Having been all my life a great lover of Italy, I have to while away the time when I am not actually in ‘the land of lands’ by reading books about it. I prefer the books old, because they are usually better written; and I like genuine memoirs packed with things seen rather than novels garnished with travel-pictures. This is not to say that I cannot relish Hans Andersen’s Improvisatore or Hawthorne’s Marble Faun; but I own that their F alstaffian ratio of sack to bread makes them unsatisfactory fare for a reader of my sober tastes. The Italian portions of Evelyn’s Diary used to stand me in good stead; but Evelyn, although I shall never wholly abandon him, is now relegated to a remoter shelf. I have discovered Richard Lassels.

Richard Lassels, author of The Voyage of Italy, was a Catholic priest. He was born (perhaps) in sixteen hundred and three, and he died (undoubtedly) in sixteen sixty-eight. In the interval he mostly travelled —in the capacity of tutor to young noblemen and by preference in Italy. He came (says Antony k Wood) ‘of genteel parents,’ Catholics and loyalists. His kinsman, Henry Lassels, was that devoted Cavalier, Colonel Lane’s Cornet, who rode with King Charles the Second from Bentley to Trent after the battle of Worcester. Charles was disguised as Mistress Lane’s tenant’s son; and Henry Lassels, among other good offices, gave up his own bed at Cirencester and slept on the truckle-bed designed for the King. His kinsman, the priest, would have done the same; for he was a steadfast champion of his own convictions, popular or unpopular, though a model of good temper and fair dealing where those of others were concerned.