I remained at the baths a few weeks, recruiting--for the hot weather and travel had, for the first time in my life, worn upon me. They say that a summer in Italy is equal to five years elsewhere, in its ravages upon the constitution, and so I found it.
RETURN TO VENICE--CITY OF LUCCA--A MAGNIFICENT WALL--A CULTIVATED AND LOVELY COUNTRY--A COMFORTABLE PALACE--THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF LUCCA--THE APPENINES--MOUNTAIN SCENERY-- MODENA--VIEW OF AN IMMENSE PLAIN--VINEYARDS AND FIELDS-- AUSTRIAN TROOPS--A PETTY DUKE AND A GREAT TYRANT--SUSPECTED TRAITORS--LADIES UNDER ARREST--MODENESE NOBILITY--SPLENDOR AND MEANNESS--CORREGIO'S BAG OF COPPER COIN--PICTURE GALLERY-- CHIEF OF THE CONSPIRATORS--OPPRESSIVE LAWS--ANTIQUITY-- MUSEUM--BOLOGNA--MANUSCRIPTS OF TASSO AND ARIOSTO--THE PO--AUSTRIAN CUSTOM-HOUSE--POLICE OFFICERS--DIFFICULTY ON BOARD THE STEAMBOAT--VENICE ONCE MORE, ETC.
After five or six weeks _sejour_ at the baths of Lucca, the only exception to the pleasure of which was an attack of the "country fever," I am again on the road, with a pleasant party, bound for Venice; but passing by cities I had not seen, I have been from one place to another for a week, till I find myself to-day in Modena--a place I might as well not have seen at all as to have hurried through, as I was compelled to do a month or two since. To go back a little, however, our first stopping-place was the city of Lucca, about fifteen miles from the baths; a little, clean, beautiful gem of a town, with a wall three miles round only, and on the top of it a broad carriage road, giving you on every side views of the best cultivated and loveliest country in Italy. The traveller finds nothing so rural and quiet, nothing so happy-looking, in the whole land. The radius to the horizon is nowhere more than five or six miles; and the bright green farms and luxuriant vineyards stretch from the foot of the wall to the summits of the lovely mountains which form the theatre around. It is a very ancient town, but the duchy is so rich and flourishing that it bears none of the marks of decay, so common to even more modern towns in Italy. Here Cæsar is said to have stopped to deliberate on passing the Rubicon.
The palace of the Duke is the _prettiest_ I ever saw. There is not a room in it you could not _live_ in--and no feeling is less common than this in visiting palaces. It is furnished with splendor, too--but with such an eye to comfort, such taste and elegance, that you would respect the prince's affections that should order such a one. The Duke of Lucca, however, is never at home. He is a young man of twenty-eight or thirty, and spends his time and money in travelling, as caprice takes him. He has been now for a year at Vienna, where he spends the revenue of these rich plains most lavishly. The Duchess, too, travels always, but in a different direction, and the people complain loudly of the desertion. For many years they have now been both absent and parted. The Duke is a member of the royal family of Spain, and at the death of Maria Louisa of Parma, he becomes Duke of Parma, and the duchy goes to Tuscany.