You do not necessarily need to read Henry James, but if you love Italy, if you have lost your heart, if only a moment, to an Italian painter or a Venetian Wall or to Giotto, then you should read this. You can skip around, if you wish, they are essays - After Season in Rome, Florence in Autumn, Siena Early.. Finish what holds you. The treat is James. He is not writing a novel, he is simply saying what he sees, and knows, what he knows to be true.  The type of this Penguin edition is a little small, you must ignore it, push on, until you find a sentence that you can climb onto. It is James, being personal with his views, that you are after. Here, a piece: “The great Venetians felt an indissoluble unity and recognized that form and color and earth and air were equal members of every possible subject; and beneath their magical touch the hard outlines melted together and the blank intervals bloomed with meaning. This beautiful Paul Veronese of the Pitti, everything is part of the charm.”