How Greatly One Would Prefer A Few More "Nooks And
By-Ways" To All These Beautiful Thoughts!
He must have been at home
again, in some bleak Caledonian retreat, when the poetic flowers were
gathered.
If only he had lingered longer among the classic remains of
the south, instead of rushing through them like an express train. That
mania of "pressing forward"; that fatal gift of hustle....
His body flits hither and thither, but his mind remains observant,
assimilative. It is only on reading this book carefully that one
realises how full of information it is. Ay, he notices things, does
Ramage - non-antiquarian things as well. He always has time to look
around him. It is his charm. An intelligent interest in the facts of
daily life should be one of the equipments of the touring scholar,
seeing that the present affords a key to the past. Ramage has that gift,
and his zest never degenerates into the fussiness of many modern
travellers. He can talk of sausages and silkworms, and forestry and
agriculture and sheep-grazing, and how they catch porcupines and cure
warts and manufacture manna; he knows about the evil eye and witches and
the fata morgana and the tarantula spider, about figs in ancient and
modern times and the fig-pecker bird - that bird you eat bones and all,
the focetola or beccafico (garden warbler). In fact, he has multifarious
interests and seems to have known several languages besides the
classics. He can hit off a thing neatly, as, when contrasting our
sepulchral epitaphs with those of olden days, he says that the key-note
of ours is Hope, and of theirs, Peace; or "wherever we find a river in
this country (Calabria) we are sure to discover that it is a source of
danger and not of profit." He knew these southern torrents and
river-beds!
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