I have already described the road between Florence and Bologna. I found it much the same on returning; for barren rocks and mountains undergo little alteration either in summer or winter. Indeed, of the two, I prefer the effect in the most dreary season, for it is then most complete and consistent with itself: on some kinds of scenery, as on some characters, any attempt at the gay and pleasing sits ill, and is a mere piece of affectation. There is so far a distinction between the Apennines and Alps, that the latter are often covered with woods, and with patches of the richest verdure, and are capable of all the gloom of winter or the bloom of spring. The soil of the Apennines, on the contrary, is as dry and _gritty_ as the rocks themselves, being nothing but a collection of sand-heaps and ashes, and mocks at every idea that is not of a repulsive and disagreeable kind. We stopped the first night at Traversa, a miserable inn or almost hovel on the road side, in the most desolate part of this track; and found amidst scenes, which the imagination and the pen of travellers have peopled with ghastly phantoms and the assassin’s midnight revelry, a kind but simple reception, and the greatest sweetness of manners, prompted by the wish, but conscious of being perhaps without the means to please. Courtesy in cities or palaces goes for little, means little, for it may and must be put on; in the cottage or on the mountain-side it is welcome to the heart, for it comes from it. It then has its root in unsophisticated nature, without the gloss of art, and shews us the original goodness of the soil or germ, from which human affections and social intercourse in all their ramifications spring. A little boy clung about its mother, wondering at the strangers; but from the very thoughts of novelty and distance, nestling more fondly in the bosom of home. What is the map of Europe, what all the glories of it, what the possession of them, to that poor little fellow’s dream, to his sidelong glance at that wide world of fancy that circles his native rocks!