Edith Wharton

Italian Backgrounds Edith Wharton

To the mind curious in contrasts-surely one of the chief pleasures of travel-there can be no better preparation for a descent into Italy than a sojourn among the upper Swiss valleys. To pass from the region of the obviously picturesque-the country contrived, it would seem, for the delectation of the coeur à poésie facile-to that sophisticated landscape where the face of nature seems moulded by the passions and imaginings of man, is one of the most suggestive transitions in the rapidly diminishing range of such experiences. Nowhere is this contrast more acutely felt than in one of the upper Grisons villages. The anecdotic Switzerland of the lakes is too remote from Italy, geographically and morally, to evoke a comparison.