Views and Opinions

Views and Opinions is a book by Ouida. The book is dedicated to W. H. Mallock as a slight token of personal regard and intellectual admiration. The writer describes a line of colossal cypresses above Careggi, planted by Cosimo de’ Medici himself, that stood as a landmark until a few months ago.

The writer says these trees were lately sold, with the ground on which they stood, to a native doctor of Florence, who felled them. The writer says that such secretiveness is the inevitable product of domestic espionage and trivial interference from the state, as the imposition of a gate-tax makes the peasantry who pass the gate ingenious in concealment and in subterfuge. A bird described by the writer builds a loose, roomy nest, often absolutely on the ground, and its song is called the most ecstatic hymn of joy. The writer cannot imagine how the bird came to be associated with sorrow and tragedy, and the ghastly story of Procne and Itys.