We had the
company, great part of the way, of more stone-pines than we had seen
even between Naples and Rome, here gathering into thick woods, with the
light beautiful beneath the spread of their horizontal boughs, there
grouped in classic groves, and yonder straying off in twos and threes.
We had the canal that of old time made Pisa a port of the Mediterranean,
with Leghorn for her servant on the shore (or, if it was not this canal,
it was another as straight and long), with a peasant walking beside it,
under a light-green umbrella, in the showers which threatened our start
but spared our arrival. We had then the city, with its domes and towers,
grown full height out of the plain through which the Arno curves in the
stateliest crescent of all its course.
The day had turned finer than any other day I can now think of in my
whole life, and I was once more in Pisa without the care for its history
or art or even novelty which had corroded my mind in former visits. I
had been there twice before--once in 1864, when I had done its wonders
with all the wonder they merited, and again in 1883, when I had lived
its memories on the scene of its manifold and mighty experiences.
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