Gleanings in Europe: Italy, vol. 2 of 2

About this book

"Gleanings in Europe : Italy, vol. 2 of 2" by James Fenimore Cooper is a travelogue written in the early 19th century. It presents an American traveler’s observations as he moves through southern Italy and into Rome, blending vivid landscape writing with sketches of antiquities, local life, and pointed political asides. The focus is on coastal routes, ruined temples, museums, and city approaches, all filtered through a reflective, often comparative American eye. The opening of the work follows the narrator from Sorrento down the precipitous Scaricatòjo to Amalfi by boat, then along the Gulf of Salerno to Eboli and the malarial plain en route to Paestum, whose massive Temple of Neptune sparks meditations on time and endurance. He contrasts desolate, fever-haunted lowlands, buffalo teams, and a tale of roadside murder with the grandeur of the ruins, then returns via Salerno, a mountain road to Pompeii, and Castel-a-Mare, where Murat’s wartime seizures prompt a sharp critique of American commercial politics. Back in Naples after a rough passage, he revels in street theaters on the mole, the softness of autumn skies, and the museum’s treasures, watching Herculaneum papyri painstakingly unrolled and musing on artifacts, taste, and even U.S. coin design. The route to Rome brings the great aqueduct and palace of Caserta, Capua, an accidental walk on a surviving stretch of the Appian Way, Gaeta and Terracina, and the Pontine Marshes (with a comic false alarm over supposed banditti). A first long view of the Roman Campagna leads to an awe-struck entrance past the Colosseum and Forum and a powerful first encounter with the immensity of St. Peter’s. The section closes with an outline of the Campagna and ancient walls, questioning the usual site of the Tarpeian Rock and weighing Rome’s wall circuits and population.