Avellino is one of those dreamy, quiet and picturesque towns which have not as yet been desecrated by the Vandal tourist. Persons holding "through tickets" from Messrs. Cook or Gaze do not stop there--there are no "sights" save the old sanctuary called Monte Virgine standing aloft on its rugged hill, with all the memories of its ancient days clinging to it like a wizard's cloak, and wrapping it in a sort of mysterious meditative silence. It can look back through a vista of eventful years to the eleventh century, when it was erected, so the people say, on the ruins of a temple of Cybele. But what do the sheep and geese that are whipped abroad in herds by the drovers Cook and Gaze know of Monte Virgine or Cybele? Nothing--and they care less; and quiet Avellino escapes from their depredations, thankful that it is not marked on the business map of the drovers' "RUNS." Shut in by the lofty Apennines, built on the slope of the hill that winds gently down into a green and fruitful valley through which the river Sabato rushes and gleams white against cleft rocks that look like war-worn and deserted castles, a drowsy peace encircles it, and a sort of stateliness, which, compared with the riotous fun and folly of Naples only thirty miles away, is as though the statue of a nude Egeria were placed in rivalry with the painted waxen image of a half-dressed ballet-dancer.
Few lovelier sights are to be seen in nature than a sunset from one of the smaller hills round Avellino--when the peaks of the Apennines seem to catch fire from the flaming clouds, and below them, the valleys are full of those tender purple and gray shadows that one sees on the canvases of Salvator Rosa, while the town itself looks like a bronzed carving on an old shield, outlined clearly against the dazzling luster of the sky. To this retired spot I came--glad to rest for a time from my work of vengeance--glad to lay down my burden of bitterness for a brief space, and become, as it were, human again, in the sight of the near mountains. For within their close proximity, things common, things mean seem to slip from the soul--a sort of largeness pervades the thoughts, the cramping prosiness of daily life has no room to assert its sway--a grand hush falls on the stormy waters of passion, and like a chidden babe the strong man stands, dwarfed to an infinite littleness in his own sight, before those majestic monarchs of the landscape whose large brows are crowned with the blue circlet of heaven.