The famous blue of the Italian sky! Always the same! We have it here in this country too, but it alternates with beautiful clouds.

There are few things in Holland I like better than our clouds.

When the rough Apennines at last lay behind me, I reached the renowned city of Florence." "And can you deny it your approval ?" asked the musician.
"No, sir, there are many proud, stately palaces and beautiful churches and no lack of silk and velvet everywhere, the trade of cloth-weaving too is flourishing; but my health, my health was not good in your Florence, principally on account of the heat, and besides I found many things different from what I expected.

In the first place, there's the river Arno! The stream is a puddle, nothing but a puddle! Do you know what the water looks like?
Like the pools that stand between the broken fragments and square blocks in a stonecutter's yard, after a heavy thunder-shower." "The score, Captain, the score!" "I mean the yard of a stone-cutter, who does a large business, and pools of tolerable width.

Will you still contradict me if I maintain--the Arno is a shallow, narrow stream, just fit to sail a boy's bark-boat.
It spreads over a wide surface of grey pebbles, very much as the gold fringe straggles over the top of Junker von Warmond's fencing-glove." "You saw it at the end of a hot summer," replied Wilhelm, "it's very different in spring." "Perhaps so; but I beg you to remember the Rhine, the Meuse, and our other rivers, even the Marne, Drecht and whatever the smaller streams are called.