Edith Wharton 
Italian Backgrounds 

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. It is not easy, in the height of the Swiss season, to light on a nook neglected by the tourist; but at Spliigen he still sweeps by in a cloud of diligence dust, or pauses only to gulp a flask of Paradiso and a rosy trout from the Suretta lakes. One’s en J oyment of the place is thus enhanced by the pleasing spec tacle of the misguided hundreds who pass it by, and from the vantage of the solitary meadows above the village one may watch the throngs descending on Thusis or Chiavenna with something of the satisfac tion that mediaeval schoolmen believed to be the por tion of angels looking down upon the damned. Spliigen abounds in such points of observation. On all sides one may climb from the alder-f ringed shores of the Rhine, through larch-thickets tremulous with the leap of water, to grassy levels far above, whence the valley is seen lengthening southward to a great concourse of peaks. In the morning these upper meadows are hot and bright, and one is glad of the red-aisled pines and the onyx-coloured torrents cool ing the dusk; but toward sunset, when the shadows make the slopes of turf look like an expanse ofwatching the sun recede from the valley, where mow ers are still sweeping the grass into long curved lines like ridges of the sea, while the pine-woods on the eastern slopes grow black and the upper snows fade to the colour of cold ashes. The landscape is simple, spacious and serene. The fields suggest the tranquil rumination of gen erations of cattle, the woods off er cool security to sylvan life, the mountains present blunt weather beaten surfaces rather than the subtle contours.