Excerpt from Little Cities of Italy Celt from Oxford and the Hill of Saint Genevieve, and a very plain person, of mixed British extraction, found themselves one pleasant day on the highway of Monsieur Maurel's "artistic and sociological journey in Italy." Here in still vigorous Tuscany, and over there in languid Venezia, thanks to his Little Cities of Italy, we began to observe with more sympathy and intelligence than ever before the life, the beauty, the mysticism of this enchanting country, and, above all, her centuries-long struggle for self-government, the love of which we, too, cherish before all other loves as the foundation and inspiration of every form of greatness. In Florence, we have counted the jewels in the girdle of Venus, and, in Venice, we have enumerated the precious stones of Aphrodite. We have stood in the "great, venerable hall" of San Gimignano, where Dante "took the word." About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.