The Innocents Abroad


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It is fearfully hot in Civita Vecchia. The streets are made very narrow  
and the houses built very solid and heavy and high, as a protection  
against the heat. This is the first Italian town I have seen which does  
not appear to have a patron saint. I suppose no saint but the one that  
went up in the chariot of fire could stand the climate.  
There is nothing here to see. They have not even a cathedral, with  
eleven tons of solid silver archbishops in the back room; and they do not  
show you any moldy buildings that are seven thousand years old; nor any  
smoke-dried old fire-screens which are chef d'oeuvres of Reubens or  
Simpson, or Titian or Ferguson, or any of those parties; and they haven't  
any bottled fragments of saints, and not even a nail from the true cross.  
We are going to Rome. There is nothing to see here.  
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295 296 297 298 299

Quick Jump
1 187 374 560 747