Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 1.djvu/127

 dress was ungainly enough, and must have been very burthensome to the walkers this hot day. It was made of heavy dark-blue cloth, with a stripe of red at the bottom of the petticoat—I speak of the dress of the women. I forget in what that of the men differs from that of the peasants of Cadenabbia. The crowd is immense; and the Albergo Grande is the focus where, going to, or coming from paying their devotions on the hill, they all collect. I grew tired of watching them from my window, and have retired to a shady bower of the gardens of the Villa Sommariva, where the hum of many thousand voices falls softened and harmless on my ear. “Eyes, look your last!” Soon the curtain of absence will be drawn before this surpassing scene. You are very hard-hearted, if you do not pity me.

And now the moon is up, and I sit at my window to say a last good-night to the lake. The bells, so peculiar a circumstance in this night-scene, “salute mine ear,” across the waters. Many a calm day, many a delicious evening, have I here spent. It is over now, lost in the ocean of time past. It is always painful to leave a room for ever in which one has slept calmly at night, and by day nurtured pleasant thoughts. I grieve to leave my little cell.