consent to make it. The

d," but for the life of us we cannot share his solemnity. The travellers met Stendhal at Lyons. After supper "he was very merry, got rather drunk and danced round the table in his big topboots." In

at hardly allows one to linger before any individual shrine. Rather one is pushed from behind and drawn from in front to an ever unreachable goal. One never finishes his Italian travels. Once the habit is formed, it becomes a disease. We care not that Cimabue is no longer consider

lowed. Now we go where fancy wills and stop off where the vagaries of our automobile force us to. And w

enton in France to Reggio in Calabria is replete with unknown, or at least unexploited, little corners, which have a wealt

the Italian round, whether they have been frequenters of the great cities and towns, or have struck out across country for themselves and found some creeper-clad ruin, or a villa in some ideally romantic situation which the makers of guide-books never heard of, o

rom the window of a railway carriage or a hotel omnibus, though it is often brought into much plainer view from the cushions of an automobile. "Motor Cars and the Genus Loci" was a very good title indeed for an article which recently appeared

gello and Ancona, and as many others as fit well into his itinerary from the Alps to ?tna or from Reggio to Ragusa. They lack much of the popular renown that the great centres possess, but they still have an aspect of the reality of the life of medi?valism which is difficult to trace when surrounded by all t

e charm of Italy, the unresistible lodestone which draws tens of thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands thither each year, from England and America. Italy is the most romantic touring ground in all the world, and, though its highways and byways are not the equal in surface of the "good roads" of France, they are, in good weather, considerably better than the

n countless canvases, and pictures of the "Grand Canal" and of "Vesuvius in Eruption" are familiar enough; but paintings of the little hill towns, the wayside shrines, the olive and orange groves, and vineyards, or a sketch of some quaint roadside alb

France and home is too frequently a reality. The automobilist may have a better time of it if he will but be rational; but, for the hurried flight above outlined, he should leave his automobile at home and make the trip by "train de luxe." It would be less costly and he would se

d or a canal job than his northern brother. It is interesting, too, to learn something-by stumbling upon it as we did-about Carrara marble, Leghorn hats and macaroni, which used to form the bulk of the cargoes of ships sailing from Italian ports to those of the United States. The Canovas, like the Botticellis, are always th

he finishes with the Queen of the Adriatic and begins with Capri. It is always Italy. The same is not true of France. Provence might, at times, and in parts, be taken for Spain, Al

of course, excepting Spain. They are far better indeed in Algeria and Tunisia. Hotel expenses are double what they are in France for the same sort of accommodation-for the automobilist at any rate. Garage accommodation is seldom, if ever, to be found in the hotel, at least not of a satisfactory kind, and w

et with no undue surprises except that bad weather, if he happens to strike a spe

summers are hot and prolific in thunder storms. In Venetia, thanks to the influence of the Adriatic, the climate is more equable. In the centre, Tuscany has a more nearly regular climate. From Naples south

osquitoes known to a suffering world. The mosquitoes of this region were supposed to have been transmitters of malaria, so one day some Italian physicians caught a good round batch of them and sent them

ennines in Central Italy. Italy by no means covers the vast extent of territory that the stranger at first presupposes. From the northern frontier of Lombardy to the toe of the Calabrian boot is considerable of a stretch to be sure, but

ything; the second to review some of the things he has already seen or heard of; and the third to leave the beaten

mpt him. Between Florence and Rome and between Rome and Naples there is quite as much to interest even the conventional traveller as in those cities themselves, if he only knows where to look for it and knows the purport of all the remarkable and frequent histori

e indeed from the vineyard covered hillsides of Vicenza to the more grandiose country around Bologna, to the dead-water la

talian may know how to read his own class distinctions, but all Americans are alike to him. Englishmen, as a rule, know the language

in a decent shop, or enter an ambitious looking café, but that the hangers-on outside mark him for a millionaire, while, if he is so foolish as to fling handfuls of soldi to an indiscriminate crowd of ragamuffins from the b

d stop of their own accord. The question resolves itself into a strictly personal one. If it pleases you to throw pennies from your balcony, your carriage or your automobile to a gathered assembly of curious, do so! It is the chief means of proving, to many, that they are superior to "foreigners!" The little-travelled person does this everywhere,-on the terrace of Shepheard's at Cairo, on the boulevard café terraces at Algiers, from the deck of his ship at Port Said,

ctedly upon the Castle of Fénis in the Valle d'Aoste, one of the finest of all feudal fortresses; or the Castle of Rimini sitting grim and sad in the Adriatic plain; or the

re speculating as to some great barbican gateway or watch tower. A saintly shrine might have for some more appeal than a hillside fortified Rocca; and