"Then came Italy. As he glided down the Rhone, on his way thither, he remembered the Hudson; and gazing thoughtfully at the remnants of feudal days that lie scattered along the banks of the lovely stream, saw visions of the past which sank deep into his memory, to revive again in some of the loveliest of his pictures. His journals and letters contain beautiful records of the feelings with which he first looked on the Mediterranean, sailed along the majestic coast of Liguria, made himself a home in Florence, studied under the Cyclopean walls of Volterra, looked out upon Rome from the room in which Claude had painted, drank to the full from the rich scenery of Naples, and then, returning again to Florence, threw off picture after picture with a sureness of touch and a fulness of feeling, which made him exclaim, when he looked back upon it in after years, "I was in the spirit of it. Oh, that I were there again, and in the same spirit!"

From: The Life of Thomas Cole
Little Brown and Company
Boston , October 1853