"
It is now many years since I first saw Venice rising from the sea on a
September morning as I sailed towards it across the Adriatic from
Trieste; and as we glided closer and closer its loveliness was slowly and
exquisitely unveiled under the slanting beams of the early sun.
In all my wanderings over two hemispheres I remember no vision so
enchanting and unsurpassable! May you live to see it, Antony, before
the vulgarities of modern life have totally defaced its beauty.
Your loving old
G.P.
29
MY DEAR ANTONY,
Born in Devon at the same time--within a year--as Ruskin, James
Anthony Froude wrote prose that displays the same sanguine and
poetical characteristics. His historical writings have, I believe, been
somewhat discredited of late years owing to the permission he is
alleged to have given himself to warp his account of events in order to
buttress some prejudice or contention of his own.
But if we set him aside as an accurate authority, we can at once restore
him to our regard as a lord of visionary language:--
"Beautiful is old age, beautiful as the slow-dropping, mellow
autumn of a rich, glorious summer. In the old man Nature has
fulfilled her work; she leads him with her blessings; she fills
him with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his
children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to
the grave, to which he is followed with blessings.
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