"Lake Como [...] is not like Lake Geneva surrounded by large fields well delimited and cultivated with the best systems, which suggest money and speculation. Here, wherever I turn, I see hills of unequal altitudes clothed with trees planted at will that the hand of man has not yet damaged and forced to bear fruit. Among these hills with admirable lines that plummet towards the lake for so singular steep slopes [...]. Everything here nobly, exquisitely speaks of love, there is nothing that reminds you of the ugliness of civilization. Halfway up the hill, hidden by large trees, the hamlets nestle and beyond the tree tops the architectural vagueness of their bell towers rises. If some small field intrudes here and there in the groups of chestnut and cherry trees, the plants seem happily to grow more vigorous than elsewhere and the gaze rests happy. And beyond the hills, whose summits offer hermitages that everyone would gladly inhabit, the astonished eye catches sight of the perpetual snow white of the peaks of the Alps which in their solemn austerity remind him just as much of the adversities of life, as much as it is enough to value the present well-being. The sound of the bell of a distant village lost in the woods stimulates the imagination: the notes flow on the water, fading in a tone of resigned melancholy and seem to say to man: life is fleeing, do not resist the happiness that comes towards you [...] hurry to enjoy it."