John L. Stoddard's Lectures: Illustrated and Embellished With Views of the World's Famous Places and People, Being the Identical Discourses Delivered ... of the Stoddard Lectures (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Excerpt from John L. Stoddard's Lectures: Illustrated and Embellished With Views of the World's Famous Places and People, Being the Identical Discourses Delivered During the Past Eighteen Years Under the Title of the Stoddard Lectures

IN one of the later volumes of this series the author wrote enthusiastically of his home in beautiful Meran, - the most attractive of Tyrolean health-resorts. Some readers of the following pages, therefore,-not so much from personal in terest, as from a wish to understand a seeming inconsistency, - may ask how he can possibly have left so rare a spot, and moved his residence elsewhere? It is easily explained. His principal reasons for residing in Meran, aside from its remark able scenery and mild though stimulating climate, were the idyllic quiet and simplicity of his surroundings. The spirit of the age, however, is opposed to all such places. It hunts them out with ferret-like tenacity, and ruthlessly transforms their gardens, groves, and vineyards into Grand Hotels and dusty highways for the tram and motor. Every one knows how true this is of parts of the United States. It is still truer of Eu rope. A tidal wave of noise, vulgarity, and crowds have swept Great Britain and the Continent from Scotland to South Italy; and thousands of sweet, rural nooks where, half a dozen years ago, one found neat, quiet inns and simple service, have now become for lovers of retirement unendurable. The pleasures of a walk or drive in many places, once renowned for their tranquillity and sylvan charm, are now completely gone; and those who still are rash enough to seek the immemorial peace of the Black Forest, the sea-girt cliff-road of the Riviera, ih numerable sections of old rural England, and even some of the stupendous passes of the solemn Alps, now do so at the peril of their lives. It was precisely to escape this inundation of the twentieth century methods that the author left Meran, and.

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