The Argosy — page 251: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

234 In Sunny Clumes. q | of Udolpho, or the old English Baron, with all its ghosts and creepy © corridors. | Then we had wished to.visit Naples, return to Brindisi, and sail © up the Adriatic to Venice. This we soon found to be impossible. — Boats would not fit in with our arrangements ; and the journey to Naples was so long and uncomfortable, that to take it a second time was out of the question. As for the Castle of Otranto, we were dissuaded from attempting © it by the emphatic language of the landlord of the hotel. ‘‘ There is absolutely nothing to see there,” he remarked energetically. ‘“‘T never heard of anyone going there. It is nothing but a sand heap crowned by an old ruin.” Nevertheless, to us it was, to a certain extent, classic ground, and we should have looked with interest and a certain romantic pleasure ~ upon the sand heap and its old ruin. But the landlord evidently. despised sentiment, and probably had never heard of Horace Wal-. pole ; and his contempt bore the usual fruit of ridicule upon a weak mind—we gave up the idea of visiting the Castle of Otranto. Ours — time was somewhat limited, and under the circumstances it scarcely’ seemed worth while devoting a whole day and many tropical hours in a stifling railway carriage for the sake of seeing a sand heap and © an old ruin. All who have to write periodically to friends or relatives in India — are familiar with the word Brindisi. More than that, they have’ almost an affection for it, since most Indian letters are marked for: this route. } But most of us know very little about the place itself, and pro- bably nine people out of ten could not tell you whether it is on the. Adriatic or the Mediterranean. Perhaps, therefore, it is fortunate that there is not very much to be known about it; and that igno- rance in the matter is not fatal to one’s character, or necessary to a finished education. mi This Brindisi, the guide books tell us, was the Brundusium of the! ancients, the greatest naval station the Romans possessed in the, Adriatic. Thus its history goes far into the past. > | We saw few signs of antiquity about it in the present. ‘There was a great deal that was modern, neglected and uninteresting ; very little that was ancient. If it possesses any Roman relics or antiquities, we did not see them; they did not appear on the a and it was too hot to search them out. Besides, Roman antiquities: are so much one like another. It is only in such a place as Rome’ that you can get up the true spirit and emotion supposed to be in- spired by a Roman antiquity ; and when once you have seen Rome and know it by heart, you have seen all. For you the chapter of Roman antiquities is closed. You may find the ruins of an old wall here, the remains of an ancient bath there, the fragments of a once — cold and creepy crypt somewhere else, herring-boned in masonry, eee me, CORNICLOOOMKS aero ane