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<pre>
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Pictures from Italy, by Charles Dickens,
Illustrated by Marcus Stone
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Pictures from Italy
Author: Charles Dickens
Release Date: February 17, 2013 [eBook #650]
[This file was first posted on September 17, 1996]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICTURES FROM ITALY***
</pre>
<p>Transcribed from the 1913 Chapman & Hall, Ltd. edition by
David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
<h1>AMERICAN NOTES<br />
<span class="GutSmall">FOR</span><br />
GENERAL CIRCULATION <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1"
class="citation">[1]</a><br />
<span class="GutSmall">AND</span><br />
PICTURES FROM ITALY</h1>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br
/>
CHARLES DICKENS</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">WITH 8
ILLUSTRATIONS BY</span><br />
<span class="GutSmall">MARCUS STONE, R.A.</span></p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p style="text-align: center"><span
class="GutSmall">LONDON</span><br />
CHAPMAN & HALL, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br />
1913</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
<table>
<tr>
<td><p>The Reader’s Passport</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page215">215</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Going through France</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page218">218</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Lyons, the Rhone, and the Goblin of Avignon</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page225">225</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Avignon to Genoa</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page233">233</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Genoa and its Neighbourhood</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page238">238</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>To Parma, Modena, and Bologna</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page264">264</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Through Bologna and Ferrara</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page272">272</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>An Italian Dream</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page277">277</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>By Verona, Mantua, and Milan, across the Pass of the
Simplon into Switzerland</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page284">284</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>To Rome by Pisa and Siena</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page297">297</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Rome</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page308">308</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>A Rapid Diorama</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page345">345</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
<table>
<tr>
<td><p><span class="smcap">Civil and Military</span></p>
</td>
<td><p><i>Marcus Stone</i>, <i>R.A.</i></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page218">218</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><span class="smcap">Italian Peasants</span></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: center">,, ,, ,,</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page250">250</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><span class="smcap">The Chiffonier</span></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: center">,, ,, ,,</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page294">294</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p><span class="smcap">In the Catacombs</span></p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: center">,, ,, ,,</p>
</td>
<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
href="#page326">326</a></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2><a name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 215</span>THE
READER’S PASSPORT</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">If</span> the readers of this volume will
be so kind as to take their credentials for the different places
which are the subject of its author’s reminiscences, from
the Author himself, perhaps they may visit them, in fancy, the
more agreeably, and with a better understanding of what they are
to expect.</p>
<p>Many books have been written upon Italy, affording many means
of studying the history of that interesting country, and the
innumerable associations entwined about it. I make but
little reference to that stock of information; not at all
regarding it as a necessary consequence of my having had recourse
to the storehouse for my own benefit, that I should reproduce its
easily accessible contents before the eyes of my readers.</p>
<p>Neither will there be found, in these pages, any grave
examination into the government or misgovernment of any portion
of the country. No visitor of that beautiful land can fail
to have a strong conviction on the subject; but as I chose when
residing there, a Foreigner, to abstain from the discussion of
any such questions with any order of Italians, so I would rather
not enter on the inquiry now. During my twelve
months’ occupation of a house at Genoa, I never found that
authorities constitutionally jealous were distrustful of me; and
I should be sorry to give them occasion to regret their free
courtesy, either to myself or any of my countrymen.</p>
<p>There is, probably, not a famous Picture or Statue in all
Italy, but could be easily buried under a mountain of printed
paper devoted to dissertations on it. I do not, therefore,
though an earnest admirer of Painting and Sculpture, expatiate at
any length on famous Pictures and Statues.</p>
<p>This Book is a series of faint reflections—mere shadows
in the water—of places to which the imaginations of most
people are attracted in a greater or less degree, on which mine
had dwelt for years, and which have some interest for all.
The greater part of the descriptions were written on the spot,
and sent home, from time to time, in private letters. I do
not mention the circumstance as an excuse for any defects they
may present, for it would be none; but as a guarantee to the
Reader that they were at least penned in the fulness of the
subject, and with the liveliest impressions of novelty and
freshness.</p>
<p>If they have ever a fanciful and idle air, perhaps the reader
will suppose them written in the shade of a Sunny Day, in the
midst of the objects of which they treat, and will like them none
the worse for having such influences of the country upon
them.</p>
<p>I hope I am not likely to be misunderstood by Professors of
the Roman Catholic faith, on account of anything contained in
these pages. I have done my best, in one of my former
productions, to do justice to them; and I trust, in this, they
will do justice to me. When I mention any exhibition that
impressed me as absurd or disagreeable, I do not seek to connect
it, or recognise it as necessarily connected with, any essentials
of their creed. When I treat of the ceremonies of the Holy
Week, I merely treat of their effect, and do not challenge the
good and learned Dr. Wiseman’s interpretation of their
meaning. When I hint a dislike of nunneries for young girls
who abjure the world before they have ever proved or known it; or
doubt the <i>ex officio</i> sanctity of all Priests and Friars; I
do no more than many conscientious Catholics both abroad and at
home.</p>
<p>I have likened these Pictures to shadows in the water, and
would fain hope that I have, nowhere, stirred the water so
roughly, as to mar the shadows. I could never desire to be
on better terms with all my friends than now, when distant
mountains rise, once more, in my path. For I need not
hesitate to avow, that, bent on correcting a brief mistake I
made, not long ago, in disturbing the old relations between
myself and my readers, and departing for a moment from my old
pursuits, I am about to resume them, joyfully, in Switzerland;
where during another year of absence, I can at once work out the
themes I have now in my mind, without interruption: and while I
keep my English audience within speaking distance, extend my
knowledge of a noble country, inexpressibly attractive to me. <a
name="citation216"></a><a href="#footnote216"
class="citation">[216]</a></p>
<p>This book is made as accessible as possible, because it would
be a great pleasure to me if I could hope, through its means, to
compare impressions with some among the multitudes who will
hereafter visit the scenes described with interest and
delight.</p>
<p>And I have only now, in passport wise, to sketch my
reader’s portrait, which I hope may be thus
supposititiously traced for either sex:</p>
<table>
<tr>
<td><p>Complexion</p>
</td>
<td><p>Fair.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Eyes</p>
</td>
<td><p>Very cheerful.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Nose</p>
</td>
<td><p>Not supercilious.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Mouth</p>
</td>
<td><p>Smiling.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>Visage</p>
</td>
<td><p>Beaming.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><p>General Expression</p>
</td>
<td><p>Extremely agreeable.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<h2><a name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
218</span>GOING THROUGH FRANCE</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">On</span> a fine Sunday morning in the
Midsummer time and weather of eighteen hundred and forty-four, it
was, my good friend, when—don’t be alarmed; not when
two travellers might have been observed slowly making their way
over that picturesque and broken ground by which the first
chapter of a Middle Aged novel is usually attained—but when
an English travelling-carriage of considerable proportions, fresh
from the shady halls of the Pantechnicon near Belgrave Square,
London, was observed (by a very small French soldier; for I saw
him look at it) to issue from the gate of the Hôtel Meurice
in the Rue Rivoli at Paris.</p>
<p>I am no more bound to explain why the English family
travelling by this carriage, inside and out, should be starting
for Italy on a Sunday morning, of all good days in the week, than
I am to assign a reason for all the little men in France being
soldiers, and all the big men postilions; which is the invariable
rule. But, they had some sort of reason for what they did,
I have no doubt; and their reason for being there at all, was, as
you know, that they were going to live in fair Genoa for a year;
and that the head of the family purposed, in that space of time,
to stroll about, wherever his restless humour carried him.</p>
<p>And it would have been small comfort to me to have explained
to the population of Paris generally, that I was that Head and
Chief; and not the radiant embodiment of good humour who sat
beside me in the person of a French Courier—best of
servants and most beaming of men! Truth to say, he looked a
great deal more patriarchal than I, who, in the shadow of his
portly presence, dwindled down to no account at all.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/p218b.jpg">
<img alt=
"Civil and military"
title=
"Civil and military"
src="images/p218s.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p>There was, of course, very little in the aspect of
Paris—as we rattled near the dismal Morgue and over the
Pont Neuf—to reproach us for our Sunday travelling.
The wine-shops (every second house) were driving a roaring trade;
awnings were spreading, and chairs and tables arranging, outside
the cafés, preparatory to the eating of ices, and drinking
of cool liquids, later in the day; shoe-blacks were busy on the
bridges; shops were open; carts and waggons clattered to and fro;
the narrow, up-hill, funnel-like streets across the River, were
so many dense perspectives of crowd and bustle, parti-coloured
nightcaps, tobacco-pipes, blouses, large boots, and shaggy heads
of hair; nothing at that hour denoted a day of rest, unless it
were the appearance, here and there, of a family pleasure-party,
crammed into a bulky old lumbering cab; or of some contemplative
holiday-maker in the freest and easiest dishabille, leaning out
of a low garret window, watching the drying of his newly polished
shoes on the little parapet outside (if a gentleman), or the
airing of her stockings in the sun (if a lady), with calm
anticipation.</p>
<p>Once clear of the never-to-be-forgotten-or-forgiven pavement
which surrounds Paris, the first three days of travelling towards
Marseilles are quiet and monotonous enough. To Sens.
To Avallon. To Chalons. A sketch of one day’s
proceedings is a sketch of all three; and here it is.</p>
<p>We have four horses, and one postilion, who has a very long
whip, and drives his team, something like the Courier of Saint
Petersburgh in the circle at Astley’s or Franconi’s:
only he sits his own horse instead of standing on him. The
immense jack-boots worn by these postilions, are sometimes a
century or two old; and are so ludicrously disproportionate to
the wearer’s foot, that the spur, which is put where his
own heel comes, is generally halfway up the leg of the
boots. The man often comes out of the stable-yard, with his
whip in his hand and his shoes on, and brings out, in both hands,
one boot at a time, which he plants on the ground by the side of
his horse, with great gravity, until everything is ready.
When it is—and oh Heaven! the noise they make about
it!—he gets into the boots, shoes and all, or is hoisted
into them by a couple of friends; adjusts the rope harness,
embossed by the labours of innumerable pigeons in the stables;
makes all the horses kick and plunge; cracks his whip like a
madman; shouts ‘En route—Hi!’ and away we
go. He is sure to have a contest with his horse before we
have gone very far; and then he calls him a Thief, and a Brigand,
and a Pig, and what not; and beats him about the head as if he
were made of wood.</p>
<p>There is little more than one variety in the appearance of the
country, for the first two days. From a dreary plain, to an
interminable avenue, and from an interminable avenue to a dreary
plain again. Plenty of vines there are in the open fields,
but of a short low kind, and not trained in festoons, but about
straight sticks. Beggars innumerable there are, everywhere;
but an extraordinarily scanty population, and fewer children than
I ever encountered. I don’t believe we saw a hundred
children between Paris and Chalons. Queer old towns,
draw-bridged and walled: with odd little towers at the angles,
like grotesque faces, as if the wall had put a mask on, and were
staring down into the moat; other strange little towers, in
gardens and fields, and down lanes, and in farm-yards: all alone,
and always round, with a peaked roof, and never used for any
purpose at all; ruinous buildings of all sorts; sometimes an
hôtel de ville, sometimes a guard-house, sometimes a
dwelling-house, sometimes a château with a rank garden,
prolific in dandelion, and watched over by extinguisher-topped
turrets, and blink-eyed little casements; are the standard
objects, repeated over and over again. Sometimes we pass a
village inn, with a crumbling wall belonging to it, and a perfect
town of out-houses; and painted over the gateway, ‘Stabling
for Sixty Horses;’ as indeed there might be stabling for
sixty score, were there any horses to be stabled there, or
anybody resting there, or anything stirring about the place but a
dangling bush, indicative of the wine inside: which flutters idly
in the wind, in lazy keeping with everything else, and certainly
is never in a green old age, though always so old as to be
dropping to pieces. And all day long, strange little narrow
waggons, in strings of six or eight, bringing cheese from
Switzerland, and frequently in charge, the whole line, of one
man, or even boy—and he very often asleep in the foremost
cart—come jingling past: the horses drowsily ringing the
bells upon their harness, and looking as if they thought (no
doubt they do) their great blue woolly furniture, of immense
weight and thickness, with a pair of grotesque horns growing out
of the collar, very much too warm for the Midsummer weather.</p>
<p>Then, there is the Diligence, twice or thrice a-day; with the
dusty outsides in blue frocks, like butchers; and the insides in
white nightcaps; and its cabriolet head on the roof, nodding and
shaking, like an idiot’s head; and its Young-France
passengers staring out of window, with beards down to their
waists, and blue spectacles awfully shading their warlike eyes,
and very big sticks clenched in their National grasp. Also
the Malle Poste, with only a couple of passengers, tearing along
at a real good dare-devil pace, and out of sight in no
time. Steady old Curés come jolting past, now and
then, in such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no
Englishman would believe in; and bony women dawdle about in
solitary places, holding cows by ropes while they feed, or
digging and hoeing or doing field-work of a more laborious kind,
or representing real shepherdesses with their flocks—to
obtain an adequate idea of which pursuit and its followers, in
any country, it is only necessary to take any pastoral poem, or
picture, and imagine to yourself whatever is most exquisitely and
widely unlike the descriptions therein contained.</p>
<p>You have been travelling along, stupidly enough, as you
generally do in the last stage of the day; and the ninety-six
bells upon the horses—twenty-four apiece—have been
ringing sleepily in your ears for half an hour or so; and it has
become a very jog-trot, monotonous, tiresome sort of business;
and you have been thinking deeply about the dinner you will have
at the next stage; when, down at the end of the long avenue of
trees through which you are travelling, the first indication of a
town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages: and the
carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven
pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the
mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly
it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in
it. Crack, crack, crack, crack.
Crack-crack-crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack.
Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur! Brigand!
Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver,
stones, beggars, children, crack, crack, crack; helo! hola!
charité pour l’amour de Dieu!
crick-crack-crick-crack; crick, crick, crick; bump, jolt, crack,
bump, crick-crack; round the corner, up the narrow street, down
the paved hill on the other side; in the gutter; bump, bump;
jolt, jog, crick, crick, crick; crack, crack, crack; into the
shop-windows on the left-hand side of the street, preliminary to
a sweeping turn into the wooden archway on the right; rumble,
rumble, rumble; clatter, clatter, clatter; crick, crick, crick;
and here we are in the yard of the Hôtel de l’Ecu
d’Or; used up, gone out, smoking, spent, exhausted; but
sometimes making a false start unexpectedly, with nothing coming
of it—like a firework to the last!</p>
<p>The landlady of the Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or is
here; and the landlord of the Hôtel de l’Ecu
d’Or is here; and the femme de chambre of the Hôtel
de l’Ecu d’Or is here; and a gentleman in a glazed
cap, with a red beard like a bosom friend, who is staying at the
Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or, is here; and Monsieur le
Curé is walking up and down in a corner of the yard by
himself, with a shovel hat upon his head, and a black gown on his
back, and a book in one hand, and an umbrella in the other; and
everybody, except Monsieur le Curé, is open-mouthed and
open-eyed, for the opening of the carriage-door. The
landlord of the Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or, dotes to
that extent upon the Courier, that he can hardly wait for his
coming down from the box, but embraces his very legs and
boot-heels as he descends. ‘My Courier! My
brave Courier! My friend! My brother!’
The landlady loves him, the femme de chambre blesses him, the
garçon worships him. The Courier asks if his letter
has been received? It has, it has. Are the rooms
prepared? They are, they are. The best rooms for my
noble Courier. The rooms of state for my gallant Courier;
the whole house is at the service of my best of friends! He
keeps his hand upon the carriage-door, and asks some other
question to enhance the expectation. He carries a green
leathern purse outside his coat, suspended by a belt. The
idlers look at it; one touches it. It is full of five-franc
pieces. Murmurs of admiration are heard among the
boys. The landlord falls upon the Courier’s neck, and
folds him to his breast. He is so much fatter than he was,
he says! He looks so rosy and so well!</p>
<p>The door is opened. Breathless expectation. The
lady of the family gets out. Ah sweet lady! Beautiful
lady! The sister of the lady of the family gets out.
Great Heaven, Ma’amselle is charming! First little
boy gets out. Ah, what a beautiful little boy! First
little girl gets out. Oh, but this is an enchanting
child! Second little girl gets out. The landlady,
yielding to the finest impulse of our common nature, catches her
up in her arms! Second little boy gets out. Oh, the
sweet boy! Oh, the tender little family! The baby is
handed out. Angelic baby! The baby has topped
everything. All the rapture is expended on the baby!
Then the two nurses tumble out; and the enthusiasm swelling into
madness, the whole family are swept up-stairs as on a cloud;
while the idlers press about the carriage, and look into it, and
walk round it, and touch it. For it is something to touch a
carriage that has held so many people. It is a legacy to
leave one’s children.</p>
<p>The rooms are on the first floor, except the nursery for the
night, which is a great rambling chamber, with four or five beds
in it: through a dark passage, up two steps, down four, past a
pump, across a balcony, and next door to the stable. The
other sleeping apartments are large and lofty; each with two
small bedsteads, tastefully hung, like the windows, with red and
white drapery. The sitting-room is famous. Dinner is
already laid in it for three; and the napkins are folded in
cocked-hat fashion. The floors are of red tile. There
are no carpets, and not much furniture to speak of; but there is
abundance of looking-glass, and there are large vases under glass
shades, filled with artificial flowers; and there are plenty of
clocks. The whole party are in motion. The brave
Courier, in particular, is everywhere: looking after the beds,
having wine poured down his throat by his dear brother the
landlord, and picking up green cucumbers—always cucumbers;
Heaven knows where he gets them—with which he walks about,
one in each hand, like truncheons.</p>
<p>Dinner is announced. There is very thin soup; there are
very large loaves—one apiece; a fish; four dishes
afterwards; some poultry afterwards; a dessert afterwards; and no
lack of wine. There is not much in the dishes; but they are
very good, and always ready instantly. When it is nearly
dark, the brave Courier, having eaten the two cucumbers, sliced
up in the contents of a pretty large decanter of oil, and another
of vinegar, emerges from his retreat below, and proposes a visit
to the Cathedral, whose massive tower frowns down upon the
court-yard of the inn. Off we go; and very solemn and grand
it is, in the dim light: so dim at last, that the polite, old,
lanthorn-jawed Sacristan has a feeble little bit of candle in his
hand, to grope among the tombs with—and looks among the
grim columns, very like a lost ghost who is searching for his
own.</p>
<p>Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior servants
of the inn are supping in the open air, at a great table; the
dish, a stew of meat and vegetables, smoking hot, and served in
the iron cauldron it was boiled in. They have a pitcher of
thin wine, and are very merry; merrier than the gentleman with
the red beard, who is playing billiards in the light room on the
left of the yard, where shadows, with cues in their hands, and
cigars in their mouths, cross and recross the window,
constantly. Still the thin Curé walks up and down
alone, with his book and umbrella. And there he walks, and
there the billiard-balls rattle, long after we are fast
asleep.</p>
<p>We are astir at six next morning. It is a delightful
day, shaming yesterday’s mud upon the carriage, if anything
could shame a carriage, in a land where carriages are never
cleaned. Everybody is brisk; and as we finish breakfast,
the horses come jingling into the yard from the Post-house.
Everything taken out of the carriage is put back again. The
brave Courier announces that all is ready, after walking into
every room, and looking all round it, to be certain that nothing
is left behind. Everybody gets in. Everybody
connected with the Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or is again
enchanted. The brave Courier runs into the house for a
parcel containing cold fowl, sliced ham, bread, and biscuits, for
lunch; hands it into the coach; and runs back again.</p>
<p>What has he got in his hand now? More cucumbers?
No. A long strip of paper. It’s the bill.</p>
<p>The brave Courier has two belts on, this morning: one
supporting the purse: another, a mighty good sort of leathern
bottle, filled to the throat with the best light Bordeaux wine in
the house. He never pays the bill till this bottle is
full. Then he disputes it.</p>
<p>He disputes it now, violently. He is still the
landlord’s brother, but by another father or mother.
He is not so nearly related to him as he was last night.
The landlord scratches his head. The brave Courier points
to certain figures in the bill, and intimates that if they remain
there, the Hôtel de l’Ecu d’Or is thenceforth
and for ever an hôtel de l’Ecu de cuivre. The
landlord goes into a little counting-house. The brave
Courier follows, forces the bill and a pen into his hand, and
talks more rapidly than ever. The landlord takes the
pen. The Courier smiles. The landlord makes an
alteration. The Courier cuts a joke. The landlord is
affectionate, but not weakly so. He bears it like a
man. He shakes hands with his brave brother, but he
don’t hug him. Still, he loves his brother; for he
knows that he will be returning that way, one of these fine days,
with another family, and he foresees that his heart will yearn
towards him again. The brave Courier traverses all round
the carriage once, looks at the drag, inspects the wheels, jumps
up, gives the word, and away we go!</p>
<p>It is market morning. The market is held in the little
square outside in front of the cathedral. It is crowded
with men and women, in blue, in red, in green, in white; with
canvassed stalls; and fluttering merchandise. The country
people are grouped about, with their clean baskets before
them. Here, the lace-sellers; there, the butter and
egg-sellers; there, the fruit-sellers; there, the
shoe-makers. The whole place looks as if it were the stage
of some great theatre, and the curtain had just run up, for a
picturesque ballet. And there is the cathedral to boot:
scene-like: all grim, and swarthy, and mouldering, and cold: just
splashing the pavement in one place with faint purple drops, as
the morning sun, entering by a little window on the eastern side,
struggles through some stained glass panes, on the western.</p>
<p>In five minutes we have passed the iron cross, with a little
ragged kneeling-place of turf before it, in the outskirts of the
town; and are again upon the road.</p>
<h2><a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
225</span>LYONS, THE RHONE, AND THE GOBLIN OF AVIGNON</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Chalons</span> is a fair resting-place, in
right of its good inn on the bank of the river, and the little
steamboats, gay with green and red paint, that come and go upon
it: which make up a pleasant and refreshing scene, after the
dusty roads. But, unless you would like to dwell on an
enormous plain, with jagged rows of irregular poplars on it, that
look in the distance like so many combs with broken teeth: and
unless you would like to pass your life without the possibility
of going up-hill, or going up anything but stairs: you would
hardly approve of Chalons as a place of residence.</p>
<p>You would probably like it better, however, than Lyons: which
you may reach, if you will, in one of the before-mentioned
steamboats, in eight hours.</p>
<p>What a city Lyons is! Talk about people feeling, at
certain unlucky times, as if they had tumbled from the
clouds! Here is a whole town that is tumbled, anyhow, out
of the sky; having been first caught up, like other stones that
tumble down from that region, out of fens and barren places,
dismal to behold! The two great streets through which the
two great rivers dash, and all the little streets whose name is
Legion, were scorching, blistering, and sweltering. The
houses, high and vast, dirty to excess, rotten as old cheeses,
and as thickly peopled. All up the hills that hem the city
in, these houses swarm; and the mites inside were lolling out of
the windows, and drying their ragged clothes on poles, and
crawling in and out at the doors, and coming out to pant and gasp
upon the pavement, and creeping in and out among huge piles and
bales of fusty, musty, stifling goods; and living, or rather not
dying till their time should come, in an exhausted
receiver. Every manufacturing town, melted into one, would
hardly convey an impression of Lyons as it presented itself to
me: for all the undrained, unscavengered qualities of a foreign
town, seemed grafted, there, upon the native miseries of a
manufacturing one; and it bears such fruit as I would go some
miles out of my way to avoid encountering again.</p>
<p>In the cool of the evening: or rather in the faded heat of the
day: we went to see the Cathedral, where divers old women, and a
few dogs, were engaged in contemplation. There was no
difference, in point of cleanliness, between its stone pavement
and that of the streets; and there was a wax saint, in a little
box like a berth aboard ship, with a glass front to it, whom
Madame Tussaud would have nothing to say to, on any terms, and
which even Westminster Abbey might be ashamed of. If you
would know all about the architecture of this church, or any
other, its dates, dimensions, endowments, and history, is it not
written in Mr. Murray’s Guide-Book, and may you not read it
there, with thanks to him, as I did!</p>
<p>For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning the curious
clock in Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a small mistake I
made, in connection with that piece of mechanism. The
keeper of the church was very anxious it should be shown; partly
for the honour of the establishment and the town; and partly,
perhaps, because of his deriving a percentage from the additional
consideration. However that may be, it was set in motion,
and thereupon a host of little doors flew open, and innumerable
little figures staggered out of them, and jerked themselves back
again, with that special unsteadiness of purpose, and hitching in
the gait, which usually attaches to figures that are moved by
clock-work. Meanwhile, the Sacristan stood explaining these
wonders, and pointing them out, severally, with a wand.
There was a centre puppet of the Virgin Mary; and close to her, a
small pigeon-hole, out of which another and a very ill-looking
puppet made one of the most sudden plunges I ever saw
accomplished: instantly flopping back again at sight of her, and
banging his little door violently after him. Taking this to
be emblematic of the victory over Sin and Death, and not at all
unwilling to show that I perfectly understood the subject, in
anticipation of the showman, I rashly said, ‘Aha! The
Evil Spirit. To be sure. He is very soon disposed
of.’ ‘Pardon, Monsieur,’ said the
Sacristan, with a polite motion of his hand towards the little
door, as if introducing somebody—‘The Angel
Gabriel!’</p>
<p>Soon after daybreak next morning, we were steaming down the
Arrowy Rhone, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, in a very
dirty vessel full of merchandise, and with only three or four
other passengers for our companions: among whom, the most
remarkable was a silly, old, meek-faced, garlic-eating,
immeasurably polite Chevalier, with a dirty scrap of red ribbon
hanging at his button-hole, as if he had tied it there to remind
himself of something; as Tom Noddy, in the farce, ties knots in
his pocket-handkerchief.</p>
<p>For the last two days, we had seen great sullen hills, the
first indications of the Alps, lowering in the distance.
Now, we were rushing on beside them: sometimes close beside them:
sometimes with an intervening slope, covered with
vineyards. Villages and small towns hanging in mid-air,
with great woods of olives seen through the light open towers of
their churches, and clouds moving slowly on, upon the steep
acclivity behind them; ruined castles perched on every eminence;
and scattered houses in the clefts and gullies of the hills; made
it very beautiful. The great height of these, too, making
the buildings look so tiny, that they had all the charm of
elegant models; their excessive whiteness, as contrasted with the
brown rocks, or the sombre, deep, dull, heavy green of the
olive-tree; and the puny size, and little slow walk of the
Lilliputian men and women on the bank; made a charming
picture. There were ferries out of number, too; bridges;
the famous Pont d’Esprit, with I don’t know how many
arches; towns where memorable wines are made; Vallence, where
Napoleon studied; and the noble river, bringing at every winding
turn, new beauties into view.</p>
<p>There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge of
Avignon, and all the city baking in the sun; yet with an
under-done-pie-crust, battlemented wall, that never will be
brown, though it bake for centuries.</p>
<p>The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the
brilliant Oleander was in full bloom everywhere. The
streets are old and very narrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded
by awnings stretched from house to house. Bright stuffs and
handkerchiefs, curiosities, ancient frames of carved wood, old
chairs, ghostly tables, saints, virgins, angels, and staring
daubs of portraits, being exposed for sale beneath, it was very
quaint and lively. All this was much set off, too, by the
glimpses one caught, through a rusty gate standing ajar, of quiet
sleepy court-yards, having stately old houses within, as silent
as tombs. It was all very like one of the descriptions in
the Arabian Nights. The three one-eyed Calenders might have
knocked at any one of those doors till the street rang again, and
the porter who persisted in asking questions—the man who
had the delicious purchases put into his basket in the
morning—might have opened it quite naturally.</p>
<p>After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the
lions. Such a delicious breeze was blowing in, from the
north, as made the walk delightful: though the pavement-stones,
and stones of the walls and houses, were far too hot to have a
hand laid on them comfortably.</p>
<p>We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the cathedral:
where Mass was performing to an auditory very like that of Lyons,
namely, several old women, a baby, and a very self-possessed dog,
who had marked out for himself a little course or platform for
exercise, beginning at the altar-rails and ending at the door, up
and down which constitutional walk he trotted, during the
service, as methodically and calmly, as any old gentleman out of
doors.</p>
<p>It is a bare old church, and the paintings in the roof are
sadly defaced by time and damp weather; but the sun was shining
in, splendidly, through the red curtains of the windows, and
glittering on the altar furniture; and it looked as bright and
cheerful as need be.</p>
<p>Going apart, in this church, to see some painting which was
being executed in fresco by a French artist and his pupil, I was
led to observe more closely than I might otherwise have done, a
great number of votive offerings with which the walls of the
different chapels were profusely hung. I will not say
decorated, for they were very roughly and comically got up; most
likely by poor sign-painters, who eke out their living in that
way. They were all little pictures: each representing some
sickness or calamity from which the person placing it there, had
escaped, through the interposition of his or her patron saint, or
of the Madonna; and I may refer to them as good specimens of the
class generally. They are abundant in Italy.</p>
<p>In a grotesque squareness of outline, and impossibility of
perspective, they are not unlike the woodcuts in old books; but
they were oil-paintings, and the artist, like the painter of the
Primrose family, had not been sparing of his colours. In
one, a lady was having a toe amputated—an operation which a
saintly personage had sailed into the room, upon a couch, to
superintend. In another, a lady was lying in bed, tucked up
very tight and prim, and staring with much composure at a tripod,
with a slop-basin on it; the usual form of washing-stand, and the
only piece of furniture, besides the bedstead, in her
chamber. One would never have supposed her to be labouring
under any complaint, beyond the inconvenience of being
miraculously wide awake, if the painter had not hit upon the idea
of putting all her family on their knees in one corner, with
their legs sticking out behind them on the floor, like
boot-trees. Above whom, the Virgin, on a kind of blue
divan, promised to restore the patient. In another case, a
lady was in the very act of being run over, immediately outside
the city walls, by a sort of piano-forte van. But the
Madonna was there again. Whether the supernatural
appearance had startled the horse (a bay griffin), or whether it
was invisible to him, I don’t know; but he was galloping
away, ding dong, without the smallest reverence or
compunction. On every picture ‘Ex voto’ was
painted in yellow capitals in the sky.</p>
<p>Though votive offerings were not unknown in Pagan Temples, and
are evidently among the many compromises made between the false
religion and the true, when the true was in its infancy, I could
wish that all the other compromises were as harmless.
Gratitude and Devotion are Christian qualities; and a grateful,
humble, Christian spirit may dictate the observance.</p>
<p>Hard by the cathedral stands the ancient Palace of the Popes,
of which one portion is now a common jail, and another a noisy
barrack: while gloomy suites of state apartments, shut up and
deserted, mock their own old state and glory, like the embalmed
bodies of kings. But we neither went there, to see state
rooms, nor soldiers’ quarters, nor a common jail, though we
dropped some money into a prisoners’ box outside, whilst
the prisoners, themselves, looked through the iron bars, high up,
and watched us eagerly. We went to see the ruins of the
dreadful rooms in which the Inquisition used to sit.</p>
<p>A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black
eyes,—proof that the world hadn’t conjured down the
devil within her, though it had had between sixty and seventy
years to do it in,—came out of the Barrack Cabaret, of
which she was the keeper, with some large keys in her hands, and
marshalled us the way that we should go. How she told us,
on the way, that she was a Government Officer (<i>concierge du
palais a apostolique</i>), and had been, for I don’t know
how many years; and how she had shown these dungeons to princes;
and how she was the best of dungeon demonstrators; and how she
had resided in the palace from an infant,—had been born
there, if I recollect right,—I needn’t relate.
But such a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic she-devil
I never beheld. She was alight and flaming, all the
time. Her action was violent in the extreme. She
never spoke, without stopping expressly for the purpose.
She stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung herself into
attitudes, hammered against walls with her keys, for mere
emphasis: now whispered as if the Inquisition were there still:
now shrieked as if she were on the rack herself; and had a
mysterious, hag-like way with her forefinger, when approaching
the remains of some new horror—looking back and walking
stealthily, and making horrible grimaces—that might alone
have qualified her to walk up and down a sick man’s
counterpane, to the exclusion of all other figures, through a
whole fever.</p>
<p>Passing through the court-yard, among groups of idle soldiers,
we turned off by a gate, which this She-Goblin unlocked for our
admission, and locked again behind us: and entered a narrow
court, rendered narrower by fallen stones and heaps of rubbish;
part of it choking up the mouth of a ruined subterranean passage,
that once communicated (or is said to have done so) with another
castle on the opposite bank of the river. Close to this
court-yard is a dungeon—we stood within it, in another
minute—in the dismal tower <i>des oubliettes</i>, where
Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by an iron chain to the very wall
that stands there now, but shut out from the sky which now looks
down into it. A few steps brought us to the Cachots, in
which the prisoners of the Inquisition were confined for
forty-eight hours after their capture, without food or drink,
that their constancy might be shaken, even before they were
confronted with their gloomy judges. The day has not got in
there yet. They are still small cells, shut in by four
unyielding, close, hard walls; still profoundly dark; still
massively doored and fastened, as of old.</p>
<p>Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, into
a vaulted chamber, now used as a store-room: once the chapel of
the Holy Office. The place where the tribunal sat, was
plain. The platform might have been removed but
yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good Samaritan
having been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition
chambers! But it was, and may be traced there yet.</p>
<p>High up in the jealous wall, are niches where the faltering
replies of the accused were heard and noted down. Many of
them had been brought out of the very cell we had just looked
into, so awfully; along the same stone passage. We had
trodden in their very footsteps.</p>
<p>I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place inspires,
when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny
finger, but the handle of a key, upon her lip. She invites
me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do so. She leads me
out into a room adjoining—a rugged room, with a
funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright
day. I ask her what it is. She folds her arms, leers
hideously, and stares. I ask again. She glances
round, to see that all the little company are there; sits down
upon a mound of stones; throws up her arms, and yells out, like a
fiend, ‘La Salle de la Question!’</p>
<p>The Chamber of Torture! And the roof was made of that
shape to stifle the victim’s cries! Oh Goblin,
Goblin, let us think of this awhile, in silence. Peace,
Goblin! Sit with your short arms crossed on your short
legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then
flame out again.</p>
<p>Minutes! Seconds are not marked upon the Palace clock,
when, with her eyes flashing fire, Goblin is up, in the middle of
the chamber, describing, with her sunburnt arms, a wheel of heavy
blows. Thus it ran round! cries Goblin. Mash, mash,
mash! An endless routine of heavy hammers. Mash,
mash, mash! upon the sufferer’s limbs. See the stone
trough! says Goblin. For the water torture! Gurgle,
swill, bloat, burst, for the Redeemer’s honour! Suck
the bloody rag, deep down into your unbelieving body, Heretic, at
every breath you draw! And when the executioner plucks it
out, reeking with the smaller mysteries of God’s own Image,
know us for His chosen servants, true believers in the Sermon on
the Mount, elect disciples of Him who never did a miracle but to
heal: who never struck a man with palsy, blindness, deafness,
dumbness, madness, any one affliction of mankind; and never
stretched His blessed hand out, but to give relief and ease!</p>
<p>See! cries Goblin. There the furnace was. There
they made the irons red-hot. Those holes supported the
sharp stake, on which the tortured persons hung poised: dangling
with their whole weight from the roof. ‘But;’
and Goblin whispers this; ‘Monsieur has heard of this
tower? Yes? Let Monsieur look down, then!’</p>
<p>A cold air, laden with an earthy smell, falls upon the face of
Monsieur; for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door in the
wall. Monsieur looks in. Downward to the bottom,
upward to the top, of a steep, dark, lofty tower: very dismal,
very dark, very cold. The Executioner of the Inquisition,
says Goblin, edging in her head to look down also, flung those
who were past all further torturing, down here. ‘But
look! does Monsieur see the black stains on the
wall?’ A glance, over his shoulder, at Goblin’s
keen eye, shows Monsieur—and would without the aid of the
directing key—where they are. ‘What are
they?’ ‘Blood!’</p>
<p>In October, 1791, when the Revolution was at its height here,
sixty persons: men and women (‘and priests,’ says
Goblin, ‘priests’): were murdered, and hurled, the
dying and the dead, into this dreadful pit, where a quantity of
quick-lime was tumbled down upon their bodies. Those
ghastly tokens of the massacre were soon no more; but while one
stone of the strong building in which the deed was done, remains
upon another, there they will lie in the memories of men, as
plain to see as the splashing of their blood upon the wall is
now.</p>
<p>Was it a portion of the great scheme of Retribution, that the
cruel deed should be committed in this place! That a part
of the atrocities and monstrous institutions, which had been, for
scores of years, at work, to change men’s nature, should in
its last service, tempt them with the ready means of gratifying
their furious and beastly rage! Should enable them to show
themselves, in the height of their frenzy, no worse than a great,
solemn, legal establishment, in the height of its power! No
worse! Much better. They used the Tower of the
Forgotten, in the name of Liberty—their liberty; an
earth-born creature, nursed in the black mud of the Bastile moats
and dungeons, and necessarily betraying many evidences of its
unwholesome bringing-up—but the Inquisition used it in the
name of Heaven.</p>
<p>Goblin’s finger is lifted; and she steals out again,
into the Chapel of the Holy Office. She stops at a certain
part of the flooring. Her great effect is at hand.
She waits for the rest. She darts at the brave Courier, who
is explaining something; hits him a sounding rap on the hat with
the largest key; and bids him be silent. She assembles us
all, round a little trap-door in the floor, as round a grave.</p>
<p>‘Voilà!’ she darts down at the ring, and
flings the door open with a crash, in her goblin energy, though
it is no light weight. ‘Voilà les
oubliettes! Voilà les oubliettes!
Subterranean! Frightful! Black! Terrible!
Deadly! Les oubliettes de l’Inquisition!’</p>
<p>My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into the
vaults, where these forgotten creatures, with recollections of
the world outside: of wives, friends, children, brothers: starved
to death, and made the stones ring with their unavailing
groans. But, the thrill I felt on seeing the accursed wall
below, decayed and broken through, and the sun shining in through
its gaping wounds, was like a sense of victory and triumph.
I felt exalted with the proud delight of living in these
degenerate times, to see it. As if I were the hero of some
high achievement! The light in the doleful vaults was
typical of the light that has streamed in, on all persecution in
God’s name, but which is not yet at its noon! It
cannot look more lovely to a blind man newly restored to sight,
than to a traveller who sees it, calmly and majestically,
treading down the darkness of that Infernal Well.</p>
<h2><a name="page233"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
233</span>AVIGNON TO GENOA</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">Goblin</span>, having shown <i>les
oubliettes</i>, felt that her great <i>coup</i> was struck.
She let the door fall with a crash, and stood upon it with her
arms a-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously.</p>
<p>When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house,
under the outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a little history
of the building. Her cabaret, a dark, low room, lighted by
small windows, sunk in the thick wall—in the softened
light, and with its forge-like chimney; its little counter by the
door, with bottles, jars, and glasses on it; its household
implements and scraps of dress against the wall; and a
sober-looking woman (she must have a congenial life of it, with
Goblin,) knitting at the door—looked exactly like a picture
by <span class="smcap">Ostade</span>.</p>
<p>I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of
dream, and yet with the delightful sense of having awakened from
it, of which the light, down in the vaults, had given me the
assurance. The immense thickness and giddy height of the
walls, the enormous strength of the massive towers, the great
extent of the building, its gigantic proportions, frowning
aspect, and barbarous irregularity, awaken awe and wonder.
The recollection of its opposite old uses: an impregnable
fortress, a luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place of
torture, the court of the Inquisition: at one and the same time,
a house of feasting, fighting, religion, and blood: gives to
every stone in its huge form a fearful interest, and imparts new
meaning to its incongruities. I could think of little,
however, then, or long afterwards, but the sun in the
dungeons. The palace coming down to be the lounging-place
of noisy soldiers, and being forced to echo their rough talk, and
common oaths, and to have their garments fluttering from its
dirty windows, was some reduction of its state, and something to
rejoice at; but the day in its cells, and the sky for the roof of
its chambers of cruelty—that was its desolation and
defeat! If I had seen it in a blaze from ditch to rampart,
I should have felt that not that light, nor all the light in all
the fire that burns, could waste it, like the sunbeams in its
secret council-chamber, and its prisons.</p>
<p>Before I quit this Palace of the Popes, let me translate from
the little history I mentioned just now, a short anecdote, quite
appropriate to itself, connected with its adventures.</p>
<p>‘An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew of
Pierre de Lude, the Pope’s legate, seriously insulted some
distinguished ladies of Avignon, whose relations, in revenge,
seized the young man, and horribly mutilated him. For
several years the legate kept <i>his</i> revenge within his own
breast, but he was not the less resolved upon its gratification
at last. He even made, in the fulness of time, advances
towards a complete reconciliation; and when their apparent
sincerity had prevailed, he invited to a splendid banquet, in
this palace, certain families, whole families, whom he sought to
exterminate. The utmost gaiety animated the repast; but the
measures of the legate were well taken. When the dessert
was on the board, a Swiss presented himself, with the
announcement that a strange ambassador solicited an extraordinary
audience. The legate, excusing himself, for the moment, to
his guests, retired, followed by his officers. Within a few
minutes afterwards, five hundred persons were reduced to ashes:
the whole of that wing of the building having been blown into the
air with a terrible explosion!’</p>
<p>After seeing the churches (I will not trouble you with
churches just now), we left Avignon that afternoon. The
heat being very great, the roads outside the walls were strewn
with people fast asleep in every little slip of shade, and with
lazy groups, half asleep and half awake, who were waiting until
the sun should be low enough to admit of their playing bowls
among the burnt-up trees, and on the dusty road. The
harvest here was already gathered in, and mules and horses were
treading out the corn in the fields. We came, at dusk, upon
a wild and hilly country, once famous for brigands; and travelled
slowly up a steep ascent. So we went on, until eleven at
night, when we halted at the town of Aix (within two stages of
Marseilles) to sleep.</p>
<p>The hotel, with all the blinds and shutters closed to keep the
light and heat out, was comfortable and airy next morning, and
the town was very clean; but so hot, and so intensely light, that
when I walked out at noon it was like coming suddenly from the
darkened room into crisp blue fire. The air was so very
clear, that distant hills and rocky points appeared within an
hour’s walk; while the town immediately at hand—with
a kind of blue wind between me and it—seemed to be white
hot, and to be throwing off a fiery air from the surface.</p>
<p>We left this town towards evening, and took the road to
Marseilles. A dusty road it was; the houses shut up close;
and the vines powdered white. At nearly all the cottage
doors, women were peeling and slicing onions into earthen bowls
for supper. So they had been doing last night all the way
from Avignon. We passed one or two shady dark
châteaux, surrounded by trees, and embellished with cool
basins of water: which were the more refreshing to behold, from
the great scarcity of such residences on the road we had
travelled. As we approached Marseilles, the road began to
be covered with holiday people. Outside the public-houses
were parties smoking, drinking, playing draughts and cards, and
(once) dancing. But dust, dust, dust, everywhere. We
went on, through a long, straggling, dirty suburb, thronged with
people; having on our left a dreary slope of land, on which the
country-houses of the Marseilles merchants, always staring white,
are jumbled and heaped without the slightest order: backs,
fronts, sides, and gables towards all points of the compass;
until, at last, we entered the town.</p>
<p>I was there, twice or thrice afterwards, in fair weather and
foul; and I am afraid there is no doubt that it is a dirty and
disagreeable place. But the prospect, from the fortified
heights, of the beautiful Mediterranean, with its lovely rocks
and islands, is most delightful. These heights are a
desirable retreat, for less picturesque reasons—as an
escape from a compound of vile smells perpetually arising from a
great harbour full of stagnant water, and befouled by the refuse
of innumerable ships with all sorts of cargoes: which, in hot
weather, is dreadful in the last degree.</p>
<p>There were foreign sailors, of all nations, in the streets;
with red shirts, blue shirts, buff shirts, tawny shirts, and
shirts of orange colour; with red caps, blue caps, green caps,
great beards, and no beards; in Turkish turbans, glazed English
hats, and Neapolitan head-dresses. There were the
townspeople sitting in clusters on the pavement, or airing
themselves on the tops of their houses, or walking up and down
the closest and least airy of Boulevards; and there were crowds
of fierce-looking people of the lower sort, blocking up the way,
constantly. In the very heart of all this stir and uproar,
was the common madhouse; a low, contracted, miserable building,
looking straight upon the street, without the smallest screen or
court-yard; where chattering mad-men and mad-women were peeping
out, through rusty bars, at the staring faces below, while the
sun, darting fiercely aslant into their little cells, seemed to
dry up their brains, and worry them, as if they were baited by a
pack of dogs.</p>
<p>We were pretty well accommodated at the Hôtel du
Paradis, situated in a narrow street of very high houses, with a
hairdresser’s shop opposite, exhibiting in one of its
windows two full-length waxen ladies, twirling round and round:
which so enchanted the hairdresser himself, that he and his
family sat in arm-chairs, and in cool undresses, on the pavement
outside, enjoying the gratification of the passers-by, with lazy
dignity. The family had retired to rest when we went to
bed, at midnight; but the hairdresser (a corpulent man, in drab
slippers) was still sitting there, with his legs stretched out
before him, and evidently couldn’t bear to have the
shutters put up.</p>
<p>Next day we went down to the harbour, where the sailors of all
nations were discharging and taking in cargoes of all kinds:
fruits, wines, oils, silks, stuffs, velvets, and every manner of
merchandise. Taking one of a great number of lively little
boats with gay-striped awnings, we rowed away, under the sterns
of great ships, under tow-ropes and cables, against and among
other boats, and very much too near the sides of vessels that
were faint with oranges, to the <i>Marie Antoinette</i>, a
handsome steamer bound for Genoa, lying near the mouth of the
harbour. By-and-by, the carriage, that unwieldy
‘trifle from the Pantechnicon,’ on a flat barge,
bumping against everything, and giving occasion for a prodigious
quantity of oaths and grimaces, came stupidly alongside; and by
five o’clock we were steaming out in the open sea.
The vessel was beautifully clean; the meals were served under an
awning on deck; the night was calm and clear; the quiet beauty of
the sea and sky unspeakable.</p>
<p>We were off Nice, early next morning, and coasted along,
within a few miles of the Cornice road (of which more in its
place) nearly all day. We could see Genoa before three; and
watching it as it gradually developed its splendid amphitheatre,
terrace rising above terrace, garden above garden, palace above
palace, height upon height, was ample occupation for us, till we
ran into the stately harbour. Having been duly astonished,
here, by the sight of a few Cappucini monks, who were watching
the fair-weighing of some wood upon the wharf, we drove off to
Albaro, two miles distant, where we had engaged a house.</p>
<p>The way lay through the main streets, but not through the
Strada Nuova, or the Strada Balbi, which are the famous streets
of palaces. I never in my life was so dismayed! The
wonderful novelty of everything, the unusual smells, the
unaccountable filth (though it is reckoned the cleanest of
Italian towns), the disorderly jumbling of dirty houses, one upon
the roof of another; the passages more squalid and more close
than any in St. Giles’s or old Paris; in and out of which,
not vagabonds, but well-dressed women, with white veils and great
fans, were passing and repassing; the perfect absence of
resemblance in any dwelling-house, or shop, or wall, or post, or
pillar, to anything one had ever seen before; and the
disheartening dirt, discomfort, and decay; perfectly confounded
me. I fell into a dismal reverie. I am conscious of a
feverish and bewildered vision of saints and virgins’
shrines at the street corners—of great numbers of friars,
monks, and soldiers—of vast red curtains, waving in the
doorways of the churches—of always going up hill, and yet
seeing every other street and passage going higher up—of
fruit-stalls, with fresh lemons and oranges hanging in garlands
made of vine-leaves—of a guard-house, and a
drawbridge—and some gateways—and vendors of iced
water, sitting with little trays upon the margin of the
kennel—and this is all the consciousness I had, until I was
set down in a rank, dull, weedy court-yard, attached to a kind of
pink jail; and was told I lived there.</p>
<p>I little thought, that day, that I should ever come to have an
attachment for the very stones in the streets of Genoa, and to
look back upon the city with affection as connected with many
hours of happiness and quiet! But these are my first
impressions honestly set down; and how they changed, I will set
down too. At present, let us breathe after this long-winded
journey.</p>
<h2><a name="page238"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
238</span>GENOA AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">The</span> first impressions of such a
place as <span class="smcap">Albaro</span>, the suburb of Genoa,
where I am now, as my American friends would say,
‘located,’ can hardly fail, I should imagine, to be
mournful and disappointing. It requires a little time and
use to overcome the feeling of depression consequent, at first,
on so much ruin and neglect. Novelty, pleasant to most
people, is particularly delightful, I think, to me. I am
not easily dispirited when I have the means of pursuing my own
fancies and occupations; and I believe I have some natural
aptitude for accommodating myself to circumstances. But, as
yet, I stroll about here, in all the holes and corners of the
neighbourhood, in a perpetual state of forlorn surprise; and
returning to my villa: the Villa Bagnerello (it sounds romantic,
but Signor Bagnerello is a butcher hard by): have sufficient
occupation in pondering over my new experiences, and comparing
them, very much to my own amusement, with my expectations, until
I wander out again.</p>
<p>The Villa Bagnerello: or the Pink Jail, a far more expressive
name for the mansion: is in one of the most splendid situations
imaginable. The noble bay of Genoa, with the deep blue
Mediterranean, lies stretched out near at hand; monstrous old
desolate houses and palaces are dotted all about; lofty hills,
with their tops often hidden in the clouds, and with strong forts
perched high up on their craggy sides, are close upon the left;
and in front, stretching from the walls of the house, down to a
ruined chapel which stands upon the bold and picturesque rocks on
the sea-shore, are green vineyards, where you may wander all day
long in partial shade, through interminable vistas of grapes,
trained on a rough trellis-work across the narrow paths.</p>
<p>This sequestered spot is approached by lanes so very narrow,
that when we arrived at the Custom-house, we found the people
here had <i>taken the measure</i> of the narrowest among them,
and were waiting to apply it to the carriage; which ceremony was
gravely performed in the street, while we all stood by in
breathless suspense. It was found to be a very tight fit,
but just a possibility, and no more—as I am reminded every
day, by the sight of various large holes which it punched in the
walls on either side as it came along. We are more
fortunate, I am told, than an old lady, who took a house in these
parts not long ago, and who stuck fast in <i>her</i> carriage in
a lane; and as it was impossible to open one of the doors, she
was obliged to submit to the indignity of being hauled through
one of the little front windows, like a harlequin.</p>
<p>When you have got through these narrow lanes, you come to an
archway, imperfectly stopped up by a rusty old gate—my
gate. The rusty old gate has a bell to correspond, which
you ring as long as you like, and which nobody answers, as it has
no connection whatever with the house. But there is a rusty
old knocker, too—very loose, so that it slides round when
you touch it—and if you learn the trick of it, and knock
long enough, somebody comes. The brave Courier comes, and
gives you admittance. You walk into a seedy little garden,
all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard opens; cross it,
enter a square hall like a cellar, walk up a cracked marble
staircase, and pass into a most enormous room with a vaulted roof
and whitewashed walls: not unlike a great Methodist chapel.
This is the <i>sala</i>. It has five windows and five
doors, and is decorated with pictures which would gladden the
heart of one of those picture-cleaners in London who hang up, as
a sign, a picture divided, like death and the lady, at the top of
the old ballad: which always leaves you in a state of uncertainty
whether the ingenious professor has cleaned one half, or dirtied
the other. The furniture of this <i>sala</i> is a sort of
red brocade. All the chairs are immovable, and the sofa
weighs several tons.</p>
<p>On the same floor, and opening out of this same chamber, are
dining-room, drawing-room, and divers bedrooms: each with a
multiplicity of doors and windows. Up-stairs are divers
other gaunt chambers, and a kitchen; and down-stairs is another
kitchen, which, with all sorts of strange contrivances for
burning charcoal, looks like an alchemical laboratory.
There are also some half-dozen small sitting-rooms, where the
servants in this hot July, may escape from the heat of the fire,
and where the brave Courier plays all sorts of musical
instruments of his own manufacture, all the evening long. A
mighty old, wandering, ghostly, echoing, grim, bare house it is,
as ever I beheld or thought of.</p>
<p>There is a little vine-covered terrace, opening from the
drawing-room; and under this terrace, and forming one side of the
little garden, is what used to be the stable. It is now a
cow-house, and has three cows in it, so that we get new milk by
the bucketful. There is no pasturage near, and they never
go out, but are constantly lying down, and surfeiting themselves
with vine-leaves—perfect Italian cows enjoying the <i>dolce
far’ niente</i> all day long. They are presided over,
and slept with, by an old man named Antonio, and his son; two
burnt-sienna natives with naked legs and feet, who wear, each, a
shirt, a pair of trousers, and a red sash, with a relic, or some
sacred charm like the bonbon off a twelfth-cake, hanging round
the neck. The old man is very anxious to convert me to the
Catholic faith, and exhorts me frequently. We sit upon a
stone by the door, sometimes in the evening, like Robinson Crusoe
and Friday reversed; and he generally relates, towards my
conversion, an abridgment of the History of Saint
Peter—chiefly, I believe, from the unspeakable delight he
has in his imitation of the cock.</p>
<p>The view, as I have said, is charming; but in the day you must
keep the lattice-blinds close shut, or the sun would drive you
mad; and when the sun goes down you must shut up all the windows,
or the mosquitoes would tempt you to commit suicide. So at
this time of the year, you don’t see much of the prospect
within doors. As for the flies, you don’t mind
them. Nor the fleas, whose size is prodigious, and whose
name is Legion, and who populate the coach-house to that extent
that I daily expect to see the carriage going off bodily, drawn
by myriads of industrious fleas in harness. The rats are
kept away, quite comfortably, by scores of lean cats, who roam
about the garden for that purpose. The lizards, of course,
nobody cares for; they play in the sun, and don’t
bite. The little scorpions are merely curious. The
beetles are rather late, and have not appeared yet. The
frogs are company. There is a preserve of them in the
grounds of the next villa; and after nightfall, one would think
that scores upon scores of women in pattens were going up and
down a wet stone pavement without a moment’s
cessation. That is exactly the noise they make.</p>
<p>The ruined chapel, on the picturesque and beautiful sea-shore,
was dedicated, once upon a time, to Saint John the Baptist.
I believe there is a legend that Saint John’s bones were
received there, with various solemnities, when they were first
brought to Genoa; for Genoa possesses them to this day.
When there is any uncommon tempest at sea, they are brought out
and exhibited to the raging weather, which they never fail to
calm. In consequence of this connection of Saint John with
the city, great numbers of the common people are christened
Giovanni Baptista, which latter name is pronounced in the Genoese
patois ‘Batcheetcha,’ like a sneeze. To hear
everybody calling everybody else Batcheetcha, on a Sunday, or
festa-day, when there are crowds in the streets, is not a little
singular and amusing to a stranger.</p>
<p>The narrow lanes have great villas opening into them, whose
walls (outside walls, I mean) are profusely painted with all
sorts of subjects, grim and holy. But time and the sea-air
have nearly obliterated them; and they look like the entrance to
Vauxhall Gardens on a sunny day. The court-yards of these
houses are overgrown with grass and weeds; all sorts of hideous
patches cover the bases of the statues, as if they were afflicted
with a cutaneous disorder; the outer gates are rusty; and the
iron bars outside the lower windows are all tumbling down.
Firewood is kept in halls where costly treasures might be heaped
up, mountains high; waterfalls are dry and choked; fountains, too
dull to play, and too lazy to work, have just enough recollection
of their identity, in their sleep, to make the neighbourhood
damp; and the sirocco wind is often blowing over all these things
for days together, like a gigantic oven out for a holiday.</p>
<p>Not long ago, there was a festa-day, in honour of the
<i>Virgin’s mother</i>, when the young men of the
neighbourhood, having worn green wreaths of the vine in some
procession or other, bathed in them, by scores. It looked
very odd and pretty. Though I am bound to confess (not
knowing of the festa at that time), that I thought, and was quite
satisfied, they wore them as horses do—to keep the flies
off.</p>
<p>Soon afterwards, there was another festa-day, in honour of St.
Nazaro. One of the Albaro young men brought two large
bouquets soon after breakfast, and coming up-stairs into the
great <i>sala</i>, presented them himself. This was a
polite way of begging for a contribution towards the expenses of
some music in the Saint’s honour, so we gave him whatever
it may have been, and his messenger departed: well
satisfied. At six o’clock in the evening we went to
the church—close at hand—a very gaudy place, hung all
over with festoons and bright draperies, and filled, from the
altar to the main door, with women, all seated. They wear
no bonnets here, simply a long white veil—the
‘mezzero;’ and it was the most gauzy,
ethereal-looking audience I ever saw. The young women are
not generally pretty, but they walk remarkably well, and in their
personal carriage and the management of their veils, display much
innate grace and elegance. There were some men present: not
very many: and a few of these were kneeling about the aisles,
while everybody else tumbled over them. Innumerable tapers
were burning in the church; the bits of silver and tin about the
saints (especially in the Virgin’s necklace) sparkled
brilliantly; the priests were seated about the chief altar; the
organ played away, lustily, and a full band did the like; while a
conductor, in a little gallery opposite to the band, hammered
away on the desk before him, with a scroll; and a tenor, without
any voice, sang. The band played one way, the organ played
another, the singer went a third, and the unfortunate conductor
banged and banged, and flourished his scroll on some principle of
his own: apparently well satisfied with the whole
performance. I never did hear such a discordant din.
The heat was intense all the time.</p>
<p>The men, in red caps, and with loose coats hanging on their
shoulders (they never put them on), were playing bowls, and
buying sweetmeats, immediately outside the church. When
half-a-dozen of them finished a game, they came into the aisle,
crossed themselves with the holy water, knelt on one knee for an
instant, and walked off again to play another game at
bowls. They are remarkably expert at this diversion, and
will play in the stony lanes and streets, and on the most uneven
and disastrous ground for such a purpose, with as much nicety as
on a billiard-table. But the most favourite game is the
national one of Mora, which they pursue with surprising ardour,
and at which they will stake everything they possess. It is
a destructive kind of gambling, requiring no accessories but the
ten fingers, which are always—I intend no pun—at
hand. Two men play together. One calls a
number—say the extreme one, ten. He marks what
portion of it he pleases by throwing out three, or four, or five
fingers; and his adversary has, in the same instant, at hazard,
and without seeing his hand, to throw out as many fingers, as
will make the exact balance. Their eyes and hands become so
used to this, and act with such astonishing rapidity, that an
uninitiated bystander would find it very difficult, if not
impossible, to follow the progress of the game. The
initiated, however, of whom there is always an eager group
looking on, devour it with the most intense avidity; and as they
are always ready to champion one side or the other in case of a
dispute, and are frequently divided in their partisanship, it is
often a very noisy proceeding. It is never the quietest
game in the world; for the numbers are always called in a loud
sharp voice, and follow as close upon each other as they can be
counted. On a holiday evening, standing at a window, or
walking in a garden, or passing through the streets, or
sauntering in any quiet place about the town, you will hear this
game in progress in a score of wine-shops at once; and looking
over any vineyard walk, or turning almost any corner, will come
upon a knot of players in full cry. It is observable that
most men have a propensity to throw out some particular number
oftener than another; and the vigilance with which two sharp-eyed
players will mutually endeavour to detect this weakness, and
adapt their game to it, is very curious and entertaining.
The effect is greatly heightened by the universal suddenness and
vehemence of gesture; two men playing for half a farthing with an
intensity as all-absorbing as if the stake were life.</p>
<p>Hard by here is a large Palazzo, formerly belonging to some
member of the Brignole family, but just now hired by a school of
Jesuits for their summer quarters. I walked into its
dismantled precincts the other evening about sunset, and
couldn’t help pacing up and down for a little time,
drowsily taking in the aspect of the place: which is repeated
hereabouts in all directions.</p>
<p>I loitered to and fro, under a colonnade, forming two sides of
a weedy, grass-grown court-yard, whereof the house formed a third
side, and a low terrace-walk, overlooking the garden and the
neighbouring hills, the fourth. I don’t believe there
was an uncracked stone in the whole pavement. In the centre
was a melancholy statue, so piebald in its decay, that it looked
exactly as if it had been covered with sticking-plaster, and
afterwards powdered. The stables, coach-houses, offices,
were all empty, all ruinous, all utterly deserted.</p>
<p>Doors had lost their hinges, and were holding on by their
latches; windows were broken, painted plaster had peeled off, and
was lying about in clods; fowls and cats had so taken possession
of the out-buildings, that I couldn’t help thinking of the
fairy tales, and eyeing them with suspicion, as transformed
retainers, waiting to be changed back again. One old Tom in
particular: a scraggy brute, with a hungry green eye (a poor
relation, in reality, I am inclined to think): came prowling
round and round me, as if he half believed, for the moment, that
I might be the hero come to marry the lady, and set all
to-rights; but discovering his mistake, he suddenly gave a grim
snarl, and walked away with such a tremendous tail, that he
couldn’t get into the little hole where he lived, but was
obliged to wait outside, until his indignation and his tail had
gone down together.</p>
<p>In a sort of summer-house, or whatever it may be, in this
colonnade, some Englishmen had been living, like grubs in a nut;
but the Jesuits had given them notice to go, and they had gone,
and <i>that</i> was shut up too. The house: a wandering,
echoing, thundering barrack of a place, with the lower windows
barred up, as usual, was wide open at the door: and I have no
doubt I might have gone in, and gone to bed, and gone dead, and
nobody a bit the wiser. Only one suite of rooms on an upper
floor was tenanted; and from one of these, the voice of a
young-lady vocalist, practising bravura lustily, came flaunting
out upon the silent evening.</p>
<p>I went down into the garden, intended to be prim and quaint,
with avenues, and terraces, and orange-trees, and statues, and
water in stone basins; and everything was green, gaunt, weedy,
straggling, under grown or over grown, mildewy, damp, redolent of
all sorts of slabby, clammy, creeping, and uncomfortable
life. There was nothing bright in the whole scene but a
firefly—one solitary firefly—showing against the dark
bushes like the last little speck of the departed Glory of the
house; and even it went flitting up and down at sudden angles,
and leaving a place with a jerk, and describing an irregular
circle, and returning to the same place with a twitch that
startled one: as if it were looking for the rest of the Glory,
and wondering (Heaven knows it might!) what had become of it.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>In the course of two months, the flitting shapes and shadows
of my dismal entering reverie gradually resolved themselves into
familiar forms and substances; and I already began to think that
when the time should come, a year hence, for closing the long
holiday and turning back to England, I might part from Genoa with
anything but a glad heart.</p>
<p>It is a place that ‘grows upon you’ every
day. There seems to be always something to find out in
it. There are the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to
walk about in. You can lose your way (what a comfort that
is, when you are idle!) twenty times a day, if you like; and turn
up again, under the most unexpected and surprising
difficulties. It abounds in the strangest contrasts; things
that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, and
offensive, break upon the view at every turn.</p>
<p>They who would know how beautiful the country immediately
surrounding Genoa is, should climb (in clear weather) to the top
of Monte Faccio, or, at least, ride round the city walls: a feat
more easily performed. No prospect can be more diversified
and lovely than the changing views of the harbour, and the
valleys of the two rivers, the Polcevera and the Bizagno, from
the heights along which the strongly fortified walls are carried,
like the great wall of China in little. In not the least
picturesque part of this ride, there is a fair specimen of a real
Genoese tavern, where the visitor may derive good entertainment
from real Genoese dishes, such as Tagliarini; Ravioli; German
sausages, strong of garlic, sliced and eaten with fresh green
figs; cocks’ combs and sheep-kidneys, chopped up with
mutton chops and liver; small pieces of some unknown part of a
calf, twisted into small shreds, fried, and served up in a great
dish like white-bait; and other curiosities of that kind.
They often get wine at these suburban Trattorie, from France and
Spain and Portugal, which is brought over by small captains in
little trading-vessels. They buy it at so much a bottle,
without asking what it is, or caring to remember if anybody tells
them, and usually divide it into two heaps; of which they label
one Champagne, and the other Madeira. The various opposite
flavours, qualities, countries, ages, and vintages that are
comprised under these two general heads is quite
extraordinary. The most limited range is probably from cool
Gruel up to old Marsala, and down again to apple Tea.</p>
<p>The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any
thoroughfare can well be, where people (even Italian people) are
supposed to live and walk about; being mere lanes, with here and
there a kind of well, or breathing-place. The houses are
immensely high, painted in all sorts of colours, and are in every
stage and state of damage, dirt, and lack of repair. They
are commonly let off in floors, or flats, like the houses in the
old town of Edinburgh, or many houses in Paris. There are
few street doors; the entrance halls are, for the most part,
looked upon as public property; and any moderately enterprising
scavenger might make a fine fortune by now and then clearing them
out. As it is impossible for coaches to penetrate into
these streets, there are sedan chairs, gilded and otherwise, for
hire in divers places. A great many private chairs are also
kept among the nobility and gentry; and at night these are
trotted to and fro in all directions, preceded by bearers of
great lanthorns, made of linen stretched upon a frame. The
sedans and lanthorns are the legitimate successors of the long
strings of patient and much-abused mules, that go jingling their
little bells through these confined streets all day long.
They follow them, as regularly as the stars the sun.</p>
<p>When shall I forget the Streets of Palaces: the Strada Nuova
and the Strada Balbi! or how the former looked one summer day,
when I first saw it underneath the brightest and most intensely
blue of summer skies: which its narrow perspective of immense
mansions, reduced to a tapering and most precious strip of
brightness, looking down upon the heavy shade below! A
brightness not too common, even in July and August, to be well
esteemed: for, if the Truth must out, there were not eight blue
skies in as many midsummer weeks, saving, sometimes, early in the
morning; when, looking out to sea, the water and the firmament
were one world of deep and brilliant blue. At other times,
there were clouds and haze enough to make an Englishman grumble
in his own climate.</p>
<p>The endless details of these rich Palaces: the walls of some
of them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke! The
great, heavy, stone balconies, one above another, and tier over
tier: with here and there, one larger than the rest, towering
high up—a huge marble platform; the doorless vestibules,
massively barred lower windows, immense public staircases, thick
marble pillars, strong dungeon-like arches, and dreary, dreaming,
echoing vaulted chambers: among which the eye wanders again, and
again, and again, as every palace is succeeded by
another—the terrace gardens between house and house, with
green arches of the vine, and groves of orange-trees, and
blushing oleander in full bloom, twenty, thirty, forty feet above
the street—the painted halls, mouldering, and blotting, and
rotting in the damp corners, and still shining out in beautiful
colours and voluptuous designs, where the walls are dry—the
faded figures on the outsides of the houses, holding wreaths, and
crowns, and flying upward, and downward, and standing in niches,
and here and there looking fainter and more feeble than
elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh little Cupids, who on a
more recently decorated portion of the front, are stretching out
what seems to be the semblance of a blanket, but is, indeed, a
sun-dial—the steep, steep, up-hill streets of small palaces
(but very large palaces for all that), with marble terraces
looking down into close by-ways—the magnificent and
innumerable Churches; and the rapid passage from a street of
stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest squalor, steaming
with unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked children
and whole worlds of dirty people—make up, altogether, such
a scene of wonder: so lively, and yet so dead: so noisy, and yet
so quiet: so obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering: so wide
awake, and yet so fast asleep: that it is a sort of intoxication
to a stranger to walk on, and on, and on, and look about
him. A bewildering phantasmagoria, with all the
inconsistency of a dream, and all the pain and all the pleasure
of an extravagant reality!</p>
<p>The different uses to which some of these Palaces are applied,
all at once, is characteristic. For instance, the English
Banker (my excellent and hospitable friend) has his office in a
good-sized Palazzo in the Strada Nuova. In the hall (every
inch of which is elaborately painted, but which is as dirty as a
police-station in London), a hook-nosed Saracen’s Head with
an immense quantity of black hair (there is a man attached to it)
sells walking-sticks. On the other side of the doorway, a
lady with a showy handkerchief for head-dress (wife to the
Saracen’s Head, I believe) sells articles of her own
knitting; and sometimes flowers. A little further in, two
or three blind men occasionally beg. Sometimes, they are
visited by a man without legs, on a little go-cart, but who has
such a fresh-coloured, lively face, and such a respectable,
well-conditioned body, that he looks as if he had sunk into the
ground up to his middle, or had come, but partially, up a flight
of cellar-steps to speak to somebody. A little further in,
a few men, perhaps, lie asleep in the middle of the day; or they
may be chairmen waiting for their absent freight. If so,
they have brought their chairs in with them, and there
<i>they</i> stand also. On the left of the hall is a little
room: a hatter’s shop. On the first floor, is the
English bank. On the first floor also, is a whole house,
and a good large residence too. Heaven knows what there may
be above that; but when you are there, you have only just begun
to go up-stairs. And yet, coming down-stairs again,
thinking of this; and passing out at a great crazy door in the
back of the hall, instead of turning the other way, to get into
the street again; it bangs behind you, making the dismallest and
most lonesome echoes, and you stand in a yard (the yard of the
same house) which seems to have been unvisited by human foot, for
a hundred years. Not a sound disturbs its repose. Not
a head, thrust out of any of the grim, dark, jealous windows,
within sight, makes the weeds in the cracked pavement faint of
heart, by suggesting the possibility of there being hands to grub
them up. Opposite to you, is a giant figure carved in
stone, reclining, with an urn, upon a lofty piece of artificial
rockwork; and out of the urn, dangles the fag end of a leaden
pipe, which, once upon a time, poured a small torrent down the
rocks. But the eye-sockets of the giant are not drier than
this channel is now. He seems to have given his urn, which
is nearly upside down, a final tilt; and after crying, like a
sepulchral child, ‘All gone!’ to have lapsed into a
stony silence.</p>
<p>In the streets of shops, the houses are much smaller, but of
great size notwithstanding, and extremely high. They are
very dirty: quite undrained, if my nose be at all reliable: and
emit a peculiar fragrance, like the smell of very bad cheese,
kept in very hot blankets. Notwithstanding the height of
the houses, there would seem to have been a lack of room in the
City, for new houses are thrust in everywhere. Wherever it
has been possible to cram a tumble-down tenement into a crack or
corner, in it has gone. If there be a nook or angle in the
wall of a church, or a crevice in any other dead wall, of any
sort, there you are sure to find some kind of habitation: looking
as if it had grown there, like a fungus. Against the
Government House, against the old Senate House, round about any
large building, little shops stick so close, like parasite vermin
to the great carcase. And for all this, look where you may:
up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere: there are irregular
houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down, leaning
against their neighbours, crippling themselves or their friends
by some means or other, until one, more irregular than the rest,
chokes up the way, and you can’t see any further.</p>
<p>One of the rottenest-looking parts of the town, I think, is
down by the landing-wharf: though it may be, that its being
associated with a great deal of rottenness on the evening of our
arrival, has stamped it deeper in my mind. Here, again, the
houses are very high, and are of an infinite variety of deformed
shapes, and have (as most of the houses have) something hanging
out of a great many windows, and wafting its frowsy fragrance on
the breeze. Sometimes, it is a curtain; sometimes, it is a
carpet; sometimes, it is a bed; sometimes, a whole line-full of
clothes; but there is almost always something. Before the
basement of these houses, is an arcade over the pavement: very
massive, dark, and low, like an old crypt. The stone, or
plaster, of which it is made, has turned quite black; and against
every one of these black piles, all sorts of filth and garbage
seem to accumulate spontaneously. Beneath some of the
arches, the sellers of macaroni and polenta establish their
stalls, which are by no means inviting. The offal of a
fish-market, near at hand—that is to say, of a back lane,
where people sit upon the ground and on various old bulk-heads
and sheds, and sell fish when they have any to dispose
of—and of a vegetable market, constructed on the same
principle—are contributed to the decoration of this
quarter; and as all the mercantile business is transacted here,
and it is crowded all day, it has a very decided flavour about
it. The Porto Franco, or Free Port (where goods brought in
from foreign countries pay no duty until they are sold and taken
out, as in a bonded warehouse in England), is down here also; and
two portentous officials, in cocked hats, stand at the gate to
search you if they choose, and to keep out Monks and
Ladies. For, Sanctity as well as Beauty has been known to
yield to the temptation of smuggling, and in the same way: that
is to say, by concealing the smuggled property beneath the loose
folds of its dress. So Sanctity and Beauty may, by no
means, enter.</p>
<p>The streets of Genoa would be all the better for the
importation of a few Priests of prepossessing appearance.
Every fourth or fifth man in the streets is a Priest or a Monk;
and there is pretty sure to be at least one itinerant
ecclesiastic inside or outside every hackney carriage on the
neighbouring roads. I have no knowledge, elsewhere, of more
repulsive countenances than are to be found among these
gentry. If Nature’s handwriting be at all legible,
greater varieties of sloth, deceit, and intellectual torpor,
could hardly be observed among any class of men in the world.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Mr. Pepys</span> once heard a clergyman
assert in his sermon, in illustration of his respect for the
Priestly office, that if he could meet a Priest and angel
together, he would salute the Priest first. I am rather of
the opinion of <span class="smcap">Petrarch</span>, who, when his
pupil <span class="smcap">Boccaccio</span> wrote to him in great
tribulation, that he had been visited and admonished for his
writings by a Carthusian Friar who claimed to be a messenger
immediately commissioned by Heaven for that purpose, replied,
that for his own part, he would take the liberty of testing the
reality of the commission by personal observation of the
Messenger’s face, eyes, forehead, behaviour, and
discourse. I cannot but believe myself, from similar
observation, that many unaccredited celestial messengers may be
seen skulking through the streets of Genoa, or droning away their
lives in other Italian towns.</p>
<p>Perhaps the Cappuccíni, though not a learned body, are,
as an order, the best friends of the people. They seem to
mingle with them more immediately, as their counsellors and
comforters; and to go among them more, when they are sick; and to
pry less than some other orders, into the secrets of families,
for the purpose of establishing a baleful ascendency over their
weaker members; and to be influenced by a less fierce desire to
make converts, and once made, to let them go to ruin, soul and
body. They may be seen, in their coarse dress, in all parts
of the town at all times, and begging in the markets early in the
morning. The Jesuits too, muster strong in the streets, and
go slinking noiselessly about, in pairs, like black cats.</p>
<p>In some of the narrow passages, distinct trades
congregate. There is a street of jewellers, and there is a
row of booksellers; but even down in places where nobody ever
can, or ever could, penetrate in a carriage, there are mighty old
palaces shut in among the gloomiest and closest walls, and almost
shut out from the sun. Very few of the tradesmen have any
idea of setting forth their goods, or disposing them for
show. If you, a stranger, want to buy anything, you usually
look round the shop till you see it; then clutch it, if it be
within reach, and inquire how much. Everything is sold at
the most unlikely place. If you want coffee, you go to a
sweetmeat shop; and if you want meat, you will probably find it
behind an old checked curtain, down half-a-dozen steps, in some
sequestered nook as hard to find as if the commodity were poison,
and Genoa’s law were death to any that uttered it.</p>
<p>Most of the apothecaries’ shops are great
lounging-places. Here, grave men with sticks, sit down in
the shade for hours together, passing a meagre Genoa paper from
hand to hand, and talking, drowsily and sparingly, about the
News. Two or three of these are poor physicians, ready to
proclaim themselves on an emergency, and tear off with any
messenger who may arrive. You may know them by the way in
which they stretch their necks to listen, when you enter; and by
the sigh with which they fall back again into their dull corners,
on finding that you only want medicine. Few people lounge
in the barbers’ shops; though they are very numerous, as
hardly any man shaves himself. But the apothecary’s
has its group of loungers, who sit back among the bottles, with
their hands folded over the tops of their sticks. So still
and quiet, that either you don’t see them in the darkened
shop, or mistake them—as I did one ghostly man in
bottle-green, one day, with a hat like a stopper—for Horse
Medicine.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>On a summer evening the Genoese are as fond of putting
themselves, as their ancestors were of putting houses, in every
available inch of space in and about the town. In all the
lanes and alleys, and up every little ascent, and on every dwarf
wall, and on every flight of steps, they cluster like bees.
Meanwhile (and especially on festa-days) the bells of the
churches ring incessantly; not in peals, or any known form of
sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, dingle,
dingle: with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or so, which
is maddening. This performance is usually achieved by a boy
up in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or a little
rope attached to it, and tries to dingle louder than every other
boy similarly employed. The noise is supposed to be
particularly obnoxious to Evil Spirits; but looking up into the
steeples, and seeing (and hearing) these young Christians thus
engaged, one might very naturally mistake them for the Enemy.</p>
<p>Festa-days, early in the autumn, are very numerous. All
the shops were shut up, twice within a week, for these holidays;
and one night, all the houses in the neighbourhood of a
particular church were illuminated, while the church itself was
lighted, outside, <a name="page250"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
250</span>with torches; and a grove of blazing links was erected,
in an open space outside one of the city gates. This part
of the ceremony is prettier and more singular a little way in the
country, where you can trace the illuminated cottages all the way
up a steep hill-side; and where you pass festoons of tapers,
wasting away in the starlight night, before some lonely little
house upon the road.</p>
<p>On these days, they always dress the church of the saint in
whose honour the festa is holden, very gaily.
Gold-embroidered festoons of different colours, hang from the
arches; the altar furniture is set forth; and sometimes, even the
lofty pillars are swathed from top to bottom in tight-fitting
draperies. The cathedral is dedicated to St. Lorenzo.
On St. Lorenzo’s day, we went into it, just as the sun was
setting. Although these decorations are usually in very
indifferent taste, the effect, just then, was very superb
indeed. For the whole building was dressed in red; and the
sinking sun, streaming in, through a great red curtain in the
chief doorway, made all the gorgeousness its own. When the
sun went down, and it gradually grew quite dark inside, except
for a few twinkling tapers on the principal altar, and some small
dangling silver lamps, it was very mysterious and
effective. But, sitting in any of the churches towards
evening, is like a mild dose of opium.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/p250b.jpg">
<img alt=
"Italian Romance"
title=
"Italian Romance"
src="images/p250s.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p>With the money collected at a festa, they usually pay for the
dressing of the church, and for the hiring of the band, and for
the tapers. If there be any left (which seldom happens, I
believe), the souls in Purgatory get the benefit of it.
They are also supposed to have the benefit of the exertions of
certain small boys, who shake money-boxes before some mysterious
little buildings like rural turnpikes, which (usually shut up
close) fly open on Red-letter days, and disclose an image and
some flowers inside.</p>
<p>Just without the city gate, on the Albara road, is a small
house, with an altar in it, and a stationary money-box: also for
the benefit of the souls in Purgatory. Still further to
stimulate the charitable, there is a monstrous painting on the
plaster, on either side of the grated door, representing a select
party of souls, frying. One of them has a grey moustache,
and an elaborate head of grey hair: as if he had been taken out
of a hairdresser’s window and cast into the furnace.
There he is: a most grotesque and hideously comic old soul: for
ever blistering in the real sun, and melting in the mimic fire,
for the gratification and improvement (and the contributions) of
the poor Genoese.</p>
<p>They are not a very joyous people, and are seldom seen to
dance on their holidays: the staple places of entertainment among
the women, being the churches and the public walks. They
are very good-tempered, obliging, and industrious. Industry
has not made them clean, for their habitations are extremely
filthy, and their usual occupation on a fine Sunday morning, is
to sit at their doors, hunting in each other’s heads.
But their dwellings are so close and confined that if those parts
of the city had been beaten down by Massena in the time of the
terrible Blockade, it would have at least occasioned one public
benefit among many misfortunes.</p>
<p>The Peasant Women, with naked feet and legs, are so constantly
washing clothes, in the public tanks, and in every stream and
ditch, that one cannot help wondering, in the midst of all this
dirt, who wears them when they are clean. The custom is to
lay the wet linen which is being operated upon, on a smooth
stone, and hammer away at it, with a flat wooden mallet.
This they do, as furiously as if they were revenging themselves
on dress in general for being connected with the Fall of
Mankind.</p>
<p>It is not unusual to see, lying on the edge of the tank at
these times, or on another flat stone, an unfortunate baby,
tightly swathed up, arms and legs and all, in an enormous
quantity of wrapper, so that it is unable to move a toe or
finger. This custom (which we often see represented in old
pictures) is universal among the common people. A child is
left anywhere without the possibility of crawling away, or is
accidentally knocked off a shelf, or tumbled out of bed, or is
hung up to a hook now and then, and left dangling like a doll at
an English rag-shop, without the least inconvenience to
anybody.</p>
<p>I was sitting, one Sunday, soon after my arrival, in the
little country church of San Martino, a couple of miles from the
city, while a baptism took place. I saw the priest, and an
attendant with a large taper, and a man, and a woman, and some
others; but I had no more idea, until the ceremony was all over,
that it was a baptism, or that the curious little stiff
instrument, that was passed from one to another, in the course of
the ceremony, by the handle—like a short poker—was a
child, than I had that it was my own christening. I
borrowed the child afterwards, for a minute or two (it was lying
across the font then), and found it very red in the face but
perfectly quiet, and not to be bent on any terms. The
number of cripples in the streets, soon ceased to surprise
me.</p>
<p>There are plenty of Saints’ and Virgin’s Shrines,
of course; generally at the corners of streets. The
favourite memento to the Faithful, about Genoa, is a painting,
representing a peasant on his knees, with a spade and some other
agricultural implements beside him; and the Madonna, with the
Infant Saviour in her arms, appearing to him in a cloud.
This is the legend of the Madonna della Guardia: a chapel on a
mountain within a few miles, which is in high repute. It
seems that this peasant lived all alone by himself, tilling some
land atop of the mountain, where, being a devout man, he daily
said his prayers to the Virgin in the open air; for his hut was a
very poor one. Upon a certain day, the Virgin appeared to
him, as in the picture, and said, ‘Why do you pray in the
open air, and without a priest?’ The peasant
explained because there was neither priest nor church at
hand—a very uncommon complaint indeed in Italy.
‘I should wish, then,’ said the Celestial Visitor,
‘to have a chapel built here, in which the prayers of the
Faithful may be offered up.’ ‘But, Santissima
Madonna,’ said the peasant, ‘I am a poor man; and
chapels cannot be built without money. They must be
supported, too, Santissima; for to have a chapel and not support
it liberally, is a wickedness—a deadly sin.’
This sentiment gave great satisfaction to the visitor.
‘Go!’ said she. ‘There is such a village
in the valley on the left, and such another village in the valley
on the right, and such another village elsewhere, that will
gladly contribute to the building of a chapel. Go to
them! Relate what you have seen; and do not doubt that
sufficient money will be forthcoming to erect my chapel, or that
it will, afterwards, be handsomely maintained.’ All
of which (miraculously) turned out to be quite true. And in
proof of this prediction and revelation, there is the chapel of
the Madonna della Guardia, rich and flourishing at this day.</p>
<p>The splendour and variety of the Genoese churches, can hardly
be exaggerated. The church of the Annunciata especially:
built, like many of the others, at the cost of one noble family,
and now in slow progress of repair: from the outer door to the
utmost height of the high cupola, is so elaborately painted and
set in gold, that it looks (as <span class="smcap">Simond</span>
describes it, in his charming book on Italy) like a great
enamelled snuff-box. Most of the richer churches contain
some beautiful pictures, or other embellishments of great price,
almost universally set, side by side, with sprawling effigies of
maudlin monks, and the veriest trash and tinsel ever seen.</p>
<p>It may be a consequence of the frequent direction of the
popular mind, and pocket, to the souls in Purgatory, but there is
very little tenderness for the <i>bodies</i> of the dead
here. For the very poor, there are, immediately outside one
angle of the walls, and behind a jutting point of the
fortification, near the sea, certain common pits—one for
every day in the year—which all remain closed up, until the
turn of each comes for its daily reception of dead bodies.
Among the troops in the town, there are usually some Swiss: more
or less. When any of these die, they are buried out of a
fund maintained by such of their countrymen as are resident in
Genoa. Their providing coffins for these men is matter of
great astonishment to the authorities.</p>
<p>Certainly, the effect of this promiscuous and indecent
splashing down of dead people in so many wells, is bad. It
surrounds Death with revolting associations, that insensibly
become connected with those whom Death is approaching.
Indifference and avoidance are the natural result; and all the
softening influences of the great sorrow are harshly
disturbed.</p>
<p>There is a ceremony when an old Cavaliére or the like,
expires, of erecting a pile of benches in the cathedral, to
represent his bier; covering them over with a pall of black
velvet; putting his hat and sword on the top; making a little
square of seats about the whole; and sending out formal
invitations to his friends and acquaintances to come and sit
there, and hear Mass: which is performed at the principal Altar,
decorated with an infinity of candles for that purpose.</p>
<p>When the better kind of people die, or are at the point of
death, their nearest relations generally walk off: retiring into
the country for a little change, and leaving the body to be
disposed of, without any superintendence from them. The
procession is usually formed, and the coffin borne, and the
funeral conducted, by a body of persons called a
Confratérnita, who, as a kind of voluntary penance,
undertake to perform these offices, in regular rotation, for the
dead; but who, mingling something of pride with their humility,
are dressed in a loose garment covering their whole person, and
wear a hood concealing the face; with breathing-holes and
apertures for the eyes. The effect of this costume is very
ghastly: especially in the case of a certain Blue
Confratérnita belonging to Genoa, who, to say the least of
them, are very ugly customers, and who look—suddenly
encountered in their pious ministration in the streets—as
if they were Ghoules or Demons, bearing off the body for
themselves.</p>
<p>Although such a custom may be liable to the abuse attendant on
many Italian customs, of being recognised as a means of
establishing a current account with Heaven, on which to draw, too
easily, for future bad actions, or as an expiation for past
misdeeds, it must be admitted to be a good one, and a practical
one, and one involving unquestionably good works. A
voluntary service like this, is surely better than the imposed
penance (not at all an infrequent one) of giving so many licks to
such and such a stone in the pavement of the cathedral; or than a
vow to the Madonna to wear nothing but blue for a year or
two. This is supposed to give great delight above; blue
being (as is well known) the Madonna’s favourite
colour. Women who have devoted themselves to this act of
Faith, are very commonly seen walking in the streets.</p>
<p>There are three theatres in the city, besides an old one now
rarely opened. The most important—the Carlo Felice:
the opera-house of Genoa—is a very splendid, commodious,
and beautiful theatre. A company of comedians were acting
there, when we arrived: and soon after their departure, a
second-rate opera company came. The great season is not
until the carnival time—in the spring. Nothing
impressed me, so much, in my visits here (which were pretty
numerous) as the uncommonly hard and cruel character of the
audience, who resent the slightest defect, take nothing
good-humouredly, seem to be always lying in wait for an
opportunity to hiss, and spare the actresses as little as the
actors.</p>
<p>But, as there is nothing else of a public nature at which they
are allowed to express the least disapprobation, perhaps they are
resolved to make the most of this opportunity.</p>
<p>There are a great number of Piedmontese officers too, who are
allowed the privilege of kicking their heels in the pit, for next
to nothing: gratuitous, or cheap accommodation for these
gentlemen being insisted on, by the Governor, in all public or
semi-public entertainments. They are lofty critics in
consequence, and infinitely more exacting than if they made the
unhappy manager’s fortune.</p>
<p>The <span class="smcap">Teatro Diurno</span>, or Day Theatre,
is a covered stage in the open air, where the performances take
place by daylight, in the cool of the afternoon; commencing at
four or five o’clock, and lasting, some three hours.
It is curious, sitting among the audience, to have a fine view of
the neighbouring hills and houses, and to see the neighbours at
their windows looking on, and to hear the bells of the churches
and convents ringing at most complete cross-purposes with the
scene. Beyond this, and the novelty of seeing a play in the
fresh pleasant air, with the darkening evening closing in, there
is nothing very exciting or characteristic in the
performances. The actors are indifferent; and though they
sometimes represent one of Goldoni’s comedies, the staple
of the Drama is French. Anything like nationality is
dangerous to despotic governments, and Jesuit-beleaguered
kings.</p>
<p>The Theatre of Puppets, or Marionetti—a famous company
from Milan—is, without any exception, the drollest
exhibition I ever beheld in my life. I never saw anything
so exquisitely ridiculous. They <i>look</i> between four
and five feet high, but are really much smaller; for when a
musician in the orchestra happens to put his hat on the stage, it
becomes alarmingly gigantic, and almost blots out an actor.
They usually play a comedy, and a ballet. The comic man in
the comedy I saw one summer night, is a waiter in an hotel.
There never was such a locomotive actor, since the world
began. Great pains are taken with him. He has extra
joints in his legs: and a practical eye, with which he winks at
the pit, in a manner that is absolutely insupportable to a
stranger, but which the initiated audience, mainly composed of
the common people, receive (so they do everything else) quite as
a matter of course, and as if he were a man. His spirits
are prodigious. He continually shakes his legs, and winks
his eye. And there is a heavy father with grey hair, who
sits down on the regular conventional stage-bank, and blesses his
daughter in the regular conventional way, who is
tremendous. No one would suppose it possible that anything
short of a real man could be so tedious. It is the triumph
of art.</p>
<p>In the ballet, an Enchanter runs away with the Bride, in the
very hour of her nuptials, He brings her to his cave, and tries
to soothe her. They sit down on a sofa (the regular sofa!
in the regular place, O. P. Second Entrance!) and a procession of
musicians enters; one creature playing a drum, and knocking
himself off his legs at every blow. These failing to
delight her, dancers appear. Four first; then two;
<i>the</i> two; the flesh-coloured two. The way in which
they dance; the height to which they spring; the impossible and
inhuman extent to which they pirouette; the revelation of their
preposterous legs; the coming down with a pause, on the very tips
of their toes, when the music requires it; the gentleman’s
retiring up, when it is the lady’s turn; and the
lady’s retiring up, when it is the gentleman’s turn;
the final passion of a pas-de-deux; and the going off with a
bound!—I shall never see a real ballet, with a composed
countenance again.</p>
<p>I went, another night, to see these Puppets act a play called
‘St. Helena, or the Death of Napoleon.’ It
began by the disclosure of Napoleon, with an immense head, seated
on a sofa in his chamber at St. Helena; to whom his valet entered
with this obscure announcement:</p>
<p>‘Sir Yew ud se on Low?’ (the <i>ow</i>, as in
cow).</p>
<p>Sir Hudson (that you could have seen his regimentals!) was a
perfect mammoth of a man, to Napoleon; hideously ugly, with a
monstrously disproportionate face, and a great clump for the
lower-jaw, to express his tyrannical and obdurate nature.
He began his system of persecution, by calling his prisoner
‘General Buonaparte;’ to which the latter replied,
with the deepest tragedy, ‘Sir Yew ud se on Low, call me
not thus. Repeat that phrase and leave me! I am
Napoleon, Emperor of France!’ Sir Yew ud se on,
nothing daunted, proceeded to entertain him with an ordinance of
the British Government, regulating the state he should preserve,
and the furniture of his rooms: and limiting his attendants to
four or five persons. ‘Four or five for
<i>me</i>!’ said Napoleon. ‘Me! One
hundred thousand men were lately at my sole command; and this
English officer talks of four or five for <i>me</i>!’
Throughout the piece, Napoleon (who talked very like the real
Napoleon, and was, for ever, having small soliloquies by himself)
was very bitter on ‘these English officers,’ and
‘these English soldiers;’ to the great satisfaction
of the audience, who were perfectly delighted to have Low
bullied; and who, whenever Low said ‘General
Buonaparte’ (which he always did: always receiving the same
correction), quite execrated him. It would be hard to say
why; for Italians have little cause to sympathise with Napoleon,
Heaven knows.</p>
<p>There was no plot at all, except that a French officer,
disguised as an Englishman, came to propound a plan of escape;
and being discovered, but not before Napoleon had magnanimously
refused to steal his freedom, was immediately ordered off by Low
to be hanged. In two very long speeches, which Low made
memorable, by winding up with ‘Yas!’—to show
that he was English—which brought down thunders of
applause. Napoleon was so affected by this catastrophe,
that he fainted away on the spot, and was carried out by two
other puppets. Judging from what followed, it would appear
that he never recovered the shock; for the next act showed him,
in a clean shirt, in his bed (curtains crimson and white), where
a lady, prematurely dressed in mourning, brought two little
children, who kneeled down by the bedside, while he made a decent
end; the last word on his lips being ‘Vatterlo.’</p>
<p>It was unspeakably ludicrous. Buonaparte’s boots
were so wonderfully beyond control, and did such marvellous
things of their own accord: doubling themselves up, and getting
under tables, and dangling in the air, and sometimes skating away
with him, out of all human knowledge, when he was in full
speech—mischances which were not rendered the less absurd,
by a settled melancholy depicted in his face. To put an end
to one conference with Low, he had to go to a table, and read a
book: when it was the finest spectacle I ever beheld, to see his
body bending over the volume, like a boot-jack, and his
sentimental eyes glaring obstinately into the pit. He was
prodigiously good, in bed, with an immense collar to his shirt,
and his little hands outside the coverlet. So was Dr.
Antommarchi, represented by a puppet with long lank hair, like
Mawworm’s, who, in consequence of some derangement of his
wires, hovered about the couch like a vulture, and gave medical
opinions in the air. He was almost as good as Low, though
the latter was great at all times—a decided brute and
villain, beyond all possibility of mistake. Low was
especially fine at the last, when, hearing the doctor and the
valet say, ‘The Emperor is dead!’ he pulled out his
watch, and wound up the piece (not the watch) by exclaiming, with
characteristic brutality, ‘Ha! ha! Eleven minutes to
six! The General dead! and the spy hanged!’
This brought the curtain down, triumphantly.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them), a
lovelier residence than the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace of the
Fishponds, whither we removed as soon as our three months’
tenancy of the Pink Jail at Albaro had ceased and determined.</p>
<p>It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but aloof
from the town: surrounded by beautiful gardens of its own,
adorned with statues, vases, fountains, marble basins, terraces,
walks of orange-trees and lemon-trees, groves of roses and
camellias. All its apartments are beautiful in their
proportions and decorations; but the great hall, some fifty feet
in height, with three large windows at the end, overlooking the
whole town of Genoa, the harbour, and the neighbouring sea,
affords one of the most fascinating and delightful prospects in
the world. Any house more cheerful and habitable than the
great rooms are, within, it would be difficult to conceive; and
certainly nothing more delicious than the scene without, in
sunshine or in moonlight, could be imagined. It is more
like an enchanted place in an Eastern story than a grave and
sober lodging.</p>
<p>How you may wander on, from room to room, and never tire of
the wild fancies on the walls and ceilings, as bright in their
fresh colouring as if they had been painted yesterday; or how one
floor, or even the great hall which opens on eight other rooms,
is a spacious promenade; or how there are corridors and
bed-chambers above, which we never use and rarely visit, and
scarcely know the way through; or how there is a view of a
perfectly different character on each of the four sides of the
building; matters little. But that prospect from the hall
is like a vision to me. I go back to it, in fancy, as I
have done in calm reality a hundred times a day; and stand there,
looking out, with the sweet scents from the garden rising up
about me, in a perfect dream of happiness.</p>
<p>There lies all Genoa, in beautiful confusion, with its many
churches, monasteries, and convents, pointing up into the sunny
sky; and down below me, just where the roofs begin, a solitary
convent parapet, fashioned like a gallery, with an iron across at
the end, where sometimes early in the morning, I have seen a
little group of dark-veiled nuns gliding sorrowfully to and fro,
and stopping now and then to peep down upon the waking world in
which they have no part. Old Monte Faccio, brightest of
hills in good weather, but sulkiest when storms are coming on, is
here, upon the left. The Fort within the walls (the good
King built it to command the town, and beat the houses of the
Genoese about their ears, in case they should be discontented)
commands that height upon the right. The broad sea lies
beyond, in front there; and that line of coast, beginning by the
light-house, and tapering away, a mere speck in the rosy
distance, is the beautiful coast road that leads to Nice.
The garden near at hand, among the roofs and houses: all red with
roses and fresh with little fountains: is the Acqua Sola—a
public promenade, where the military band plays gaily, and the
white veils cluster thick, and the Genoese nobility ride round,
and round, and round, in state-clothes and coaches at least, if
not in absolute wisdom. Within a stone’s-throw, as it
seems, the audience of the Day Theatre sit: their faces turned
this way. But as the stage is hidden, it is very odd,
without a knowledge of the cause, to see their faces changed so
suddenly from earnestness to laughter; and odder still, to hear
the rounds upon rounds of applause, rattling in the evening air,
to which the curtain falls. But, being Sunday night, they
act their best and most attractive play. And now, the sun
is going down, in such magnificent array of red, and green, and
golden light, as neither pen nor pencil could depict; and to the
ringing of the vesper bells, darkness sets in at once, without a
twilight. Then, lights begin to shine in Genoa, and on the
country road; and the revolving lanthorn out at sea there,
flashing, for an instant, on this palace front and portico,
illuminates it as if there were a bright moon bursting from
behind a cloud; then, merges it in deep obscurity. And
this, so far as I know, is the only reason why the Genoese avoid
it after dark, and think it haunted.</p>
<p>My memory will haunt it, many nights, in time to come; but
nothing worse, I will engage. The same Ghost will
occasionally sail away, as I did one pleasant autumn evening,
into the bright prospect, and sniff the morning air at
Marseilles.</p>
<p>The corpulent hairdresser was still sitting in his slippers
outside his shop-door there, but the twirling ladies in the
window, with the natural inconstancy of their sex, had ceased to
twirl, and were languishing, stock still, with their beautiful
faces addressed to blind corners of the establishment, where it
was impossible for admirers to penetrate.</p>
<p>The steamer had come from Genoa in a delicious run of eighteen
hours, and we were going to run back again by the Cornice road
from Nice: not being satisfied to have seen only the outsides of
the beautiful towns that rise in picturesque white clusters from
among the olive woods, and rocks, and hills, upon the margin of
the Sea.</p>
<p>The Boat which started for Nice that night, at eight
o’clock, was very small, and so crowded with goods that
there was scarcely room to move; neither was there anything to
cat on board, except bread; nor to drink, except coffee.
But being due at Nice at about eight or so in the morning, this
was of no consequence; so when we began to wink at the bright
stars, in involuntary acknowledgment of their winking at us, we
turned into our berths, in a crowded, but cool little cabin, and
slept soundly till morning.</p>
<p>The Boat, being as dull and dogged a little boat as ever was
built, it was within an hour of noon when we turned into Nice
Harbour, where we very little expected anything but
breakfast. But we were laden with wool. Wool must not
remain in the Custom-house at Marseilles more than twelve months
at a stretch, without paying duty. It is the custom to make
fictitious removals of unsold wool to evade this law; to take it
somewhere when the twelve months are nearly out; bring it
straight back again; and warehouse it, as a new cargo, for nearly
twelve months longer. This wool of ours, had come
originally from some place in the East. It was recognised
as Eastern produce, the moment we entered the harbour.
Accordingly, the gay little Sunday boats, full of holiday people,
which had come off to greet us, were warned away by the
authorities; we were declared in quarantine; and a great flag was
solemnly run up to the mast-head on the wharf, to make it known
to all the town.</p>
<p>It was a very hot day indeed. We were unshaved,
unwashed, undressed, unfed, and could hardly enjoy the absurdity
of lying blistering in a lazy harbour, with the town looking on
from a respectful distance, all manner of whiskered men in cocked
hats discussing our fate at a remote guard-house, with gestures
(we looked very hard at them through telescopes) expressive of a
week’s detention at least: and nothing whatever the matter
all the time. But even in this crisis the brave Courier
achieved a triumph. He telegraphed somebody (<i>I</i> saw
nobody) either naturally connected with the hotel, or put <i>en
rapport</i> with the establishment for that occasion only.
The telegraph was answered, and in half an hour or less, there
came a loud shout from the guard-house. The captain was
wanted. Everybody helped the captain into his boat.
Everybody got his luggage, and said we were going. The
captain rowed away, and disappeared behind a little jutting
corner of the Galley-slaves’ Prison: and presently came
back with something, very sulkily. The brave Courier met
him at the side, and received the something as its rightful
owner. It was a wicker basket, folded in a linen cloth; and
in it were two great bottles of wine, a roast fowl, some salt
fish chopped with garlic, a great loaf of bread, a dozen or so of
peaches, and a few other trifles. When we had selected our
own breakfast, the brave Courier invited a chosen party to
partake of these refreshments, and assured them that they need
not be deterred by motives of delicacy, as he would order a
second basket to be furnished at their expense. Which he
did—no one knew how—and by-and-by, the captain being
again summoned, again sulkily returned with another something;
over which my popular attendant presided as before: carving with
a clasp-knife, his own personal property, something smaller than
a Roman sword.</p>
<p>The whole party on board were made merry by these unexpected
supplies; but none more so than a loquacious little Frenchman,
who got drunk in five minutes, and a sturdy Cappuccíno
Friar, who had taken everybody’s fancy mightily, and was
one of the best friars in the world, I verily believe.</p>
<p>He had a free, open countenance; and a rich brown, flowing
beard; and was a remarkably handsome man, of about fifty.
He had come up to us, early in the morning, and inquired whether
we were sure to be at Nice by eleven; saying that he particularly
wanted to know, because if we reached it by that time he would
have to perform Mass, and must deal with the consecrated wafer,
fasting; whereas, if there were no chance of his being in time,
he would immediately breakfast. He made this communication,
under the idea that the brave Courier was the captain; and indeed
he looked much more like it than anybody else on board.
Being assured that we should arrive in good time, he fasted, and
talked, fasting, to everybody, with the most charming good
humour; answering jokes at the expense of friars, with other
jokes at the expense of laymen, and saying that, friar as he was,
he would engage to take up the two strongest men on board, one
after the other, with his teeth, and carry them along the
deck. Nobody gave him the opportunity, but I dare say he
could have done it; for he was a gallant, noble figure of a man,
even in the Cappuccíno dress, which is the ugliest and
most ungainly that can well be.</p>
<p>All this had given great delight to the loquacious Frenchman,
who gradually patronised the Friar very much, and seemed to
commiserate him as one who might have been born a Frenchman
himself, but for an unfortunate destiny. Although his
patronage was such as a mouse might bestow upon a lion, he had a
vast opinion of its condescension; and in the warmth of that
sentiment, occasionally rose on tiptoe, to slap the Friar on the
back.</p>
<p>When the baskets arrived: it being then too late for Mass: the
Friar went to work bravely: eating prodigiously of the cold meat
and bread, drinking deep draughts of the wine, smoking cigars,
taking snuff, sustaining an uninterrupted conversation with all
hands, and occasionally running to the boat’s side and
hailing somebody on shore with the intelligence that we
<i>must</i> be got out of this quarantine somehow or other, as he
had to take part in a great religious procession in the
afternoon. After this, he would come back, laughing lustily
from pure good humour: while the Frenchman wrinkled his small
face into ten thousand creases, and said how droll it was, and
what a brave boy was that Friar! At length the heat of the
sun without, and the wine within, made the Frenchman
sleepy. So, in the noontide of his patronage of his
gigantic protégé, he lay down among the wool, and
began to snore.</p>
<p>It was four o’clock before we were released; and the
Frenchman, dirty and woolly, and snuffy, was still sleeping when
the Friar went ashore. As soon as we were free, we all
hurried away, to wash and dress, that we might make a decent
appearance at the procession; and I saw no more of the Frenchman
until we took up our station in the main street to see it pass,
when he squeezed himself into a front place, elaborately
renovated; threw back his little coat, to show a broad-barred
velvet waistcoat, sprinkled all over with stars; then adjusted
himself and his cane so as utterly to bewilder and transfix the
Friar, when he should appear.</p>
<p>The procession was a very long one, and included an immense
number of people divided into small parties; each party chanting
nasally, on its own account, without reference to any other, and
producing a most dismal result. There were angels, crosses,
Virgins carried on flat boards surrounded by Cupids, crowns,
saints, missals, infantry, tapers, monks, nuns, relics,
dignitaries of the church in green hats, walking under crimson
parasols: and, here and there, a species of sacred street-lamp
hoisted on a pole. We looked out anxiously for the
Cappuccíni, and presently their brown robes and corded
girdles were seen coming on, in a body.</p>
<p>I observed the little Frenchman chuckle over the idea that
when the Friar saw him in the broad-barred waistcoat, he would
mentally exclaim, ‘Is that my Patron! <i>That</i>
distinguished man!’ and would be covered with
confusion. Ah! never was the Frenchman so deceived.
As our friend the Cappuccíno advanced, with folded arms,
he looked straight into the visage of the little Frenchman, with
a bland, serene, composed abstraction, not to be described.
There was not the faintest trace of recognition or amusement on
his features; not the smallest consciousness of bread and meat,
wine, snuff, or cigars. ‘C’est
lui-même,’ I heard the little Frenchman say, in some
doubt. Oh yes, it was himself. It was not his brother
or his nephew, very like him. It was he. He walked in
great state: being one of the Superiors of the Order: and looked
his part to admiration. There never was anything so perfect
of its kind as the contemplative way in which he allowed his
placid gaze to rest on us, his late companions, as if he had
never seen us in his life and didn’t see us then. The
Frenchman, quite humbled, took off his hat at last, but the Friar
still passed on, with the same imperturbable serenity; and the
broad-barred waistcoat, fading into the crowd, was seen no
more.</p>
<p>The procession wound up with a discharge of musketry that
shook all the windows in the town. Next afternoon we
started for Genoa, by the famed Cornice road.</p>
<p>The half-French, half-Italian Vetturíno, who undertook,
with his little rattling carriage and pair, to convey us thither
in three days, was a careless, good-looking fellow, whose
light-heartedness and singing propensities knew no bounds as long
as we went on smoothly. So long, he had a word and a smile,
and a flick of his whip, for all the peasant girls, and odds and
ends of the Sonnambula for all the echoes. So long, he went
jingling through every little village, with bells on his horses
and rings in his ears: a very meteor of gallantry and
cheerfulness. But, it was highly characteristic to see him
under a slight reverse of circumstances, when, in one part of the
journey, we came to a narrow place where a waggon had broken down
and stopped up the road. His hands were twined in his hair
immediately, as if a combination of all the direst accidents in
life had suddenly fallen on his devoted head. He swore in
French, prayed in Italian, and went up and down, beating his feet
on the ground in a very ecstasy of despair. There were
various carters and mule-drivers assembled round the broken
waggon, and at last some man of an original turn of mind,
proposed that a general and joint effort should be made to get
things to-rights again, and clear the way—an idea which I
verily believe would never have presented itself to our friend,
though we had remained there until now. It was done at no
great cost of labour; but at every pause in the doing, his hands
were wound in his hair again, as if there were no ray of hope to
lighten his misery. The moment he was on his box once more,
and clattering briskly down hill, he returned to the Sonnambula
and the peasant girls, as if it were not in the power of
misfortune to depress him.</p>
<p>Much of the romance of the beautiful towns and villages on
this beautiful road, disappears when they are entered, for many
of them are very miserable. The streets are narrow, dark,
and dirty; the inhabitants lean and squalid; and the withered old
women, with their wiry grey hair twisted up into a knot on the
top of the head, like a pad to carry loads on, are so intensely
ugly, both along the Riviera, and in Genoa, too, that, seen
straggling about in dim doorways with their spindles, or crooning
together in by-corners, they are like a population of
Witches—except that they certainly are not to be suspected
of brooms or any other instrument of cleanliness. Neither
are the pig-skins, in common use to hold wine, and hung out in
the sun in all directions, by any means ornamental, as they
always preserve the form of very bloated pigs, with their heads
and legs cut off, dangling upside-down by their own tails.</p>
<p>These towns, as they are seen in the approach, however:
nestling, with their clustering roofs and towers, among trees on
steep hill-sides, or built upon the brink of noble bays: are
charming. The vegetation is, everywhere, luxuriant and
beautiful, and the Palm-tree makes a novel feature in the novel
scenery. In one town, San Remo—a most extraordinary
place, built on gloomy open arches, so that one might ramble
underneath the whole town—there are pretty terrace gardens;
in other towns, there is the clang of shipwrights’ hammers,
and the building of small vessels on the beach. In some of
the broad bays, the fleets of Europe might ride at anchor.
In every case, each little group of houses presents, in the
distance, some enchanting confusion of picturesque and fanciful
shapes.</p>
<p>The road itself—now high above the glittering sea, which
breaks against the foot of the precipice: now turning inland to
sweep the shore of a bay: now crossing the stony bed of a
mountain stream: now low down on the beach: now winding among
riven rocks of many forms and colours: now chequered by a
solitary ruined tower, one of a chain of towers built, in old
time, to protect the coast from the invasions of the Barbary
Corsairs—presents new beauties every moment. When its
own striking scenery is passed, and it trails on through a long
line of suburb, lying on the flat sea-shore, to Genoa, then, the
changing glimpses of that noble city and its harbour, awaken a
new source of interest; freshened by every huge, unwieldy,
half-inhabited old house in its outskirts: and coming to its
climax when the city gate is reached, and all Genoa with its
beautiful harbour, and neighbouring hills, bursts proudly on the
view.</p>
<h2><a name="page264"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 264</span>TO
PARMA, MODENA, AND BOLOGNA</h2>
<p>I <span class="smcap">strolled</span> away from Genoa on the
6th of November, bound for a good many places (England among
them), but first for Piacenza; for which town I started in the
<i>coupé</i> of a machine something like a travelling
caravan, in company with the brave Courier, and a lady with a
large dog, who howled dolefully, at intervals, all night.
It was very wet, and very cold; very dark, and very dismal; we
travelled at the rate of barely four miles an hour, and stopped
nowhere for refreshment. At ten o’clock next morning,
we changed coaches at Alessandria, where we were packed up in
another coach (the body whereof would have been small for a fly),
in company with a very old priest; a young Jesuit, his
companion—who carried their breviaries and other books, and
who, in the exertion of getting into the coach, had made a gash
of pink leg between his black stocking and his black knee-shorts,
that reminded one of Hamlet in Ophelia’s closet, only it
was visible on both legs—a provincial Avvocáto; and
a gentleman with a red nose that had an uncommon and singular
sheen upon it, which I never observed in the human subject
before. In this way we travelled on, until four
o’clock in the afternoon; the roads being still very heavy,
and the coach very slow. To mend the matter, the old priest
was troubled with cramps in his legs, so that he had to give a
terrible yell every ten minutes or so, and be hoisted out by the
united efforts of the company; the coach always stopping for him,
with great gravity. This disorder, and the roads, formed
the main subject of conversation. Finding, in the
afternoon, that the <i>coupé</i> had discharged two
people, and had only one passenger inside—a monstrous ugly
Tuscan, with a great purple moustache, of which no man could see
the ends when he had his hat on—I took advantage of its
better accommodation, and in company with this gentleman (who was
very conversational and good-humoured) travelled on, until nearly
eleven o’clock at night, when the driver reported that he
couldn’t think of going any farther, and we accordingly
made a halt at a place called Stradella.</p>
<p>The inn was a series of strange galleries surrounding a yard
where our coach, and a waggon or two, and a lot of fowls, and
firewood, were all heaped up together, higgledy-piggledy; so that
you didn’t know, and couldn’t have taken your oath,
which was a fowl and which was a cart. We followed a sleepy
man with a flaring torch, into a great, cold room, where there
were two immensely broad beds, on what looked like two immensely
broad deal dining-tables; another deal table of similar
dimensions in the middle of the bare floor; four windows; and two
chairs. Somebody said it was my room; and I walked up and
down it, for half an hour or so, staring at the Tuscan, the old
priest, the young priest, and the Avvocáto (Red-Nose lived
in the town, and had gone home), who sat upon their beds, and
stared at me in return.</p>
<p>The rather dreary whimsicality of this stage of the
proceedings, is interrupted by an announcement from the Brave (he
had been cooking) that supper is ready; and to the priest’s
chamber (the next room and the counterpart of mine) we all
adjourn. The first dish is a cabbage, boiled with a great
quantity of rice in a tureen full of water, and flavoured with
cheese. It is so hot, and we are so cold, that it appears
almost jolly. The second dish is some little bits of pork,
fried with pigs’ kidneys. The third, two red
fowls. The fourth, two little red turkeys. The fifth,
a huge stew of garlic and truffles, and I don’t know what
else; and this concludes the entertainment.</p>
<p>Before I can sit down in my own chamber, and think it of the
dampest, the door opens, and the Brave comes moving in, in the
middle of such a quantity of fuel that he looks like Birnam Wood
taking a winter walk. He kindles this heap in a twinkling,
and produces a jorum of hot brandy and water; for that bottle of
his keeps company with the seasons, and now holds nothing but the
purest <i>eau de vie</i>. When he has accomplished this
feat, he retires for the night; and I hear him, for an hour
afterwards, and indeed until I fall asleep, making jokes in some
outhouse (apparently under the pillow), where he is smoking
cigars with a party of confidential friends. He never was
in the house in his life before; but he knows everybody
everywhere, before he has been anywhere five minutes; and is
certain to have attracted to himself, in the meantime, the
enthusiastic devotion of the whole establishment.</p>
<p>This is at twelve o’clock at night. At four
o’clock next morning, he is up again, fresher than a
full-blown rose; making blazing fires without the least authority
from the landlord; producing mugs of scalding coffee when nobody
else can get anything but cold water; and going out into the dark
streets, and roaring for fresh milk, on the chance of somebody
with a cow getting up to supply it. While the horses are
‘coming,’ I stumble out into the town too. It
seems to be all one little Piazza, with a cold damp wind blowing
in and out of the arches, alternately, in a sort of
pattern. But it is profoundly dark, and raining heavily;
and I shouldn’t know it to-morrow, if I were taken there to
try. Which Heaven forbid.</p>
<p>The horses arrive in about an hour. In the interval, the
driver swears; sometimes Christian oaths, sometimes Pagan
oaths. Sometimes, when it is a long, compound oath, he
begins with Christianity and merges into Paganism. Various
messengers are despatched; not so much after the horses, as after
each other; for the first messenger never comes back, and all the
rest imitate him. At length the horses appear, surrounded
by all the messengers; some kicking them, and some dragging them,
and all shouting abuse to them. Then, the old priest, the
young priest, the Avvocáto, the Tuscan, and all of us,
take our places; and sleepy voices proceeding from the doors of
extraordinary hutches in divers parts of the yard, cry out
‘Addio corrière mio! Buon’
viággio, corrière!’ Salutations which
the courier, with his face one monstrous grin, returns in like
manner as we go jolting and wallowing away, through the mud.</p>
<p>At Piacenza, which was four or five hours’ journey from
the inn at Stradella, we broke up our little company before the
hotel door, with divers manifestations of friendly feeling on all
sides. The old priest was taken with the cramp again,
before he had got half-way down the street; and the young priest
laid the bundle of books on a door-step, while he dutifully
rubbed the old gentleman’s legs. The client of the
Avvocáto was waiting for him at the yard-gate, and kissed
him on each cheek, with such a resounding smack, that I am afraid
he had either a very bad case, or a scantily-furnished
purse. The Tuscan, with a cigar in his mouth, went
loitering off, carrying his hat in his hand that he might the
better trail up the ends of his dishevelled moustache. And
the brave Courier, as he and I strolled away to look about us,
began immediately to entertain me with the private histories and
family affairs of the whole party.</p>
<p>A brown, decayed, old town, Piacenza is. A deserted,
solitary, grass-grown place, with ruined ramparts; half filled-up
trenches, which afford a frowsy pasturage to the lean kine that
wander about them; and streets of stern houses, moodily frowning
at the other houses over the way. The sleepiest and
shabbiest of soldiery go wandering about, with the double curse
of laziness and poverty, uncouthly wrinkling their misfitting
regimentals; the dirtiest of children play with their impromptu
toys (pigs and mud) in the feeblest of gutters; and the gauntest
of dogs trot in and out of the dullest of archways, in perpetual
search of something to eat, which they never seem to find.
A mysterious and solemn Palace, guarded by two colossal statues,
twin Genii of the place, stands gravely in the midst of the idle
town; and the king with the marble legs, who flourished in the
time of the thousand and one Nights, might live contentedly
inside of it, and never have the energy, in his upper half of
flesh and blood, to want to come out.</p>
<p>What a strange, half-sorrowful and half-delicious doze it is,
to ramble through these places gone to sleep and basking in the
sun! Each, in its turn, appears to be, of all the mouldy,
dreary, God-forgotten towns in the wide world, the chief.
Sitting on this hillock where a bastion used to be, and where a
noisy fortress was, in the time of the old Roman station here, I
became aware that I have never known till now, what it is to be
lazy. A dormouse must surely be in very much the same
condition before he retires under the wool in his cage; or a
tortoise before he buries himself.</p>
<p>I feel that I am getting rusty. That any attempt to
think, would be accompanied with a creaking noise. That
there is nothing, anywhere, to be done, or needing to be
done. That there is no more human progress, motion, effort,
or advancement, of any kind beyond this. That the whole
scheme stopped here centuries ago, and laid down to rest until
the Day of Judgment.</p>
<p>Never while the brave Courier lives! Behold him jingling
out of Piacenza, and staggering this way, in the tallest
posting-chaise ever seen, so that he looks out of the front
window as if he were peeping over a garden wall; while the
postilion, concentrated essence of all the shabbiness of Italy,
pauses for a moment in his animated conversation, to touch his
hat to a blunt-nosed little Virgin, hardly less shabby than
himself, enshrined in a plaster Punch’s show outside the
town.</p>
<p>In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the vines on
trellis-work, supported on square clumsy pillars, which, in
themselves, are anything but picturesque. But, here, they
twine them around trees, and let them trail among the hedges; and
the vineyards are full of trees, regularly planted for this
purpose, each with its own vine twining and clustering about
it. Their leaves are now of the brightest gold and deepest
red; and never was anything so enchantingly graceful and full of
beauty. Through miles of these delightful forms and
colours, the road winds its way. The wild festoons, the
elegant wreaths, and crowns, and garlands of all shapes; the
fairy nets flung over great trees, and making them prisoners in
sport; the tumbled heaps and mounds of exquisite shapes upon the
ground; how rich and beautiful they are! And every now and
then, a long, long line of trees, will be all bound and garlanded
together: as if they had taken hold of one another, and were
coming dancing down the field!</p>
<p>Parma has cheerful, stirring streets, for an Italian town; and
consequently is not so characteristic as many places of less
note. Always excepting the retired Piazza, where the
Cathedral, Baptistery, and Campanile—ancient buildings, of
a sombre brown, embellished with innumerable grotesque monsters
and dreamy-looking creatures carved in marble and red
stone—are clustered in a noble and magnificent
repose. Their silent presence was only invaded, when I saw
them, by the twittering of the many birds that were flying in and
out of the crevices in the stones and little nooks in the
architecture, where they had made their nests. They were
busy, rising from the cold shade of Temples made with hands, into
the sunny air of Heaven. Not so the worshippers within, who
were listening to the same drowsy chaunt, or kneeling before the
same kinds of images and tapers, or whispering, with their heads
bowed down, in the selfsame dark confessionals, as I had left in
Genoa and everywhere else.</p>
<p>The decayed and mutilated paintings with which this church is
covered, have, to my thinking, a remarkably mournful and
depressing influence. It is miserable to see great works of
art—something of the Souls of Painters—perishing and
fading away, like human forms. This cathedral is odorous
with the rotting of Correggio’s frescoes in the
Cupola. Heaven knows how beautiful they may have been at
one time. Connoisseurs fall into raptures with them now;
but such a labyrinth of arms and legs: such heaps of
foreshortened limbs, entangled and involved and jumbled together:
no operative surgeon, gone mad, could imagine in his wildest
delirium.</p>
<p>There is a very interesting subterranean church here: the roof
supported by marble pillars, behind each of which there seemed to
be at least one beggar in ambush: to say nothing of the tombs and
secluded altars. From every one of these lurking-places,
such crowds of phantom-looking men and women, leading other men
and women with twisted limbs, or chattering jaws, or paralytic
gestures, or idiotic heads, or some other sad infirmity, came
hobbling out to beg, that if the ruined frescoes in the cathedral
above, had been suddenly animated, and had retired to this lower
church, they could hardly have made a greater confusion, or
exhibited a more confounding display of arms and legs.</p>
<p>There is Petrarch’s Monument, too; and there is the
Baptistery, with its beautiful arches and immense font; and there
is a gallery containing some very remarkable pictures, whereof a
few were being copied by hairy-faced artists, with little velvet
caps more off their heads than on. There is the Farnese
Palace, too; and in it one of the dreariest spectacles of decay
that ever was seen—a grand, old, gloomy theatre, mouldering
away.</p>
<p>It is a large wooden structure, of the horse-shoe shape; the
lower seats arranged upon the Roman plan, but above them, great
heavy chambers; rather than boxes, where the Nobles sat, remote
in their proud state. Such desolation as has fallen on this
theatre, enhanced in the spectator’s fancy by its gay
intention and design, none but worms can be familiar with.
A hundred and ten years have passed, since any play was acted
here. The sky shines in through the gashes in the roof; the
boxes are dropping down, wasting away, and only tenanted by rats;
damp and mildew smear the faded colours, and make spectral maps
upon the panels; lean rags are dangling down where there were gay
festoons on the Proscenium; the stage has rotted so, that a
narrow wooden gallery is thrown across it, or it would sink
beneath the tread, and bury the visitor in the gloomy depth
beneath. The desolation and decay impress themselves on all
the senses. The air has a mouldering smell, and an earthy
taste; any stray outer sounds that straggle in with some lost
sunbeam, are muffled and heavy; and the worm, the maggot, and the
rot have changed the surface of the wood beneath the touch, as
time will seam and roughen a smooth hand. If ever Ghosts
act plays, they act them on this ghostly stage.</p>
<p>It was most delicious weather, when we came into Modena, where
the darkness of the sombre colonnades over the footways skirting
the main street on either side, was made refreshing and agreeable
by the bright sky, so wonderfully blue. I passed from all
the glory of the day, into a dim cathedral, where High Mass was
performing, feeble tapers were burning, people were kneeling in
all directions before all manner of shrines, and officiating
priests were crooning the usual chant, in the usual, low, dull,
drawling, melancholy tone.</p>
<p>Thinking how strange it was, to find, in every stagnant town,
this same Heart beating with the same monotonous pulsation, the
centre of the same torpid, listless system, I came out by another
door, and was suddenly scared to death by a blast from the
shrillest trumpet that ever was blown. Immediately, came
tearing round the corner, an equestrian company from Paris:
marshalling themselves under the walls of the church, and
flouting, with their horses’ heels, the griffins, lions,
tigers, and other monsters in stone and marble, decorating its
exterior. First, there came a stately nobleman with a great
deal of hair, and no hat, bearing an enormous banner, on which
was inscribed, <span class="smcap">Mazeppa</span>! <span
class="smcap">to-night</span>! Then, a Mexican chief, with
a great pear-shaped club on his shoulder, like Hercules.
Then, six or eight Roman chariots: each with a beautiful lady in
extremely short petticoats, and unnaturally pink tights, erect
within: shedding beaming looks upon the crowd, in which there was
a latent expression of discomposure and anxiety, for which I
couldn’t account, until, as the open back of each chariot
presented itself, I saw the immense difficulty with which the
pink legs maintained their perpendicular, over the uneven
pavement of the town: which gave me quite a new idea of the
ancient Romans and Britons. The procession was brought to a
close, by some dozen indomitable warriors of different nations,
riding two and two, and haughtily surveying the tame population
of Modena: among whom, however, they occasionally condescended to
scatter largesse in the form of a few handbills. After
caracolling among the lions and tigers, and proclaiming that
evening’s entertainments with blast of trumpet, it then
filed off, by the other end of the square, and left a new and
greatly increased dulness behind.</p>
<p>When the procession had so entirely passed away, that the
shrill trumpet was mild in the distance, and the tail of the last
horse was hopelessly round the corner, the people who had come
out of the church to stare at it, went back again. But one
old lady, kneeling on the pavement within, near the door, had
seen it all, and had been immensely interested, without getting
up; and this old lady’s eye, at that juncture, I happened
to catch: to our mutual confusion. She cut our
embarrassment very short, however, by crossing herself devoutly,
and going down, at full length, on her face, before a figure in a
fancy petticoat and a gilt crown; which was so like one of the
procession-figures, that perhaps at this hour she may think the
whole appearance a celestial vision. Anyhow, I must
certainly have forgiven her her interest in the Circus, though I
had been her Father Confessor.</p>
<p>There was a little fiery-eyed old man with a crooked shoulder,
in the cathedral, who took it very ill that I made no effort to
see the bucket (kept in an old tower) which the people of Modena
took away from the people of Bologna in the fourteenth century,
and about which there was war made and a mock-heroic poem by
<span class="smcap">Tassone</span>, too. Being quite
content, however, to look at the outside of the tower, and feast,
in imagination, on the bucket within; and preferring to loiter in
the shade of the tall Campanile, and about the cathedral; I have
no personal knowledge of this bucket, even at the present
time.</p>
<p>Indeed, we were at Bologna, before the little old man (or the
Guide-Book) would have considered that we had half done justice
to the wonders of Modena. But it is such a delight to me to
leave new scenes behind, and still go on, encountering newer
scenes—and, moreover, I have such a perverse disposition in
respect of sights that are cut, and dried, and
dictated—that I fear I sin against similar authorities in
every place I visit.</p>
<p>Be this as it may, in the pleasant Cemetery at Bologna, I
found myself walking next Sunday morning, among the stately
marble tombs and colonnades, in company with a crowd of Peasants,
and escorted by a little Cicerone of that town, who was
excessively anxious for the honour of the place, and most
solicitous to divert my attention from the bad monuments: whereas
he was never tired of extolling the good ones. Seeing this
little man (a good-humoured little man he was, who seemed to have
nothing in his face but shining teeth and eyes) looking wistfully
at a certain plot of grass, I asked him who was buried
there. ‘The poor people, Signore,’ he said,
with a shrug and a smile, and stopping to look back at
me—for he always went on a little before, and took off his
hat to introduce every new monument. ‘Only the poor,
Signore! It’s very cheerful. It’s very
lively. How green it is, how cool! It’s like a
meadow! There are five,’—holding up all the
fingers of his right hand to express the number, which an Italian
peasant will always do, if it be within the compass of his ten
fingers,—‘there are five of my little children buried
there, Signore; just there; a little to the right.
Well! Thanks to God! It’s very cheerful.
How green it is, how cool it is! It’s quite a
meadow!’</p>
<p>He looked me very hard in the face, and seeing I was sorry for
him, took a pinch of snuff (every Cicerone takes snuff), and made
a little bow; partly in deprecation of his having alluded to such
a subject, and partly in memory of the children and of his
favourite saint. It was as unaffected and as perfectly
natural a little bow, as ever man made. Immediately
afterwards, he took his hat off altogether, and begged to
introduce me to the next monument; and his eyes and his teeth
shone brighter than before.</p>
<h2><a name="page272"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
272</span>THROUGH BOLOGNA AND FERRARA</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">There</span> was such a very smart
official in attendance at the Cemetery where the little Cicerone
had buried his children, that when the little Cicerone suggested
to me, in a whisper, that there would be no offence in presenting
this officer, in return for some slight extra service, with a
couple of pauls (about tenpence, English money), I looked
incredulously at his cocked hat, wash-leather gloves, well-made
uniform, and dazzling buttons, and rebuked the little Cicerone
with a grave shake of the head. For, in splendour of
appearance, he was at least equal to the Deputy Usher of the
Black Rod; and the idea of his carrying, as Jeremy Diddler would
say, ‘such a thing as tenpence’ away with him, seemed
monstrous. He took it in excellent part, however, when I
made bold to give it him, and pulled off his cocked hat with a
flourish that would have been a bargain at double the money.</p>
<p>It seemed to be his duty to describe the monuments to the
people—at all events he was doing so; and when I compared
him, like Gulliver in Brobdingnag, ‘with the Institutions
of my own beloved country, I could not refrain from tears of
pride and exultation.’ He had no pace at all; no more
than a tortoise. He loitered as the people loitered, that
they might gratify their curiosity; and positively allowed them,
now and then, to read the inscriptions on the tombs. He was
neither shabby, nor insolent, nor churlish, nor ignorant.
He spoke his own language with perfect propriety, and seemed to
consider himself, in his way, a kind of teacher of the people,
and to entertain a just respect both for himself and them.
They would no more have such a man for a Verger in Westminster
Abbey, than they would let the people in (as they do at Bologna)
to see the monuments for nothing. <a name="citation272"></a><a
href="#footnote272" class="citation">[272]</a></p>
<p>Again, an ancient sombre town, under the brilliant sky; with
heavy arcades over the footways of the older streets, and lighter
and more cheerful archways in the newer portions of the
town. Again, brown piles of sacred buildings, with more
birds flying in and out of chinks in the stones; and more
snarling monsters for the bases of the pillars. Again, rich
churches, drowsy Masses, curling incense, tinkling bells, priests
in bright vestments: pictures, tapers, laced altar cloths,
crosses, images, and artificial flowers.</p>
<p>There is a grave and learned air about the city, and a
pleasant gloom upon it, that would leave it, a distinct and
separate impression in the mind, among a crowd of cities, though
it were not still further marked in the traveller’s
remembrance by the two brick leaning towers (sufficiently
unsightly in themselves, it must be acknowledged), inclining
cross-wise as if they were bowing stiffly to each other—a
most extraordinary termination to the perspective of some of the
narrow streets. The colleges, and churches too, and
palaces: and above all the academy of Fine Arts, where there are
a host of interesting pictures, especially by <span
class="smcap">Guido</span>, <span
class="smcap">Domenichino</span>, and <span
class="smcap">Ludovico Caracci</span>: give it a place of its own
in the memory. Even though these were not, and there were
nothing else to remember it by, the great Meridian on the
pavement of the church of San Petronio, where the sunbeams mark
the time among the kneeling people, would give it a fanciful and
pleasant interest.</p>
<p>Bologna being very full of tourists, detained there by an
inundation which rendered the road to Florence impassable, I was
quartered up at the top of an hotel, in an out-of-the-way room
which I never could find: containing a bed, big enough for a
boarding-school, which I couldn’t fall asleep in. The
chief among the waiters who visited this lonely retreat, where
there was no other company but the swallows in the broad eaves
over the window, was a man of one idea in connection with the
English; and the subject of this harmless monomania, was Lord
Byron. I made the discovery by accidentally remarking to
him, at breakfast, that the matting with which the floor was
covered, was very comfortable at that season, when he immediately
replied that Milor Beeron had been much attached to that kind of
matting. Observing, at the same moment, that I took no
milk, he exclaimed with enthusiasm, that Milor Beeron had never
touched it. At first, I took it for granted, in my
innocence, that he had been one of the Beeron servants; but no,
he said, no, he was in the habit of speaking about my Lord, to
English gentlemen; that was all. He knew all about him, he
said. In proof of it, he connected him with every possible
topic, from the Monte Pulciano wine at dinner (which was grown on
an estate he had owned), to the big bed itself, which was the
very model of his. When I left the inn, he coupled with his
final bow in the yard, a parting assurance that the road by which
I was going, had been Milor Beeron’s favourite ride; and
before the horse’s feet had well begun to clatter on the
pavement, he ran briskly up-stairs again, I dare say to tell some
other Englishman in some other solitary room that the guest who
had just departed was Lord Beeron’s living image.</p>
<p>I had entered Bologna by night—almost midnight—and
all along the road thither, after our entrance into the Papal
territory: which is not, in any part, supremely well governed,
Saint Peter’s keys being rather rusty now; the driver had
so worried about the danger of robbers in travelling after dark,
and had so infected the brave Courier, and the two had been so
constantly stopping and getting up and down to look after a
portmanteau which was tied on behind, that I should have felt
almost obliged to any one who would have had the goodness to take
it away. Hence it was stipulated, that, whenever we left
Bologna, we should start so as not to arrive at Ferrara later
than eight at night; and a delightful afternoon and evening
journey it was, albeit through a flat district which gradually
became more marshy from the overflow of brooks and rivers in the
recent heavy rains.</p>
<p>At sunset, when I was walking on alone, while the horses
rested, I arrived upon a little scene, which, by one of those
singular mental operations of which we are all conscious, seemed
perfectly familiar to me, and which I see distinctly now.
There was not much in it. In the blood red light, there was
a mournful sheet of water, just stirred by the evening wind; upon
its margin a few trees. In the foreground was a group of
silent peasant girls leaning over the parapet of a little bridge,
and looking, now up at the sky, now down into the water; in the
distance, a deep bell; the shade of approaching night on
everything. If I had been murdered there, in some former
life, I could not have seemed to remember the place more
thoroughly, or with a more emphatic chilling of the blood; and
the mere remembrance of it acquired in that minute, is so
strengthened by the imaginary recollection, that I hardly think I
could forget it.</p>
<p>More solitary, more depopulated, more deserted, old Ferrara,
than any city of the solemn brotherhood! The grass so grows
up in the silent streets, that any one might make hay there,
literally, while the sun shines. But the sun shines with
diminished cheerfulness in grim Ferrara; and the people are so
few who pass and re-pass through the places, that the flesh of
its inhabitants might be grass indeed, and growing in the
squares.</p>
<p>I wonder why the head coppersmith in an Italian town, always
lives next door to the Hotel, or opposite: making the visitor
feel as if the beating hammers were his own heart, palpitating
with a deadly energy! I wonder why jealous corridors
surround the bedroom on all sides, and fill it with unnecessary
doors that can’t be shut, and will not open, and abut on
pitchy darkness! I wonder why it is not enough that these
distrustful genii stand agape at one’s dreams all night,
but there must also be round open portholes, high in the wall,
suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot, of
a somebody scraping the wall with his toes, in his endeavours to
reach one of these portholes and look in! I wonder why the
faggots are so constructed, as to know of no effect but an agony
of heat when they are lighted and replenished, and an agony of
cold and suffocation at all other times! I wonder, above
all, why it is the great feature of domestic architecture in
Italian inns, that all the fire goes up the chimney, except the
smoke!</p>
<p>The answer matters little. Coppersmiths, doors,
portholes, smoke, and faggots, are welcome to me. Give me
the smiling face of the attendant, man or woman; the courteous
manner; the amiable desire to please and to be pleased; the
light-hearted, pleasant, simple air—so many jewels set in
dirt—and I am theirs again to-morrow!</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Ariosto’s</span> house, <span
class="smcap">Tasso’s</span> prison, a rare old Gothic
cathedral, and more churches of course, are the sights of
Ferrara. But the long silent streets, and the dismantled
palaces, where ivy waves in lieu of banners, and where rank weeds
are slowly creeping up the long-untrodden stairs, are the best
sights of all.</p>
<p>The aspect of this dreary town, half an hour before sunrise
one fine morning, when I left it, was as picturesque as it seemed
unreal and spectral. It was no matter that the people were
not yet out of bed; for if they had all been up and busy, they
would have made but little difference in that desert of a
place. It was best to see it, without a single figure in
the picture; a city of the dead, without one solitary
survivor. Pestilence might have ravaged streets, squares,
and market-places; and sack and siege have ruined the old houses,
battered down their doors and windows, and made breaches in their
roofs. In one part, a great tower rose into the air; the
only landmark in the melancholy view. In another, a
prodigious castle, with a moat about it, stood aloof: a sullen
city in itself. In the black dungeons of this castle,
Parisina and her lover were beheaded in the dead of night.
The red light, beginning to shine when I looked back upon it,
stained its walls without, as they have, many a time, been
stained within, in old days; but for any sign of life they gave,
the castle and the city might have been avoided by all human
creatures, from the moment when the axe went down upon the last
of the two lovers: and might have never vibrated to another
sound</p>
<blockquote><p>Beyond the blow that to the block<br />
Pierced through with forced and sullen shock.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Coming to the Po, which was greatly swollen, and running
fiercely, we crossed it by a floating bridge of boats, and so
came into the Austrian territory, and resumed our journey:
through a country of which, for some miles, a great part was
under water. The brave Courier and the soldiery had first
quarrelled, for half an hour or more, over our eternal
passport. But this was a daily relaxation with the Brave,
who was always stricken deaf when shabby functionaries in uniform
came, as they constantly did come, plunging out of wooden boxes
to look at it—or in other words to beg—and who, stone
deaf to my entreaties that the man might have a trifle given him,
and we resume our journey in peace, was wont to sit reviling the
functionary in broken English: while the unfortunate man’s
face was a portrait of mental agony framed in the coach window,
from his perfect ignorance of what was being said to his
disparagement.</p>
<p>There was a postilion, in the course of this day’s
journey, as wild and savagely good-looking a vagabond as you
would desire to see. He was a tall, stout-made,
dark-complexioned fellow, with a profusion of shaggy black hair
hanging all over his face, and great black whiskers stretching
down his throat. His dress was a torn suit of rifle green,
garnished here and there with red; a steeple-crowned hat,
innocent of nap, with a broken and bedraggled feather stuck in
the band; and a flaming red neckerchief hanging on his
shoulders. He was not in the saddle, but reposed, quite at
his ease, on a sort of low foot-board in front of the postchaise,
down amongst the horses’ tails—convenient for having
his brains kicked out, at any moment. To this Brigand, the
brave Courier, when we were at a reasonable trot, happened to
suggest the practicability of going faster. He received the
proposal with a perfect yell of derision; brandished his whip
about his head (such a whip! it was more like a home-made bow);
flung up his heels, much higher than the horses; and disappeared,
in a paroxysm, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the
axle-tree. I fully expected to see him lying in the road, a
hundred yards behind, but up came the steeple-crowned hat again,
next minute, and he was seen reposing, as on a sofa, entertaining
himself with the idea, and crying, ‘Ha, ha! what
next! Oh the devil! Faster too!
Shoo—hoo—o—o!’ (This last
ejaculation, an inexpressibly defiant hoot.) Being anxious
to reach our immediate destination that night, I ventured,
by-and-by, to repeat the experiment on my own account. It
produced exactly the same effect. Round flew the whip with
the same scornful flourish, up came the heels, down went the
steeple-crowned hat, and presently he reappeared, reposing as
before and saying to himself, ‘Ha ha! what next!
Faster too! Oh the devil!
Shoo—hoo—o—o!’</p>
<h2><a name="page277"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 277</span>AN
ITALIAN DREAM</h2>
<p>I <span class="smcap">had</span> been travelling, for some
days; resting very little in the night, and never in the
day. The rapid and unbroken succession of novelties that
had passed before me, came back like half-formed dreams; and a
crowd of objects wandered in the greatest confusion through my
mind, as I travelled on, by a solitary road. At intervals,
some one among them would stop, as it were, in its restless
flitting to and fro, and enable me to look at it, quite steadily,
and behold it in full distinctness. After a few moments, it
would dissolve, like a view in a magic-lantern; and while I saw
some part of it quite plainly, and some faintly, and some not at
all, would show me another of the many places I had lately seen,
lingering behind it, and coming through it. This was no
sooner visible than, in its turn, it melted into something
else.</p>
<p>At one moment, I was standing again, before the brown old
rugged churches of Modena. As I recognised the curious
pillars with grim monsters for their bases, I seemed to see them,
standing by themselves in the quiet square at Padua, where there
were the staid old University, and the figures, demurely gowned,
grouped here and there in the open space about it. Then, I
was strolling in the outskirts of that pleasant city, admiring
the unusual neatness of the dwelling-houses, gardens, and
orchards, as I had seen them a few hours before. In their
stead arose, immediately, the two towers of Bologna; and the most
obstinate of all these objects, failed to hold its ground, a
minute, before the monstrous moated castle of Ferrara, which,
like an illustration to a wild romance, came back again in the
red sunrise, lording it over the solitary, grass-grown, withered
town. In short, I had that incoherent but delightful jumble
in my brain, which travellers are apt to have, and are indolently
willing to encourage. Every shake of the coach in which I
sat, half dozing in the dark, appeared to jerk some new
recollection out of its place, and to jerk some other new
recollection into it; and in this state I fell asleep.</p>
<p>I was awakened after some time (as I thought) by the stopping
of the coach. It was now quite night, and we were at the
waterside. There lay here, a black boat, with a little
house or cabin in it of the same mournful colour. When I
had taken my seat in this, the boat was paddled, by two men,
towards a great light, lying in the distance on the sea.</p>
<p>Ever and again, there was a dismal sigh of wind. It
ruffled the water, and rocked the boat, and sent the dark clouds
flying before the stars. I could not but think how strange
it was, to be floating away at that hour: leaving the land
behind, and going on, towards this light upon the sea. It
soon began to burn brighter; and from being one light became a
cluster of tapers, twinkling and shining out of the water, as the
boat approached towards them by a dreamy kind of track, marked
out upon the sea by posts and piles.</p>
<p>We had floated on, five miles or so, over the dark water, when
I heard it rippling in my dream, against some obstruction near at
hand. Looking out attentively, I saw, through the gloom, a
something black and massive—like a shore, but lying close
and flat upon the water, like a raft—which we were gliding
past. The chief of the two rowers said it was a
burial-place.</p>
<p>Full of the interest and wonder which a cemetery lying out
there, in the lonely sea, inspired, I turned to gaze upon it as
it should recede in our path, when it was quickly shut out from
my view. Before I knew by what, or how, I found that we
were gliding up a street—a phantom street; the houses
rising on both sides, from the water, and the black boat gliding
on beneath their windows. Lights were shining from some of
these casements, plumbing the depth of the black stream with
their reflected rays, but all was profoundly silent.</p>
<p>So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to hold our
course through narrow streets and lanes, all filled and flowing
with water. Some of the corners where our way branched off,
were so acute and narrow, that it seemed impossible for the long
slender boat to turn them; but the rowers, with a low melodious
cry of warning, sent it skimming on without a pause.
Sometimes, the rowers of another black boat like our own, echoed
the cry, and slackening their speed (as I thought we did ours)
would come flitting past us like a dark shadow. Other
boats, of the same sombre hue, were lying moored, I thought, to
painted pillars, near to dark mysterious doors that opened
straight upon the water. Some of these were empty; in some,
the rowers lay asleep; towards one, I saw some figures coming
down a gloomy archway from the interior of a palace: gaily
dressed, and attended by torch-bearers. It was but a
glimpse I had of them; for a bridge, so low and close upon the
boat that it seemed ready to fall down and crush us: one of the
many bridges that perplexed the Dream: blotted them out,
instantly. On we went, floating towards the heart of this
strange place—with water all about us where never water was
elsewhere—clusters of houses, churches, heaps of stately
buildings growing out of it—and, everywhere, the same
extraordinary silence. Presently, we shot across a broad
and open stream; and passing, as I thought, before a spacious
paved quay, where the bright lamps with which it was illuminated
showed long rows of arches and pillars, of ponderous construction
and great strength, but as light to the eye as garlands of
hoarfrost or gossamer—and where, for the first time, I saw
people walking—arrived at a flight of steps leading from
the water to a large mansion, where, having passed through
corridors and galleries innumerable, I lay down to rest;
listening to the black boats stealing up and down below the
window on the rippling water, till I fell asleep.</p>
<p>The glory of the day that broke upon me in this Dream; its
freshness, motion, buoyancy; its sparkles of the sun in water;
its clear blue sky and rustling air; no waking words can
tell. But, from my window, I looked down on boats and
barks; on masts, sails, cordage, flags; on groups of busy
sailors, working at the cargoes of these vessels; on wide quays,
strewn with bales, casks, merchandise of many kinds; on great
ships, lying near at hand in stately indolence; on islands,
crowned with gorgeous domes and turrets: and where golden crosses
glittered in the light, atop of wondrous churches, springing from
the sea! Going down upon the margin of the green sea,
rolling on before the door, and filling all the streets, I came
upon a place of such surpassing beauty, and such grandeur, that
all the rest was poor and faded, in comparison with its absorbing
loveliness.</p>
<p>It was a great Piazza, as I thought; anchored, like all the
rest, in the deep ocean. On its broad bosom, was a Palace,
more majestic and magnificent in its old age, than all the
buildings of the earth, in the high prime and fulness of their
youth. Cloisters and galleries: so light, they might have
been the work of fairy hands: so strong that centuries had
battered them in vain: wound round and round this palace, and
enfolded it with a Cathedral, gorgeous in the wild luxuriant
fancies of the East. At no great distance from its porch, a
lofty tower, standing by itself, and rearing its proud head,
alone, into the sky, looked out upon the Adriatic Sea. Near
to the margin of the stream, were two ill-omened pillars of red
granite; one having on its top, a figure with a sword and shield;
the other, a winged lion. Not far from these again, a
second tower: richest of the rich in all its decorations: even
here, where all was rich: sustained aloft, a great orb, gleaming
with gold and deepest blue: the Twelve Signs painted on it, and a
mimic sun revolving in its course around them: while above, two
bronze giants hammered out the hours upon a sounding bell.
An oblong square of lofty houses of the whitest stone, surrounded
by a light and beautiful arcade, formed part of this enchanted
scene; and, here and there, gay masts for flags rose, tapering,
from the pavement of the unsubstantial ground.</p>
<p>I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went in and out among
its many arches: traversing its whole extent. A grand and
dreamy structure, of immense proportions; golden with old
mosaics; redolent of perfumes; dim with the smoke of incense;
costly in treasure of precious stones and metals, glittering
through iron bars; holy with the bodies of deceased saints;
rainbow-hued with windows of stained glass; dark with carved
woods and coloured marbles; obscure in its vast heights, and
lengthened distances; shining with silver lamps and winking
lights; unreal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable
throughout. I thought I entered the old palace; pacing
silent galleries and council-chambers, where the old rulers of
this mistress of the waters looked sternly out, in pictures, from
the walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still victorious on
canvas, fought and conquered as of old. I thought I
wandered through its halls of state and triumph—bare and
empty now!—and musing on its pride and might, extinct: for
that was past; all past: heard a voice say, ‘Some tokens of
its ancient rule and some consoling reasons for its downfall, may
be traced here, yet!’</p>
<p>I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous rooms,
communicating with a prison near the palace; separated from it by
a lofty bridge crossing a narrow street; and called, I dreamed,
The Bridge of Sighs.</p>
<p>But first I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall; the
lions’ mouths—now toothless—where, in the
distempered horror of my sleep, I thought denunciations of
innocent men to the old wicked Council, had been dropped through,
many a time, when the night was dark. So, when I saw the
council-room to which such prisoners were taken for examination,
and the door by which they passed out, when they were
condemned—a door that never closed upon a man with life and
hope before him—my heart appeared to die within me.</p>
<p>It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, I descended
from the cheerful day into two ranges, one below another, of
dismal, awful, horrible stone cells. They were quite
dark. Each had a loop-hole in its massive wall, where, in
the old time, every day, a torch was placed—I
dreamed—to light the prisoner within, for half an
hour. The captives, by the glimmering of these brief rays,
had scratched and cut inscriptions in the blackened vaults.
I saw them. For their labour with a rusty nail’s
point, had outlived their agony and them, through many
generations.</p>
<p>One cell, I saw, in which no man remained for more than
four-and-twenty hours; being marked for dead before he entered
it. Hard by, another, and a dismal one, whereto, at
midnight, the confessor came—a monk brown-robed, and
hooded—ghastly in the day, and free bright air, but in the
midnight of that murky prison, Hope’s extinguisher, and
Murder’s herald. I had my foot upon the spot, where,
at the same dread hour, the shriven prisoner was strangled; and
struck my hand upon the guilty door—low-browed and
stealthy—through which the lumpish sack was carried out
into a boat, and rowed away, and drowned where it was death to
cast a net.</p>
<p>Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part of it:
licking the rough walls without, and smearing them with damp and
slime within: stuffing dank weeds and refuse into chinks and
crevices, as if the very stones and bars had mouths to stop:
furnishing a smooth road for the removal of the bodies of the
secret victims of the State—a road so ready that it went
along with them, and ran before them, like a cruel
officer—flowed the same water that filled this Dream of
mine, and made it seem one, even at the time.</p>
<p>Descending from the palace by a staircase, called, I thought,
the Giant’s—I had some imaginary recollection of an
old man abdicating, coming, more slowly and more feebly, down it,
when he heard the bell, proclaiming his successor—I glided
off, in one of the dark boats, until we came to an old arsenal
guarded by four marble lions. To make my Dream more
monstrous and unlikely, one of these had words and sentences upon
its body, inscribed there, at an unknown time, and in an unknown
language; so that their purport was a mystery to all men.</p>
<p>There was little sound of hammers in this place for building
ships, and little work in progress; for the greatness of the city
was no more, as I have said. Indeed, it seemed a very wreck
found drifting on the sea; a strange flag hoisted in its
honourable stations, and strangers standing at its helm. A
splendid barge in which its ancient chief had gone forth,
pompously, at certain periods, to wed the ocean, lay here, I
thought, no more; but, in its place, there was a tiny model, made
from recollection like the city’s greatness; and it told of
what had been (so are the strong and weak confounded in the dust)
almost as eloquently as the massive pillars, arches, roofs,
reared to overshadow stately ships that had no other shadow now,
upon the water or the earth.</p>
<p>An armoury was there yet. Plundered and despoiled; but
an armoury. With a fierce standard taken from the Turks,
drooping in the dull air of its cage. Rich suits of mail
worn by great warriors were hoarded there; crossbows and bolts;
quivers full of arrows; spears; swords, daggers, maces, shields,
and heavy-headed axes. Plates of wrought steel and iron, to
make the gallant horse a monster cased in metal scales; and one
spring-weapon (easy to be carried in the breast) designed to do
its office noiselessly, and made for shooting men with poisoned
darts.</p>
<p>One press or case I saw, full of accursed instruments of
torture horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, and grind and
crush men’s bones, and tear and twist them with the torment
of a thousand deaths. Before it, were two iron helmets,
with breast-pieces: made to close up tight and smooth upon the
heads of living sufferers; and fastened on to each, was a small
knob or anvil, where the directing devil could repose his elbow
at his ease, and listen, near the walled-up ear, to the
lamentations and confessions of the wretch within. There
was that grim resemblance in them to the human shape—they
were such moulds of sweating faces, pained and cramped—that
it was difficult to think them empty; and terrible distortions
lingering within them, seemed to follow me, when, taking to my
boat again, I rowed off to a kind of garden or public walk in the
sea, where there were grass and trees. But I forgot them
when I stood upon its farthest brink—I stood there, in my
dream—and looked, along the ripple, to the setting sun;
before me, in the sky and on the deep, a crimson flush; and
behind me the whole city resolving into streaks of red and
purple, on the water.</p>
<p>In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little
heed of time, and had but little understanding of its
flight. But there were days and nights in it; and when the
sun was high, and when the rays of lamps were crooked in the
running water, I was still afloat, I thought: plashing the
slippery walls and houses with the cleavings of the tide, as my
black boat, borne upon it, skimmed along the streets.</p>
<p>Sometimes, alighting at the doors of churches and vast
palaces, I wandered on, from room to room, from aisle to aisle,
through labyrinths of rich altars, ancient monuments; decayed
apartments where the furniture, half awful, half grotesque, was
mouldering away. Pictures were there, replete with such
enduring beauty and expression: with such passion, truth and
power: that they seemed so many young and fresh realities among a
host of spectres. I thought these, often intermingled with
the old days of the city: with its beauties, tyrants, captains,
patriots, merchants, counters, priests: nay, with its very
stones, and bricks, and public places; all of which lived again,
about me, on the walls. Then, coming down some marble
staircase where the water lapped and oozed against the lower
steps, I passed into my boat again, and went on in my dream.</p>
<p>Floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at work with
plane and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving
straight upon the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed away
before me in a tangled heap. Past open doors, decayed and
rotten from long steeping in the wet, through which some scanty
patch of vine shone green and bright, making unusual shadows on
the pavement with its trembling leaves. Past quays and
terraces, where women, gracefully veiled, were passing and
repassing, and where idlers were reclining in the sunshine, on
flag-stones and on flights of steps. Past bridges, where
there were idlers too; loitering and looking over. Below
stone balconies, erected at a giddy height, before the loftiest
windows of the loftiest houses. Past plots of garden,
theatres, shrines, prodigious piles of
architecture—Gothic—Saracenic—fanciful with all
the fancies of all times and countries. Past buildings that
were high, and low, and black, and white, and straight, and
crooked; mean and grand, crazy and strong. Twining among a
tangled lot of boats and barges, and shooting out at last into a
Grand Canal! There, in the errant fancy of my dream, I saw
old Shylock passing to and fro upon a bridge, all built upon with
shops and humming with the tongues of men; a form I seemed to
know for Desdemona’s, leaned down through a latticed blind
to pluck a flower. And, in the dream, I thought that
Shakespeare’s spirit was abroad upon the water somewhere:
stealing through the city.</p>
<p>At night, when two votive lamps burnt before an image of the
Virgin, in a gallery outside the great cathedral, near the roof,
I fancied that the great piazza of the Winged Lion was a blaze of
cheerful light, and that its whole arcade was thronged with
people; while crowds were diverting themselves in splendid
coffee-houses opening from it—which were never shut, I
thought, but open all night long. When the bronze giants
struck the hour of midnight on the bell, I thought the life and
animation of the city were all centred here; and as I rowed away,
abreast the silent quays, I only saw them dotted, here and there,
with sleeping boatmen wrapped up in their cloaks, and lying at
full length upon the stones.</p>
<p>But close about the quays and churches, palaces and prisons
sucking at their walls, and welling up into the secret places of
the town: crept the water always. Noiseless and watchful:
coiled round and round it, in its many folds, like an old
serpent: waiting for the time, I thought, when people should look
down into its depths for any stone of the old city that had
claimed to be its mistress.</p>
<p>Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old market-place
at Verona. I have, many and many a time, thought since, of
this strange Dream upon the water: half-wondering if it lie there
yet, and if its name be <span class="smcap">Venice</span>.</p>
<h2><a name="page284"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 284</span>BY
VERONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACROSS THE PASS OF THE SIMPLON INTO
SWITZERLAND</h2>
<p>I <span class="smcap">had</span> been half afraid to go to
Verona, lest it should at all put me out of conceit with Romeo
and Juliet. But, I was no sooner come into the old
market-place, than the misgiving vanished. It is so
fanciful, quaint, and picturesque a place, formed by such an
extraordinary and rich variety of fantastic buildings, that there
could be nothing better at the core of even this romantic town:
scene of one of the most romantic and beautiful of stories.</p>
<p>It was natural enough, to go straight from the Market-place,
to the House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most
miserable little inn. Noisy vetturíni and muddy
market-carts were disputing possession of the yard, which was
ankle-deep in dirt, with a brood of splashed and bespattered
geese; and there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a
doorway, who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the
moment he put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at
large in those times. The orchard fell into other hands,
and was parted off many years ago; but there used to be one
attached to the house—or at all events there may have,
been,—and the hat (Cappêllo) the ancient cognizance
of the family, may still be seen, carved in stone, over the
gateway of the yard. The geese, the market-carts, their
drivers, and the dog, were somewhat in the way of the story, it
must be confessed; and it would have been pleasanter to have
found the house empty, and to have been able to walk through the
disused rooms. But the hat was unspeakably comfortable; and
the place where the garden used to be, hardly less so.
Besides, the house is a distrustful, jealous-looking house as one
would desire to see, though of a very moderate size. So I
was quite satisfied with it, as the veritable mansion of old
Capulet, and was correspondingly grateful in my acknowledgments
to an extremely unsentimental middle-aged lady, the Padrona of
the Hotel, who was lounging on the threshold looking at the
geese; and who at least resembled the Capulets in the one
particular of being very great indeed in the ‘Family’
way.</p>
<p>From Juliet’s home, to Juliet’s tomb, is a
transition as natural to the visitor, as to fair Juliet herself,
or to the proudest Juliet that ever has taught the torches to
burn bright in any time. So, I went off, with a guide, to
an old, old garden, once belonging to an old, old convent, I
suppose; and being admitted, at a shattered gate, by a
bright-eyed woman who was washing clothes, went down some walks
where fresh plants and young flowers were prettily growing among
fragments of old wall, and ivy-coloured mounds; and was shown a
little tank, or water-trough, which the bright-eyed
woman—drying her arms upon her ‘kerchief, called
‘La tomba di Giulietta la sfortunáta.’
With the best disposition in the world to believe, I could do no
more than believe that the bright-eyed woman believed; so I gave
her that much credit, and her customary fee in ready money.
It was a pleasure, rather than a disappointment, that
Juliet’s resting-place was forgotten. However
consolatory it may have been to Yorick’s Ghost, to hear the
feet upon the pavement overhead, and, twenty times a day, the
repetition of his name, it is better for Juliet to lie out of the
track of tourists, and to have no visitors but such as come to
graves in spring-rain, and sweet air, and sunshine.</p>
<p>Pleasant Verona! With its beautiful old palaces, and
charming country in the distance, seen from terrace walks, and
stately, balustraded galleries. With its Roman gates, still
spanning the fair street, and casting, on the sunlight of to-day,
the shade of fifteen hundred years ago. With its
marble-fitted churches, lofty towers, rich architecture, and
quaint old quiet thoroughfares, where shouts of Montagues and
Capulets once resounded,</p>
<blockquote><p>And made Verona’s ancient citizens<br />
Cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments,<br />
To wield old partizans.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old bridge, great
castle, waving cypresses, and prospect so delightful, and so
cheerful! Pleasant Verona!</p>
<p>In the midst of it, in the Piazza di Brá—a spirit
of old time among the familiar realities of the passing
hour—is the great Roman Amphitheatre. So well
preserved, and carefully maintained, that every row of seats is
there, unbroken. Over certain of the arches, the old Roman
numerals may yet be seen; and there are corridors, and
staircases, and subterranean passages for beasts, and winding
ways, above ground and below, as when the fierce thousands
hurried in and out, intent upon the bloody shows of the
arena. Nestling in some of the shadows and hollow places of
the walls, now, are smiths with their forges, and a few small
dealers of one kind or other; and there are green weeds, and
leaves, and grass, upon the parapet. But little else is
greatly changed.</p>
<p>When I had traversed all about it, with great interest, and
had gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turning from the
lovely panorama closed in by the distant Alps, looked down into
the building, it seemed to lie before me like the inside of a
prodigious hat of plaited straw, with an enormously broad brim
and a shallow crown; the plaits being represented by the
four-and-forty rows of seats. The comparison is a homely
and fantastic one, in sober remembrance and on paper, but it was
irresistibly suggested at the moment, nevertheless.</p>
<p>An equestrian troop had been there, a short time
before—the same troop, I dare say, that appeared to the old
lady in the church at Modena—and had scooped out a little
ring at one end of the area; where their performances had taken
place, and where the marks of their horses’ feet were still
fresh. I could not but picture to myself, a handful of
spectators gathered together on one or two of the old stone
seats, and a spangled Cavalier being gallant, or a Policinello
funny, with the grim walls looking on. Above all, I thought
how strangely those Roman mutes would gaze upon the favourite
comic scene of the travelling English, where a British nobleman
(Lord John), with a very loose stomach: dressed in a blue-tailed
coat down to his heels, bright yellow breeches, and a white hat:
comes abroad, riding double on a rearing horse, with an English
lady (Lady Betsy) in a straw bonnet and green veil, and a red
spencer; and who always carries a gigantic reticule, and a put-up
parasol.</p>
<p>I walked through and through the town all the rest of the day,
and could have walked there until now, I think. In one
place, there was a very pretty modern theatre, where they had
just performed the opera (always popular in Verona) of Romeo and
Juliet. In another there was a collection, under a
colonnade, of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan remains, presided over
by an ancient man who might have been an Etruscan relic himself;
for he was not strong enough to open the iron gate, when he had
unlocked it, and had neither voice enough to be audible when he
described the curiosities, nor sight enough to see them: he was
so very old. In another place, there was a gallery of
pictures: so abominably bad, that it was quite delightful to see
them mouldering away. But anywhere: in the churches, among
the palaces, in the streets, on the bridge, or down beside the
river: it was always pleasant Verona, and in my remembrance
always will be.</p>
<p>I read Romeo and Juliet in my own room at the inn that
night—of course, no Englishman had ever read it there,
before—and set out for Mantua next day at sunrise,
repeating to myself (in the <i>coupé</i> of an omnibus,
and next to the conductor, who was reading the Mysteries of
Paris),</p>
<blockquote><p>There is no world without Verona’s walls<br
/>
But purgatory, torture, hell itself.<br />
Hence-banished is banished from the world,<br />
And world’s exile is death—</p>
</blockquote>
<p>which reminded me that Romeo was only banished five-and-twenty
miles after all, and rather disturbed my confidence in his energy
and boldness.</p>
<p>Was the way to Mantua as beautiful, in his time, I
wonder! Did it wind through pasture land as green, bright
with the same glancing streams, and dotted with fresh clumps of
graceful trees! Those purple mountains lay on the horizon,
then, for certain; and the dresses of these peasant girls, who
wear a great, knobbed, silver pin like an English
‘life-preserver’ through their hair behind, can
hardly be much changed. The hopeful feeling of so bright a
morning, and so exquisite a sunrise, can have been no stranger,
even to an exiled lover’s breast; and Mantua itself must
have broken on him in the prospect, with its towers, and walls,
and water, pretty much as on a commonplace and matrimonial
omnibus. He made the same sharp twists and turns, perhaps,
over two rumbling drawbridges; passed through the like long,
covered, wooden bridge; and leaving the marshy water behind,
approached the rusty gate of stagnant Mantua.</p>
<p>If ever a man were suited to his place of residence, and his
place of residence to him, the lean Apothecary and Mantua came
together in a perfect fitness of things. It may have been
more stirring then, perhaps. If so, the Apothecary was a
man in advance of his time, and knew what Mantua would be, in
eighteen hundred and forty-four. He fasted much, and that
assisted him in his foreknowledge.</p>
<p>I put up at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, and was in my own
room arranging plans with the brave Courier, when there came a
modest little tap at the door, which opened on an outer gallery
surrounding a court-yard; and an intensely shabby little man
looked in, to inquire if the gentleman would have a Cicerone to
show the town. His face was so very wistful and anxious, in
the half-opened doorway, and there was so much poverty expressed
in his faded suit and little pinched hat, and in the thread-bare
worsted glove with which he held it—not expressed the less,
because these were evidently his genteel clothes, hastily slipped
on—that I would as soon have trodden on him as dismissed
him. I engaged him on the instant, and he stepped in
directly.</p>
<p>While I finished the discussion in which I was engaged, he
stood, beaming by himself in a corner, making a feint of brushing
my hat with his arm. If his fee had been as many napoleons
as it was francs, there could not have shot over the twilight of
his shabbiness such a gleam of sun, as lighted up the whole man,
now that he was hired.</p>
<p>‘Well!’ said I, when I was ready, ‘shall we
go out now?’</p>
<p>‘If the gentleman pleases. It is a beautiful
day. A little fresh, but charming; altogether
charming. The gentleman will allow me to open the
door. This is the Inn Yard. The court-yard of the
Golden Lion! The gentleman will please to mind his footing
on the stairs.’</p>
<p>We were now in the street.</p>
<p>‘This is the street of the Golden Lion. This, the
outside of the Golden Lion. The interesting window up
there, on the first Piano, where the pane of glass is broken, is
the window of the gentleman’s chamber!’</p>
<p>Having viewed all these remarkable objects, I inquired if
there were much to see in Mantua.</p>
<p>‘Well! Truly, no. Not much! So,
so,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders apologetically.</p>
<p>‘Many churches?’</p>
<p>‘No. Nearly all suppressed by the
French.’</p>
<p>‘Monasteries or convents?’</p>
<p>‘No. The French again! Nearly all suppressed
by Napoleon.’</p>
<p>‘Much business?’</p>
<p>‘Very little business.’</p>
<p>‘Many strangers?’</p>
<p>‘Ah Heaven!’</p>
<p>I thought he would have fainted.</p>
<p>‘Then, when we have seen the two large churches yonder,
what shall we do next?’ said I.</p>
<p>He looked up the street, and down the street, and rubbed his
chin timidly; and then said, glancing in my face as if a light
had broken on his mind, yet with a humble appeal to my
forbearance that was perfectly irresistible:</p>
<p>‘We can take a little turn about the town,
Signore!’ (Si può far ’un píccolo
gíro della citta).</p>
<p>It was impossible to be anything but delighted with the
proposal, so we set off together in great good-humour. In
the relief of his mind, he opened his heart, and gave up as much
of Mantua as a Cicerone could.</p>
<p>‘One must eat,’ he said; ‘but, bah! it was a
dull place, without doubt!’</p>
<p>He made as much as possible of the Basilica of Santa
Andrea—a noble church—and of an inclosed portion of
the pavement, about which tapers were burning, and a few people
kneeling, and under which is said to be preserved the Sangreal of
the old Romances. This church disposed of, and another
after it (the cathedral of San Pietro), we went to the Museum,
which was shut up. ‘It was all the same,’ he
said. ‘Bah! There was not much
inside!’ Then, we went to see the Piazza del Diavolo,
built by the Devil (for no particular purpose) in a single night;
then, the Piazza Virgiliana; then, the statue of
Virgil—<i>our</i> Poet, my little friend said, plucking up
a spirit, for the moment, and putting his hat a little on one
side. Then, we went to a dismal sort of farm-yard, by which
a picture-gallery was approached. The moment the gate of
this retreat was opened, some five hundred geese came waddling
round us, stretching out their necks, and clamouring in the most
hideous manner, as if they were ejaculating, ‘Oh!
here’s somebody come to see the Pictures! Don’t
go up! Don’t go up!’ While we went up,
they waited very quietly about the door in a crowd, cackling to
one another occasionally, in a subdued tone; but the instant we
appeared again, their necks came out like telescopes, and setting
up a great noise, which meant, I have no doubt, ‘What, you
would go, would you! What do you think of it! How do
you like it!’ they attended us to the outer gate, and cast
us forth, derisively, into Mantua.</p>
<p>The geese who saved the Capitol, were, as compared to these,
Pork to the learned Pig. What a gallery it was! I
would take their opinion on a question of art, in preference to
the discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds.</p>
<p>Now that we were standing in the street, after being thus
ignominiouly escorted thither, my little friend was plainly
reduced to the ‘píccolo gíro,’ or
little circuit of the town, he had formerly proposed. But
my suggestion that we should visit the Palazzo Tè (of
which I had heard a great deal, as a strange wild place) imparted
new life to him, and away we went.</p>
<p>The secret of the length of Midas’s ears, would have
been more extensively known, if that servant of his, who
whispered it to the reeds, had lived in Mantua, where there are
reeds and rushes enough to have published it to all the
world. The Palazzo Tè stands in a swamp, among this
sort of vegetation; and is, indeed, as singular a place as I ever
saw.</p>
<p>Not for its dreariness, though it is very dreary. Not
for its dampness, though it is very damp. Nor for its
desolate condition, though it is as desolate and neglected as
house can be. But chiefly for the unaccountable nightmares
with which its interior has been decorated (among other subjects
of more delicate execution), by Giulio Romano. There is a
leering Giant over a certain chimney-piece, and there are dozens
of Giants (Titans warring with Jove) on the walls of another
room, so inconceivably ugly and grotesque, that it is marvellous
how any man can have imagined such creatures. In the
chamber in which they abound, these monsters, with swollen faces
and cracked cheeks, and every kind of distortion of look and
limb, are depicted as staggering under the weight of falling
buildings, and being overwhelmed in the ruins; upheaving masses
of rock, and burying themselves beneath; vainly striving to
sustain the pillars of heavy roofs that topple down upon their
heads; and, in a word, undergoing and doing every kind of mad and
demoniacal destruction. The figures are immensely large,
and exaggerated to the utmost pitch of uncouthness; the colouring
is harsh and disagreeable; and the whole effect more like (I
should imagine) a violent rush of blood to the head of the
spectator, than any real picture set before him by the hand of an
artist. This apoplectic performance was shown by a
sickly-looking woman, whose appearance was referable, I dare say,
to the bad air of the marshes; but it was difficult to help
feeling as if she were too much haunted by the Giants, and they
were frightening her to death, all alone in that exhausted
cistern of a Palace, among the reeds and rushes, with the mists
hovering about outside, and stalking round and round it
continually.</p>
<p>Our walk through Mantua showed us, in almost every street,
some suppressed church: now used for a warehouse, now for nothing
at all: all as crazy and dismantled as they could be, short of
tumbling down bodily. The marshy town was so intensely dull
and flat, that the dirt upon it seemed not to have come there in
the ordinary course, but to have settled and mantled on its
surface as on standing water. And yet there were some
business-dealings going on, and some profits realising; for there
were arcades full of Jews, where those extraordinary people were
sitting outside their shops, contemplating their stores of
stuffs, and woollens, and bright handkerchiefs, and trinkets: and
looking, in all respects, as wary and business-like, as their
brethren in Houndsditch, London.</p>
<p>Having selected a Vetturíno from among the neighbouring
Christians, who agreed to carry us to Milan in two days and a
half, and to start, next morning, as soon as the gates were
opened, I returned to the Golden Lion, and dined luxuriously in
my own room, in a narrow passage between two bedsteads:
confronted by a smoky fire, and backed up by a chest of
drawers. At six o’clock next morning, we were
jingling in the dark through the wet cold mist that enshrouded
the town; and, before noon, the driver (a native of Mantua, and
sixty years of age or thereabouts) began <i>to ask the way</i> to
Milan.</p>
<p>It lay through Bozzolo; formerly a little republic, and now
one of the most deserted and poverty-stricken of towns: where the
landlord of the miserable inn (God bless him! it was his weekly
custom) was distributing infinitesimal coins among a clamorous
herd of women and children, whose rags were fluttering in the
wind and rain outside his door, where they were gathered to
receive his charity. It lay through mist, and mud, and
rain, and vines trained low upon the ground, all that day and the
next; the first sleeping-place being Cremona, memorable for its
dark brick churches, and immensely high tower, the
Torrazzo—to say nothing of its violins, of which it
certainly produces none in these degenerate days; and the second,
Lodi. Then we went on, through more mud, mist, and rain,
and marshy ground: and through such a fog, as Englishmen, strong
in the faith of their own grievances, are apt to believe is
nowhere to be found but in their own country, until we entered
the paved streets of Milan.</p>
<p>The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far-famed
Cathedral might as well have been at Bombay, for anything that
could be seen of it at that time. But as we halted to
refresh, for a few days then, and returned to Milan again next
summer, I had ample opportunities of seeing the glorious
structure in all its majesty and beauty.</p>
<p>All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it!
There are many good and true saints in the calendar, but San
Carlo Borromeo has—if I may quote Mrs. Primrose on such a
subject—‘my warm heart.’ A charitable
doctor to the sick, a munificent friend to the poor, and this,
not in any spirit of blind bigotry, but as the bold opponent of
enormous abuses in the Romish church, I honour his memory.
I honour it none the less, because he was nearly slain by a
priest, suborned, by priests, to murder him at the altar: in
acknowledgment of his endeavours to reform a false and
hypocritical brotherhood of monks. Heaven shield all
imitators of San Carlo Borromeo as it shielded him! A
reforming Pope would need a little shielding, even now.</p>
<p>The subterranean chapel in which the body of San Carlo
Borromeo is preserved, presents as striking and as ghastly a
contrast, perhaps, as any place can show. The tapers which
are lighted down there, flash and gleam on alti-rilievi in gold
and silver, delicately wrought by skilful hands, and representing
the principal events in the life of the saint. Jewels, and
precious metals, shine and sparkle on every side. A
windlass slowly removes the front of the altar; and, within it,
in a gorgeous shrine of gold and silver, is seen, through
alabaster, the shrivelled mummy of a man: the pontifical robes
with which it is adorned, radiant with diamonds, emeralds,
rubies: every costly and magnificent gem. The shrunken heap
of poor earth in the midst of this great glitter, is more pitiful
than if it lay upon a dung-hill. There is not a ray of
imprisoned light in all the flash and fire of jewels, but seems
to mock the dusty holes where eyes were, once. Every thread
of silk in the rich vestments seems only a provision from the
worms that spin, for the behoof of worms that propagate in
sepulchres.</p>
<p>In the old refectory of the dilapidated Convent of Santa Maria
delle Grazie, is the work of art, perhaps, better known than any
other in the world: the Last Supper, by Leonardo da
Vinci—with a door cut through it by the intelligent
Dominican friars, to facilitate their operations at
dinner-time.</p>
<p>I am not mechanically acquainted with the art of painting, and
have no other means of judging of a picture than as I see it
resembling and refining upon nature, and presenting graceful
combinations of forms and colours. I am, therefore, no
authority whatever, in reference to the ‘touch’ of
this or that master; though I know very well (as anybody may, who
chooses to think about the matter) that few very great masters
can possibly have painted, in the compass of their lives,
one-half of the pictures that bear their names, and that are
recognised by many aspirants to a reputation for taste, as
undoubted originals. But this, by the way. Of the
Last Supper, I would simply observe, that in its beautiful
composition and arrangement, there it is, at Milan, a wonderful
picture; and that, in its original colouring, or in its original
expression of any single face or feature, there it is not.
Apart from the damage it has sustained from damp, decay, or
neglect, it has been (as Barry shows) so retouched upon, and
repainted, and that so clumsily, that many of the heads are, now,
positive deformities, with patches of paint and plaster sticking
upon them like wens, and utterly distorting the expression.
Where the original artist set that impress of his genius on a
face, which, almost in a line or touch, separated him from meaner
painters and made him what he was, succeeding bunglers, filling
up, or painting across seams and cracks, have been quite unable
to imitate his hand; and putting in some scowls, or frowns, or
wrinkles, of their own, have blotched and spoiled the work.
This is so well established as an historical fact, that I should
not repeat it, at the risk of being tedious, but for having
observed an English gentleman before the picture, who was at
great pains to fall into what I may describe as mild convulsions,
at certain minute details of expression which are not left in
it. Whereas, it would be comfortable and rational for
travellers and critics to arrive at a general understanding that
it cannot fail to have been a work of extraordinary merit, once:
when, with so few of its original beauties remaining, the
grandeur of the general design is yet sufficient to sustain it,
as a piece replete with interest and dignity.</p>
<p>We achieved the other sights of Milan, in due course, and a
fine city it is, though not so unmistakably Italian as to possess
the characteristic qualities of many towns far less important in
themselves. The Corso, where the Milanese gentry ride up
and down in carriages, and rather than not do which, they would
half starve themselves at home, is a most noble public promenade,
shaded by long avenues of trees. In the splendid theatre of
La Scala, there was a ballet of action performed after the opera,
under the title of Prometheus: in the beginning of which, some
hundred or two of men and women represented our mortal race
before the refinements of the arts and sciences, and loves and
graces, came on earth to soften them. I never saw anything
more effective. Generally speaking, the pantomimic action
of the Italians is more remarkable for its sudden and impetuous
character than for its delicate expression, but, in this case,
the drooping monotony: the weary, miserable, listless, moping
life: the sordid passions and desires of human creatures,
destitute of those elevating influences to which we owe so much,
and to whose promoters we render so little: were expressed in a
manner really powerful and affecting. I should have thought
it almost impossible to present such an idea so strongly on the
stage, without the aid of speech.</p>
<p>Milan soon lay behind us, at five o’clock in the
morning; and before the golden statue on the summit of the
cathedral spire was lost in the blue sky, the Alps, stupendously
confused in lofty peaks and ridges, clouds and snow, were
towering in our path.</p>
<p>Still, we continued to advance toward them until nightfall;
and, all day long, the mountain tops presented strangely shifting
shapes, as the road displayed them in different points of
view. The beautiful day was just declining, when we came
upon the Lago Maggiore, with its lovely islands. For
however fanciful and fantastic the Isola Bella may be, and is, it
still is beautiful. Anything springing out of that blue
water, with that scenery around it, must be.</p>
<p>It was ten o’clock at night when we got to Domo
d’Ossola, at the foot of the Pass of the Simplon. But
as the moon was shining brightly, and there was not a cloud in
the starlit sky, it was no time for going to bed, or going
anywhere but on. So, we got a little carriage, after some
delay, and began the ascent.</p>
<p>It was late in November; and the snow lying four or five feet
thick in the beaten road on the summit (in other parts the new
drift was already deep), the air was piercing cold. But,
the serenity of the night, and the grandeur of the road, with its
impenetrable shadows, and deep glooms, and its sudden turns into
the shining of the moon and its incessant roar of falling water,
rendered the journey more and more sublime at every step.</p>
<p>Soon leaving the calm Italian villages below us, sleeping in
the moonlight, the road began to wind among dark trees, and after
a time emerged upon a barer region, very steep and toilsome,
where the moon shone bright and high. By degrees, the roar
of water grew louder; and the stupendous track, after crossing
the torrent by a bridge, struck in between two massive
perpendicular walls of rock that quite shut out the moonlight,
and only left a few stars shining in the narrow strip of sky
above. Then, even this was lost, in the thick darkness of a
cavern in the rock, through which the way was pierced; the
terrible cataract thundering and roaring close below it, and its
foam and spray hanging, in a mist, about the entrance.
Emerging from this cave, and coming again into the moonlight, and
across a dizzy bridge, it crept and twisted upward, through the
Gorge of Gondo, savage and grand beyond description, <a
name="page294"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 294</span>with
smooth-fronted precipices, rising up on either hand, and almost
meeting overhead. Thus we went, climbing on our rugged way,
higher and higher all night, without a moment’s weariness:
lost in the contemplation of the black rocks, the tremendous
heights and depths, the fields of smooth snow lying, in the
clefts and hollows, and the fierce torrents thundering headlong
down the deep abyss.</p>
<p>Towards daybreak, we came among the snow, where a keen wind
was blowing fiercely. Having, with some trouble, awakened
the inmates of a wooden house in this solitude: round which the
wind was howling dismally, catching up the snow in wreaths and
hurling it away: we got some breakfast in a room built of rough
timbers, but well warmed by a stove, and well contrived (as it
had need to be) for keeping out the bitter storms. A sledge
being then made ready, and four horses harnessed to it, we went,
ploughing, through the snow. Still upward, but now in the
cold light of morning, and with the great white desert on which
we travelled, plain and clear.</p>
<p>We were well upon the summit of the mountain: and had before
us the rude cross of wood, denoting its greatest altitude above
the sea: when the light of the rising sun, struck, all at once,
upon the waste of snow, and turned it a deep red. The
lonely grandeur of the scene was then at its height.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/p294b.jpg">
<img alt=
"The Chiffonier"
title=
"The Chiffonier"
src="images/p294s.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p>As we went sledging on, there came out of the Hospice founded
by Napoleon, a group of Peasant travellers, with staves and
knapsacks, who had rested there last night: attended by a Monk or
two, their hospitable entertainers, trudging slowly forward with
them, for company’s sake. It was pleasant to give
them good morning, and pretty, looking back a long way after
them, to see them looking back at us, and hesitating presently,
when one of our horses stumbled and fell, whether or no they
should return and help us. But he was soon up again, with
the assistance of a rough waggoner whose team had stuck fast
there too; and when we had helped him out of his difficulty, in
return, we left him slowly ploughing towards them, and went
slowly and swiftly forward, on the brink of a steep precipice,
among the mountain pines.</p>
<p>Taking to our wheels again, soon afterwards, we began rapidly
to descend; passing under everlasting glaciers, by means of
arched galleries, hung with clusters of dripping icicles; under
and over foaming waterfalls; near places of refuge, and galleries
of shelter against sudden danger; through caverns over whose
arched roofs the avalanches slide, in spring, and bury themselves
in the unknown gulf beneath. Down, over lofty bridges, and
through horrible ravines: a little shifting speck in the vast
desolation of ice and snow, and monstrous granite rocks; down
through the deep Gorge of the Saltine, and deafened by the
torrent plunging madly down, among the riven blocks of rock, into
the level country, far below. Gradually down, by zig-zag
roads, lying between an upward and a downward precipice, into
warmer weather, calmer air, and softer scenery, until there lay
before us, glittering like gold or silver in the thaw and
sunshine, the metal-covered, red, green, yellow, domes and
church-spires of a Swiss town.</p>
<p>The business of these recollections being with Italy, and my
business, consequently, being to scamper back thither as fast as
possible, I will not recall (though I am sorely tempted) how the
Swiss villages, clustered at the feet of Giant mountains, looked
like playthings; or how confusedly the houses were heaped and
piled together; or how there were very narrow streets to shut the
howling winds out in the winter-time; and broken bridges, which
the impetuous torrents, suddenly released in spring, had swept
away. Or how there were peasant women here, with great
round fur caps: looking, when they peeped out of casements and
only their heads were seen, like a population of Sword-bearers to
the Lord Mayor of London; or how the town of Vevey, lying on the
smooth lake of Geneva, was beautiful to see; or how the statue of
Saint Peter in the street at Fribourg, grasps the largest key
that ever was beheld; or how Fribourg is illustrious for its two
suspension bridges, and its grand cathedral organ.</p>
<p>Or how, between that town and Bâle, the road meandered
among thriving villages of wooden cottages, with overhanging
thatched roofs, and low protruding windows, glazed with small
round panes of glass like crown-pieces; or how, in every little
Swiss homestead, with its cart or waggon carefully stowed away
beside the house, its little garden, stock of poultry, and groups
of red-cheeked children, there was an air of comfort, very new
and very pleasant after Italy; or how the dresses of the women
changed again, and there were no more sword-bearers to be seen;
and fair white stomachers, and great black, fan-shaped,
gauzy-looking caps, prevailed instead.</p>
<p>Or how the country by the Jura mountains, sprinkled with snow,
and lighted by the moon, and musical with falling water, was
delightful; or how, below the windows of the great hotel of the
Three Kings at Bâle, the swollen Rhine ran fast and green;
or how, at Strasbourg, it was quite as fast but not as green: and
was said to be foggy lower down: and, at that late time of the
year, was a far less certain means of progress, than the highway
road to Paris.</p>
<p>Or how Strasbourg itself, in its magnificent old Gothic
Cathedral, and its ancient houses with their peaked roofs and
gables, made a little gallery of quaint and interesting views; or
how a crowd was gathered inside the cathedral at noon, to see the
famous mechanical clock in motion, striking twelve. How,
when it struck twelve, a whole army of puppets went through many
ingenious evolutions; and, among them, a huge puppet-cock,
perched on the top, crowed twelve times, loud and clear. Or
how it was wonderful to see this cock at great pains to clap its
wings, and strain its throat; but obviously having no connection
whatever with its own voice; which was deep within the clock, a
long way down.</p>
<p>Or how the road to Paris, was one sea of mud, and thence to
the coast, a little better for a hard frost. Or how the
cliffs of Dover were a pleasant sight, and England was so
wonderfully neat—though dark, and lacking colour on a
winter’s day, it must be conceded.</p>
<p>Or how, a few days afterwards, it was cool, re-crossing the
channel, with ice upon the decks, and snow lying pretty deep in
France. Or how the Malle Poste scrambled through the snow,
headlong, drawn in the hilly parts by any number of stout horses
at a canter; or how there were, outside the Post-office Yard in
Paris, before daybreak, extraordinary adventurers in heaps of
rags, groping in the snowy streets with little rakes, in search
of odds and ends.</p>
<p>Or how, between Paris and Marseilles, the snow being then
exceeding deep, a thaw came on, and the mail waded rather than
rolled for the next three hundred miles or so; breaking springs
on Sunday nights, and putting out its two passengers to warm and
refresh themselves pending the repairs, in miserable
billiard-rooms, where hairy company, collected about stoves, were
playing cards; the cards being very like
themselves—extremely limp and dirty.</p>
<p>Or how there was detention at Marseilles from stress of
weather; and steamers were advertised to go, which did not go; or
how the good Steam-packet Charlemagne at length put out, and met
such weather that now she threatened to run into Toulon, and now
into Nice, but, the wind moderating, did neither, but ran on into
Genoa harbour instead, where the familiar Bells rang sweetly in
my ear. Or how there was a travelling party on board, of
whom one member was very ill in the cabin next to mine, and being
ill was cross, and therefore declined to give up the Dictionary,
which he kept under his pillow; thereby obliging his companions
to come down to him, constantly, to ask what was the Italian for
a lump of sugar—a glass of brandy and
water—what’s o’clock? and so forth: which he
always insisted on looking out, with his own sea-sick eyes,
declining to entrust the book to any man alive.</p>
<p>Like <span class="smcap">Grumio</span>, I might have told you,
in detail, all this and something more—but to as little
purpose—were I not deterred by the remembrance that my
business is with Italy. Therefore, like <span
class="smcap">Grumio’s</span> story, ‘it shall die in
oblivion.’</p>
<h2><a name="page297"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 297</span>TO
ROME BY PISA AND SIENA</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">There</span> is nothing in Italy, more
beautiful to me, than the coast-road between Genoa and
Spezzia. On one side: sometimes far below, sometimes nearly
on a level with the road, and often skirted by broken rocks of
many shapes: there is the free blue sea, with here and there a
picturesque felucca gliding slowly on; on the other side are
lofty hills, ravines besprinkled with white cottages, patches of
dark olive woods, country churches with their light open towers,
and country houses gaily painted. On every bank and knoll
by the wayside, the wild cactus and aloe flourish in exuberant
profusion; and the gardens of the bright villages along the road,
are seen, all blushing in the summer-time with clusters of the
Belladonna, and are fragrant in the autumn and winter with golden
oranges and lemons.</p>
<p>Some of the villages are inhabited, almost exclusively, by
fishermen; and it is pleasant to see their great boats hauled up
on the beach, making little patches of shade, where they lie
asleep, or where the women and children sit romping and looking
out to sea, while they mend their nets upon the shore.
There is one town, Camoglia, with its little harbour on the sea,
hundreds of feet below the road; where families of mariners live,
who, time out of mind, have owned coasting-vessels in that place,
and have traded to Spain and elsewhere. Seen from the road
above, it is like a tiny model on the margin of the dimpled
water, shining in the sun. Descended into, by the winding
mule-tracks, it is a perfect miniature of a primitive seafaring
town; the saltest, roughest, most piratical little place that
ever was seen. Great rusty iron rings and mooring-chains,
capstans, and fragments of old masts and spars, choke up the way;
hardy rough-weather boats, and seamen’s clothing, flutter
in the little harbour or are drawn out on the sunny stones to
dry; on the parapet of the rude pier, a few amphibious-looking
fellows lie asleep, with their legs dangling over the wall, as
though earth or water were all one to them, and if they slipped
in, they would float away, dozing comfortably among the fishes;
the church is bright with trophies of the sea, and votive
offerings, in commemoration of escape from storm and
shipwreck. The dwellings not immediately abutting on the
harbour are approached by blind low archways, and by crooked
steps, as if in darkness and in difficulty of access they should
be like holds of ships, or inconvenient cabins under water; and
everywhere, there is a smell of fish, and sea-weed, and old
rope.</p>
<p>The coast-road whence Camoglia is descried so far below, is
famous, in the warm season, especially in some parts near Genoa,
for fire-flies. Walking there on a dark night, I have seen
it made one sparkling firmament by these beautiful insects: so
that the distant stars were pale against the flash and glitter
that spangled every olive wood and hill-side, and pervaded the
whole air.</p>
<p>It was not in such a season, however, that we traversed this
road on our way to Rome. The middle of January was only
just past, and it was very gloomy and dark weather; very wet
besides. In crossing the fine pass of Bracco, we
encountered such a storm of mist and rain, that we travelled in a
cloud the whole way. There might have been no Mediterranean
in the world, for anything that we saw of it there, except when a
sudden gust of wind, clearing the mist before it, for a moment,
showed the agitated sea at a great depth below, lashing the
distant rocks, and spouting up its foam furiously. The rain
was incessant; every brook and torrent was greatly swollen; and
such a deafening leaping, and roaring, and thundering of water, I
never heard the like of in my life.</p>
<p>Hence, when we came to Spezzia, we found that the Magra, an
unbridged river on the high-road to Pisa, was too high to be
safely crossed in the Ferry Boat, and were fain to wait until the
afternoon of next day, when it had, in some degree,
subsided. Spezzia, however, is a good place to tarry at; by
reason, firstly, of its beautiful bay; secondly, of its ghostly
Inn; thirdly, of the head-dress of the women, who wear, on one
side of their head, a small doll’s straw hat, stuck on to
the hair; which is certainly the oddest and most roguish
head-gear that ever was invented.</p>
<p>The Magra safely crossed in the Ferry Boat—the passage
is not by any means agreeable, when the current is swollen and
strong—we arrived at Carrara, within a few hours. In
good time next morning, we got some ponies, and went out to see
the marble quarries.</p>
<p>They are four or five great glens, running up into a range of
lofty hills, until they can run no longer, and are stopped by
being abruptly strangled by Nature. The quarries, ‘or
caves,’ as they call them there, are so many openings, high
up in the hills, on either side of these passes, where they blast
and excavate for marble: which may turn out good or bad: may make
a man’s fortune very quickly, or ruin him by the great
expense of working what is worth nothing. Some of these
caves were opened by the ancient Romans, and remain as they left
them to this hour. Many others are being worked at this
moment; others are to be begun to-morrow, next week, next month;
others are unbought, unthought of; and marble enough for more
ages than have passed since the place was resorted to, lies
hidden everywhere: patiently awaiting its time of discovery.</p>
<p>As you toil and clamber up one of these steep gorges (having
left your pony soddening his girths in water, a mile or two lower
down) you hear, every now and then, echoing among the hills, in a
low tone, more silent than the previous silence, a melancholy
warning bugle,—a signal to the miners to withdraw.
Then, there is a thundering, and echoing from hill to hill, and
perhaps a splashing up of great fragments of rock into the air;
and on you toil again until some other bugle sounds, in a new
direction, and you stop directly, lest you should come within the
range of the new explosion.</p>
<p>There were numbers of men, working high up in these
hills—on the sides—clearing away, and sending down
the broken masses of stone and earth, to make way for the blocks
of marble that had been discovered. As these came rolling
down from unseen hands into the narrow valley, I could not help
thinking of the deep glen (just the same sort of glen) where the
Roc left Sindbad the Sailor; and where the merchants from the
heights above, flung down great pieces of meat for the diamonds
to stick to. There were no eagles here, to darken the sun
in their swoop, and pounce upon them; but it was as wild and
fierce as if there had been hundreds.</p>
<p>But the road, the road down which the marble comes, however
immense the blocks! The genius of the country, and the spirit of
its institutions, pave that road: repair it, watch it, keep it
going! Conceive a channel of water running over a rocky
bed, beset with great heaps of stone of all shapes and sizes,
winding down the middle of this valley; and <i>that</i> being the
road—because it was the road five hundred years ago!
Imagine the clumsy carts of five hundred years ago, being used to
this hour, and drawn, as they used to be, five hundred years ago,
by oxen, whose ancestors were worn to death five hundred years
ago, as their unhappy descendants are now, in twelve months, by
the suffering and agony of this cruel work! Two pair, four
pair, ten pair, twenty pair, to one block, according to its size;
down it must come, this way. In their struggling from stone
to stone, with their enormous loads behind them, they die
frequently upon the spot; and not they alone; for their
passionate drivers, sometimes tumbling down in their energy, are
crushed to death beneath the wheels. But it was good five
hundred years ago, and it must be good now: and a railroad down
one of these steeps (the easiest thing in the world) would be
flat blasphemy.</p>
<p>When we stood aside, to see one of these cars drawn by only a
pair of oxen (for it had but one small block of marble on it),
coming down, I hailed, in my heart, the man who sat upon the
heavy yoke, to keep it on the neck of the poor beasts—and
who faced backwards: not before him—as the very Devil of
true despotism. He had a great rod in his hand, with an
iron point; and when they could plough and force their way
through the loose bed of the torrent no longer, and came to a
stop, he poked it into their bodies, beat it on their heads,
screwed it round and round in their nostrils, got them on a yard
or two, in the madness of intense pain; repeated all these
persuasions, with increased intensity of purpose, when they
stopped again; got them on, once more; forced and goaded them to
an abrupter point of the descent; and when their writhing and
smarting, and the weight behind them, bore them plunging down the
precipice in a cloud of scattered water, whirled his rod above
his head, and gave a great whoop and hallo, as if he had achieved
something, and had no idea that they might shake him off, and
blindly mash his brains upon the road, in the noontide of his
triumph.</p>
<p>Standing in one of the many studii of Carrara, that
afternoon—for it is a great workshop, full of
beautifully-finished copies in marble, of almost every figure,
group, and bust, we know—it seemed, at first, so strange to
me that those exquisite shapes, replete with grace, and thought,
and delicate repose, should grow out of all this toil, and sweat,
and torture! But I soon found a parallel to it, and an
explanation of it, in every virtue that springs up in miserable
ground, and every good thing that has its birth in sorrow and
distress. And, looking out of the sculptor’s great
window, upon the marble mountains, all red and glowing in the
decline of day, but stern and solemn to the last, I thought, my
God! how many quarries of human hearts and souls, capable of far
more beautiful results, are left shut up and mouldering away:
while pleasure-travellers through life, avert their faces, as
they pass, and shudder at the gloom and ruggedness that conceal
them!</p>
<p>The then reigning Duke of Modena, to whom this territory in
part belonged, claimed the proud distinction of being the only
sovereign in Europe who had not recognised Louis-Philippe as King
of the French! He was not a wag, but quite in
earnest. He was also much opposed to railroads; and if
certain lines in contemplation by other potentates, on either
side of him, had been executed, would have probably enjoyed the
satisfaction of having an omnibus plying to and fro across his
not very vast dominions, to forward travellers from one terminus
to another.</p>
<p>Carrara, shut in by great hills, is very picturesque and
bold. Few tourists stay there; and the people are nearly
all connected, in one way or other, with the working of
marble. There are also villages among the caves, where the
workmen live. It contains a beautiful little Theatre, newly
built; and it is an interesting custom there, to form the chorus
of labourers in the marble quarries, who are self-taught and sing
by ear. I heard them in a comic opera, and in an act of
‘Norma;’ and they acquitted themselves very well;
unlike the common people of Italy generally, who (with some
exceptions among the Neapolitans) sing vilely out of tune, and
have very disagreeable singing voices.</p>
<p>From the summit of a lofty hill beyond Carrara, the first view
of the fertile plain in which the town of Pisa lies—with
Leghorn, a purple spot in the flat distance—is
enchanting. Nor is it only distance that lends enchantment
to the view; for the fruitful country, and rich woods of
olive-trees through which the road subsequently passes, render it
delightful.</p>
<p>The moon was shining when we approached Pisa, and for a long
time we could see, behind the wall, the leaning Tower, all awry
in the uncertain light; the shadowy original of the old pictures
in school-books, setting forth ‘The Wonders of the
World.’ Like most things connected in their first
associations with school-books and school-times, it was too
small. I felt it keenly. It was nothing like so high
above the wall as I had hoped. It was another of the many
deceptions practised by Mr. Harris, Bookseller, at the corner of
St. Paul’s Churchyard, London. <i>His</i> Tower was a
fiction, but this was a reality—and, by comparison, a short
reality. Still, it looked very well, and very strange, and
was quite as much out of the perpendicular as Harris had
represented it to be. The quiet air of Pisa too; the big
guard-house at the gate, with only two little soldiers in it; the
streets with scarcely any show of people in them; and the Arno,
flowing quaintly through the centre of the town; were
excellent. So, I bore no malice in my heart against Mr.
Harris (remembering his good intentions), but forgave him before
dinner, and went out, full of confidence, to see the Tower next
morning.</p>
<p>I might have known better; but, somehow, I had expected to see
it, casting its long shadow on a public street where people came
and went all day. It was a surprise to me to find it in a
grave retired place, apart from the general resort, and carpeted
with smooth green turf. But, the group of buildings,
clustered on and about this verdant carpet: comprising the Tower,
the Baptistery, the Cathedral, and the Church of the Campo Santo:
is perhaps the most remarkable and beautiful in the whole world;
and from being clustered there, together, away from the ordinary
transactions and details of the town, they have a singularly
venerable and impressive character. It is the architectural
essence of a rich old city, with all its common life and common
habitations pressed out, and filtered away.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">Simond</span> compares the Tower to the
usual pictorial representations in children’s books of the
Tower of Babel. It is a happy simile, and conveys a better
idea of the building than chapters of laboured description.
Nothing can exceed the grace and lightness of the structure;
nothing can be more remarkable than its general appearance.
In the course of the ascent to the top (which is by an easy
staircase), the inclination is not very apparent; but, at the
summit, it becomes so, and gives one the sensation of being in a
ship that has heeled over, through the action of an
ebb-tide. The effect <i>upon the low side</i>, so to
speak—looking over from the gallery, and seeing the shaft
recede to its base—is very startling; and I saw a nervous
traveller hold on to the Tower involuntarily, after glancing
down, as if he had some idea of propping it up. The view
within, from the ground—looking up, as through a slanted
tube—is also very curious. It certainly inclines as
much as the most sanguine tourist could desire. The natural
impulse of ninety-nine people out of a hundred, who were about to
recline upon the grass below it, to rest, and contemplate the
adjacent buildings, would probably be, not to take up their
position under the leaning side; it is so very much aslant.</p>
<p>The manifold beauties of the Cathedral and Baptistery need no
recapitulation from me; though in this case, as in a hundred
others, I find it difficult to separate my own delight in
recalling them, from your weariness in having them
recalled. There is a picture of St. Agnes, by Andrea del
Sarto, in the former, and there are a variety of rich columns in
the latter, that tempt me strongly.</p>
<p>It is, I hope, no breach of my resolution not to be tempted
into elaborate descriptions, to remember the Campo Santo; where
grass-grown graves are dug in earth brought more than six hundred
years ago, from the Holy Land; and where there are, surrounding
them, such cloisters, with such playing lights and shadows
falling through their delicate tracery on the stone pavement, as
surely the dullest memory could never forget. On the walls
of this solemn and lovely place, are ancient frescoes, very much
obliterated and decayed, but very curious. As usually
happens in almost any collection of paintings, of any sort, in
Italy, where there are many heads, there is, in one of them, a
striking accidental likeness of Napoleon. At one time, I
used to please my fancy with the speculation whether these old
painters, at their work, had a foreboding knowledge of the man
who would one day arise to wreak such destruction upon art: whose
soldiers would make targets of great pictures, and stable their
horses among triumphs of architecture. But the same
Corsican face is so plentiful in some parts of Italy at this day,
that a more commonplace solution of the coincidence is
unavoidable.</p>
<p>If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the world in right of its
Tower, it may claim to be, at least, the second or third in right
of its beggars. They waylay the unhappy visitor at every
turn, escort him to every door he enters at, and lie in wait for
him, with strong reinforcements, at every door by which they know
he must come out. The grating of the portal on its hinges
is the signal for a general shout, and the moment he appears, he
is hemmed in, and fallen on, by heaps of rags and personal
distortions. The beggars seem to embody all the trade and
enterprise of Pisa. Nothing else is stirring, but warm
air. Going through the streets, the fronts of the sleepy
houses look like backs. They are all so still and quiet,
and unlike houses with people in them, that the greater part of
the city has the appearance of a city at daybreak, or during a
general siesta of the population. Or it is yet more like
those backgrounds of houses in common prints, or old engravings,
where windows and doors are squarely indicated, and one figure (a
beggar of course) is seen walking off by itself into illimitable
perspective.</p>
<p>Not so Leghorn (made illustrious by <span
class="smcap">Smollett’s</span> grave), which is a
thriving, business-like, matter-of-fact place, where idleness is
shouldered out of the way by commerce. The regulations
observed there, in reference to trade and merchants, are very
liberal and free; and the town, of course, benefits by
them. Leghorn had a bad name in connection with stabbers,
and with some justice it must be allowed; for, not many years
ago, there was an assassination club there, the members of which
bore no ill-will to anybody in particular, but stabbed people
(quite strangers to them) in the streets at night, for the
pleasure and excitement of the recreation. I think the
president of this amiable society was a shoemaker. He was
taken, however, and the club was broken up. It would,
probably, have disappeared in the natural course of events,
before the railroad between Leghorn and Pisa, which is a good
one, and has already begun to astonish Italy with a precedent of
punctuality, order, plain dealing, and improvement—the most
dangerous and heretical astonisher of all. There must have
been a slight sensation, as of earthquake, surely, in the
Vatican, when the first Italian railroad was thrown open.</p>
<p>Returning to Pisa, and hiring a good-tempered
Vetturíno, and his four horses, to take us on to Rome, we
travelled through pleasant Tuscan villages and cheerful scenery
all day. The roadside crosses in this part of Italy are
numerous and curious. There is seldom a figure on the
cross, though there is sometimes a face, but they are remarkable
for being garnished with little models in wood, of every possible
object that can be connected with the Saviour’s
death. The cock that crowed when Peter had denied his
Master thrice, is usually perched on the tip-top; and an
ornithological phenomenon he generally is. Under him, is
the inscription. Then, hung on to the cross-beam, are the
spear, the reed with the sponge of vinegar and water at the end,
the coat without seam for which the soldiers cast lots, the
dice-box with which they threw for it, the hammer that drove in
the nails, the pincers that pulled them out, the ladder which was
set against the cross, the crown of thorns, the instrument of
flagellation, the lanthorn with which Mary went to the tomb (I
suppose), and the sword with which Peter smote the servant of the
high priest,—a perfect toy-shop of little objects, repeated
at every four or five miles, all along the highway.</p>
<p>On the evening of the second day from Pisa, we reached the
beautiful old city of Siena. There was what they called a
Carnival, in progress; but, as its secret lay in a score or two
of melancholy people walking up and down the principal street in
common toy-shop masks, and being more melancholy, if possible,
than the same sort of people in England, I say no more of
it. We went off, betimes next morning, to see the
Cathedral, which is wonderfully picturesque inside and out,
especially the latter—also the market-place, or great
Piazza, which is a large square, with a great broken-nosed
fountain in it: some quaint Gothic houses: and a high square
brick tower; <i>outside</i> the top of which—a curious
feature in such views in Italy—hangs an enormous
bell. It is like a bit of Venice, without the water.
There are some curious old Palazzi in the town, which is very
ancient; and without having (for me) the interest of Verona, or
Genoa, it is very dreamy and fantastic, and most interesting.</p>
<p>We went on again, as soon as we had seen these things, and
going over a rather bleak country (there had been nothing but
vines until now: mere walking-sticks at that season of the year),
stopped, as usual, between one and two hours in the middle of the
day, to rest the horses; that being a part of every
Vetturíno contract. We then went on again, through a
region gradually becoming bleaker and wilder, until it became as
bare and desolate as any Scottish moors. Soon after dark,
we halted for the night, at the osteria of La Scala: a perfectly
lone house, where the family were sitting round a great fire in
the kitchen, raised on a stone platform three or four feet high,
and big enough for the roasting of an ox. On the upper, and
only other floor of this hotel, there was a great, wild, rambling
sála, with one very little window in a by-corner, and four
black doors opening into four black bedrooms in various
directions. To say nothing of another large black door,
opening into another large black sála, with the staircase
coming abruptly through a kind of trap-door in the floor, and the
rafters of the roof looming above: a suspicious little press
skulking in one obscure corner: and all the knives in the house
lying about in various directions. The fireplace was of the
purest Italian architecture, so that it was perfectly impossible
to see it for the smoke. The waitress was like a dramatic
brigand’s wife, and wore the same style of dress upon her
head. The dogs barked like mad; the echoes returned the
compliments bestowed upon them; there was not another house
within twelve miles; and things had a dreary, and rather a
cut-throat, appearance.</p>
<p>They were not improved by rumours of robbers having come out,
strong and boldly, within a few nights; and of their having
stopped the mail very near that place. They were known to
have waylaid some travellers not long before, on Mount Vesuvius
itself, and were the talk at all the roadside inns. As they
were no business of ours, however (for we had very little with us
to lose), we made ourselves merry on the subject, and were very
soon as comfortable as need be. We had the usual dinner in
this solitary house; and a very good dinner it is, when you are
used to it. There is something with a vegetable or some
rice in it which is a sort of shorthand or arbitrary character
for soup, and which tastes very well, when you have flavoured it
with plenty of grated cheese, lots of salt, and abundance of
pepper. There is the half fowl of which this soup has been
made. There is a stewed pigeon, with the gizzards and
livers of himself and other birds stuck all round him.
There is a bit of roast beef, the size of a small French
roll. There are a scrap of Parmesan cheese, and five little
withered apples, all huddled together on a small plate, and
crowding one upon the other, as if each were trying to save
itself from the chance of being eaten. Then there is
coffee; and then there is bed. You don’t mind brick
floors; you don’t mind yawning doors, nor banging windows;
you don’t mind your own horses being stabled under the bed:
and so close, that every time a horse coughs or sneezes, he wakes
you. If you are good-humoured to the people about you, and
speak pleasantly, and look cheerful, take my word for it you may
be well entertained in the very worst Italian Inn, and always in
the most obliging manner, and may go from one end of the country
to the other (despite all stories to the contrary) without any
great trial of your patience anywhere. Especially, when you
get such wine in flasks, as the Orvieto, and the Monte
Pulciano.</p>
<p>It was a bad morning when we left this place; and we went, for
twelve miles, over a country as barren, as stony, and as wild, as
Cornwall in England, until we came to Radicofani, where there is
a ghostly, goblin inn: once a hunting-seat, belonging to the
Dukes of Tuscany. It is full of such rambling corridors,
and gaunt rooms, that all the murdering and phantom tales that
ever were written might have originated in that one house.
There are some horrible old Palazzi in Genoa: one in particular,
not unlike it, outside: but there is a winding, creaking, wormy,
rustling, door-opening, foot-on-staircase-falling character about
this Radicofani Hotel, such as I never saw, anywhere else.
The town, such as it is, hangs on a hill-side above the house,
and in front of it. The inhabitants are all beggars; and as
soon as they see a carriage coming, they swoop down upon it, like
so many birds of prey.</p>
<p>When we got on the mountain pass, which lies beyond this
place, the wind (as they had forewarned us at the inn) was so
terrific, that we were obliged to take my other half out of the
carriage, lest she should be blown over, carriage and all, and to
hang to it, on the windy side (as well as we could for laughing),
to prevent its going, Heaven knows where. For mere force of
wind, this land-storm might have competed with an Atlantic gale,
and had a reasonable chance of coming off victorious. The
blast came sweeping down great gullies in a range of mountains on
the right: so that we looked with positive awe at a great morass
on the left, and saw that there was not a bush or twig to hold
by. It seemed as if, once blown from our feet, we must be
swept out to sea, or away into space. There was snow, and
hail, and rain, and lightning, and thunder; and there were
rolling mists, travelling with incredible velocity. It was
dark, awful, and solitary to the last degree; there were
mountains above mountains, veiled in angry clouds; and there was
such a wrathful, rapid, violent, tumultuous hurry, everywhere, as
rendered the scene unspeakably exciting and grand.</p>
<p>It was a relief to get out of it, notwithstanding; and to
cross even the dismal, dirty Papal Frontier. After passing
through two little towns; in one of which, Acquapendente, there
was also a ‘Carnival’ in progress: consisting of one
man dressed and masked as a woman, and one woman dressed and
masked as a man, walking ankle-deep, through the muddy streets,
in a very melancholy manner: we came, at dusk, within sight of
the Lake of Bolsena, on whose bank there is a little town of the
same name, much celebrated for malaria. With the exception
of this poor place, there is not a cottage on the banks of the
lake, or near it (for nobody dare sleep there); not a boat upon
its waters; not a stick or stake to break the dismal monotony of
seven-and-twenty watery miles. We were late in getting in,
the roads being very bad from heavy rains; and, after dark, the
dulness of the scene was quite intolerable.</p>
<p>We entered on a very different, and a finer scene of
desolation, next night, at sunset. We had passed through
Montefiaschone (famous for its wine) and Viterbo (for its
fountains): and after climbing up a long hill of eight or ten
miles’ extent, came suddenly upon the margin of a solitary
lake: in one part very beautiful, with a luxuriant wood; in
another, very barren, and shut in by bleak volcanic hills.
Where this lake flows, there stood, of old, a city. It was
swallowed up one day; and in its stead, this water rose.
There are ancient traditions (common to many parts of the world)
of the ruined city having been seen below, when the water was
clear; but however that may be, from this spot of earth it
vanished. The ground came bubbling up above it; and the
water too; and here they stand, like ghosts on whom the other
world closed suddenly, and who have no means of getting back
again. They seem to be waiting the course of ages, for the
next earthquake in that place; when they will plunge below the
ground, at its first yawning, and be seen no more. The
unhappy city below, is not more lost and dreary, than these
fire-charred hills and the stagnant water, above. The red
sun looked strangely on them, as with the knowledge that they
were made for caverns and darkness; and the melancholy water
oozed and sucked the mud, and crept quietly among the marshy
grass and reeds, as if the overthrow of all the ancient towers
and housetops, and the death of all the ancient people born and
bred there, were yet heavy on its conscience.</p>
<p>A short ride from this lake, brought us to Ronciglione; a
little town like a large pig-sty, where we passed the
night. Next morning at seven o’clock, we started for
Rome.</p>
<p>As soon as we were out of the pig-sty, we entered on the
Campagna Romana; an undulating flat (as you know), where few
people can live; and where, for miles and miles, there is nothing
to relieve the terrible monotony and gloom. Of all kinds of
country that could, by possibility, lie outside the gates of
Rome, this is the aptest and fittest burial-ground for the Dead
City. So sad, so quiet, so sullen; so secret in its
covering up of great masses of ruin, and hiding them; so like the
waste places into which the men possessed with devils used to go
and howl, and rend themselves, in the old days of
Jerusalem. We had to traverse thirty miles of this
Campagna; and for two-and-twenty we went on and on, seeing
nothing but now and then a lonely house, or a villainous-looking
shepherd: with matted hair all over his face, and himself wrapped
to the chin in a frowsy brown mantle, tending his sheep. At
the end of that distance, we stopped to refresh the horses, and
to get some lunch, in a common malaria-shaken, despondent little
public-house, whose every inch of wall and beam, inside, was
(according to custom) painted and decorated in a way so miserable
that every room looked like the wrong side of another room, and,
with its wretched imitation of drapery, and lop-sided little
daubs of lyres, seemed to have been plundered from behind the
scenes of some travelling circus.</p>
<p>When we were fairly going off again, we began, in a perfect
fever, to strain our eyes for Rome; and when, after another mile
or two, the Eternal City appeared, at length, in the distance; it
looked like—I am half afraid to write the word—like
LONDON!!! There it lay, under a thick cloud, with
innumerable towers, and steeples, and roofs of houses, rising up
into the sky, and high above them all, one Dome. I swear,
that keenly as I felt the seeming absurdity of the comparison, it
was so like London, at that distance, that if you could have
shown it me, in a glass, I should have taken it for nothing
else.</p>
<h2><a name="page308"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
308</span>ROME</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">We</span> entered the Eternal City, at
about four o’clock in the afternoon, on the thirtieth of
January, by the Porta del Popolo, and came immediately—it
was a dark, muddy day, and there had been heavy rain—on the
skirts of the Carnival. We did not, then, know that we were
only looking at the fag end of the masks, who were driving slowly
round and round the Piazza until they could find a promising
opportunity for falling into the stream of carriages, and
getting, in good time, into the thick of the festivity; and
coming among them so abruptly, all travel-stained and weary, was
not coming very well prepared to enjoy the scene.</p>
<p>We had crossed the Tiber by the Ponte Molle two or three miles
before. It had looked as yellow as it ought to look, and
hurrying on between its worn-away and miry banks, had a promising
aspect of desolation and ruin. The masquerade dresses on
the fringe of the Carnival, did great violence to this
promise. There were no great ruins, no solemn tokens of
antiquity, to be seen;—they all lie on the other side of
the city. There seemed to be long streets of commonplace
shops and houses, such as are to be found in any European town;
there were busy people, equipages, ordinary walkers to and fro; a
multitude of chattering strangers. It was no more <i>my</i>
Rome: the Rome of anybody’s fancy, man or boy; degraded and
fallen and lying asleep in the sun among a heap of ruins: than
the Place de la Concorde in Paris is. A cloudy sky, a dull
cold rain, and muddy streets, I was prepared for, but not for
this: and I confess to having gone to bed, that night, in a very
indifferent humour, and with a very considerably quenched
enthusiasm.</p>
<p>Immediately on going out next day, we hurried off to St.
Peter’s. It looked immense in the distance, but
distinctly and decidedly small, by comparison, on a near
approach. The beauty of the Piazza, on which it stands,
with its clusters of exquisite columns, and its gushing
fountains—so fresh, so broad, and free, and
beautiful—nothing can exaggerate. The first burst of
the interior, in all its expansive majesty and glory: and, most
of all, the looking up into the Dome: is a sensation never to be
forgotten. But, there were preparations for a Festa; the
pillars of stately marble were swathed in some impertinent
frippery of red and yellow; the altar, and entrance to the
subterranean chapel: which is before it: in the centre of the
church: were like a goldsmith’s shop, or one of the opening
scenes in a very lavish pantomime. And though I had as high
a sense of the beauty of the building (I hope) as it is possible
to entertain, I felt no very strong emotion. I have been
infinitely more affected in many English cathedrals when the
organ has been playing, and in many English country churches when
the congregation have been singing. I had a much greater
sense of mystery and wonder, in the Cathedral of San Mark at
Venice.</p>
<p>When we came out of the church again (we stood nearly an hour
staring up into the dome: and would not have ‘gone
over’ the Cathedral then, for any money), we said to the
coachman, ‘Go to the Coliseum.’ In a quarter of
an hour or so, he stopped at the gate, and we went in.</p>
<p>It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say: so
suggestive and distinct is it at this hour: that, for a
moment—actually in passing in—they who will, may have
the whole great pile before them, as it used to be, with
thousands of eager faces staring down into the arena, and such a
whirl of strife, and blood, and dust going on there, as no
language can describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, and
its utter desolation, strike upon the stranger the next moment,
like a softened sorrow; and never in his life, perhaps, will he
be so moved and overcome by any sight, not immediately connected
with his own affections and afflictions.</p>
<p>To see it crumbling there, an inch a year; its walls and
arches overgrown with green; its corridors open to the day; the
long grass growing in its porches; young trees of yesterday,
springing up on its ragged parapets, and bearing fruit: chance
produce of the seeds dropped there by the birds who build their
nests within its chinks and crannies; to see its Pit of Fight
filled up with earth, and the peaceful Cross planted in the
centre; to climb into its upper halls, and look down on ruin,
ruin, ruin, all about it; the triumphal arches of Constantine,
Septimus Severus, and Titus; the Roman Forum; the Palace of the
Cæsars; the temples of the old religion, fallen down and
gone; is to see the ghost of old Rome, wicked, wonderful old
city, haunting the very ground on which its people trod. It
is the most impressive, the most stately, the most solemn, grand,
majestic, mournful sight, conceivable. Never, in its
bloodiest prime, can the sight of the gigantic Coliseum, full and
running over with the lustiest life, have moved one’s
heart, as it must move all who look upon it now, a ruin.
<span class="smcap">God</span> be thanked: a ruin!</p>
<p>As it tops the other ruins: standing there, a mountain among
graves: so do its ancient influences outlive all other remnants
of the old mythology and old butchery of Rome, in the nature of
the fierce and cruel Roman people. The Italian face changes
as the visitor approaches the city; its beauty becomes devilish;
and there is scarcely one countenance in a hundred, among the
common people in the streets, that would not be at home and happy
in a renovated Coliseum to-morrow.</p>
<p>Here was Rome indeed at last; and such a Rome as no one can
imagine in its full and awful grandeur! We wandered out
upon the Appian Way, and then went on, through miles of ruined
tombs and broken walls, with here and there a desolate and
uninhabited house: past the Circus of Romulus, where the course
of the chariots, the stations of the judges, competitors, and
spectators, are yet as plainly to be seen as in old time: past
the tomb of Cecilia Metella: past all inclosure, hedge, or stake,
wall or fence: away upon the open Campagna, where on that side of
Rome, nothing is to be beheld but Ruin. Except where the
distant Apennines bound the view upon the left, the whole wide
prospect is one field of ruin. Broken aqueducts, left in
the most picturesque and beautiful clusters of arches; broken
temples; broken tombs. A desert of decay, sombre and
desolate beyond all expression; and with a history in every stone
that strews the ground.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>On Sunday, the Pope assisted in the performance of High Mass
at St. Peter’s. The effect of the Cathedral on my
mind, on that second visit, was exactly what it was at first, and
what it remains after many visits. It is not religiously
impressive or affecting. It is an immense edifice, with no
one point for the mind to rest upon; and it tires itself with
wandering round and round. The very purpose of the place,
is not expressed in anything you see there, unless you examine
its details—and all examination of details is incompatible
with the place itself. It might be a Pantheon, or a Senate
House, or a great architectural trophy, having no other object
than an architectural triumph. There is a black statue of
St. Peter, to be sure, under a red canopy; which is larger than
life and which is constantly having its great toe kissed by good
Catholics. You cannot help seeing that: it is so very
prominent and popular. But it does not heighten the effect
of the temple, as a work of art; and it is not
expressive—to me at least—of its high purpose.</p>
<p>A large space behind the altar, was fitted up with boxes,
shaped like those at the Italian Opera in England, but in their
decoration much more gaudy. In the centre of the kind of
theatre thus railed off, was a canopied dais with the
Pope’s chair upon it. The pavement was covered with a
carpet of the brightest green; and what with this green, and the
intolerable reds and crimsons, and gold borders of the hangings,
the whole concern looked like a stupendous Bonbon. On
either side of the altar, was a large box for lady
strangers. These were filled with ladies in black dresses
and black veils. The gentlemen of the Pope’s guard,
in red coats, leather breeches, and jack-boots, guarded all this
reserved space, with drawn swords that were very flashy in every
sense; and from the altar all down the nave, a broad lane was
kept clear by the Pope’s Swiss guard, who wear a quaint
striped surcoat, and striped tight legs, and carry halberds like
those which are usually shouldered by those theatrical
supernumeraries, who never <i>can</i> get off the stage fast
enough, and who may be generally observed to linger in the
enemy’s camp after the open country, held by the opposite
forces, has been split up the middle by a convulsion of
Nature.</p>
<p>I got upon the border of the green carpet, in company with a
great many other gentlemen, attired in black (no other passport
is necessary), and stood there at my ease, during the performance
of Mass. The singers were in a crib of wirework (like a
large meat-safe or bird-cage) in one corner; and sang most
atrociously. All about the green carpet, there was a slowly
moving crowd of people: talking to each other: staring at the
Pope through eye-glasses; defrauding one another, in moments of
partial curiosity, out of precarious seats on the bases of
pillars: and grinning hideously at the ladies. Dotted here
and there, were little knots of friars (Frances-cáni, or
Cappuccíni, in their coarse brown dresses and peaked
hoods) making a strange contrast to the gaudy ecclesiastics of
higher degree, and having their humility gratified to the utmost,
by being shouldered about, and elbowed right and left, on all
sides. Some of these had muddy sandals and umbrellas, and
stained garments: having trudged in from the country. The
faces of the greater part were as coarse and heavy as their
dress; their dogged, stupid, monotonous stare at all the glory
and splendour, having something in it, half miserable, and half
ridiculous.</p>
<p>Upon the green carpet itself, and gathered round the altar,
was a perfect army of cardinals and priests, in red, gold,
purple, violet, white, and fine linen. Stragglers from
these, went to and fro among the crowd, conversing two and two,
or giving and receiving introductions, and exchanging
salutations; other functionaries in black gowns, and other
functionaries in court-dresses, were similarly engaged. In
the midst of all these, and stealthy Jesuits creeping in and out,
and the extreme restlessness of the Youth of England, who were
perpetually wandering about, some few steady persons in black
cassocks, who had knelt down with their faces to the wall, and
were poring over their missals, became, unintentionally, a sort
of humane man-traps, and with their own devout legs, tripped up
other people’s by the dozen.</p>
<p>There was a great pile of candles lying down on the floor near
me, which a very old man in a rusty black gown with an open-work
tippet, like a summer ornament for a fireplace in tissue-paper,
made himself very busy in dispensing to all the ecclesiastics:
one a-piece. They loitered about with these for some time,
under their arms like walking-sticks, or in their hands like
truncheons. At a certain period of the ceremony, however,
each carried his candle up to the Pope, laid it across his two
knees to be blessed, took it back again, and filed off.
This was done in a very attenuated procession, as you may
suppose, and occupied a long time. Not because it takes
long to bless a candle through and through, but because there
were so many candles to be blessed. At last they were all
blessed: and then they were all lighted; and then the Pope was
taken up, chair and all, and carried round the church.</p>
<p>I must say, that I never saw anything, out of November, so
like the popular English commemoration of the fifth of that
month. A bundle of matches and a lantern, would have made
it perfect. Nor did the Pope, himself, at all mar the
resemblance, though he has a pleasant and venerable face; for, as
this part of the ceremony makes him giddy and sick, he shuts his
eyes when it is performed: and having his eyes shut and a great
mitre on his head, and his head itself wagging to and fro as they
shook him in carrying, he looked as if his mask were going to
tumble off. The two immense fans which are always borne,
one on either side of him, accompanied him, of course, on this
occasion. As they carried him along, he blessed the people
with the mystic sign; and as he passed them, they kneeled
down. When he had made the round of the church, he was
brought back again, and if I am not mistaken, this performance
was repeated, in the whole, three times. There was,
certainly nothing solemn or effective in it; and certainly very
much that was droll and tawdry. But this remark applies to
the whole ceremony, except the raising of the Host, when every
man in the guard dropped on one knee instantly, and dashed his
naked sword on the ground; which had a fine effect.</p>
<p>The next time I saw the cathedral, was some two or three weeks
afterwards, when I climbed up into the ball; and then, the
hangings being taken down, and the carpet taken up, but all the
framework left, the remnants of these decorations looked like an
exploded cracker.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>The Friday and Saturday having been solemn Festa days, and
Sunday being always a <i>dies non</i> in carnival proceedings, we
had looked forward, with some impatience and curiosity, to the
beginning of the new week: Monday and Tuesday being the two last
and best days of the Carnival.</p>
<p>On the Monday afternoon at one or two o’clock, there
began to be a great rattling of carriages into the court-yard of
the hotel; a hurrying to and fro of all the servants in it; and,
now and then, a swift shooting across some doorway or balcony, of
a straggling stranger in a fancy dress: not yet sufficiently well
used to the same, to wear it with confidence, and defy public
opinion. All the carriages were open, and had the linings
carefully covered with white cotton or calico, to prevent their
proper decorations from being spoiled by the incessant pelting of
sugar-plums; and people were packing and cramming into every
vehicle as it waited for its occupants, enormous sacks and
baskets full of these confétti, together with such heaps
of flowers, tied up in little nosegays, that some carriages were
not only brimful of flowers, but literally running over:
scattering, at every shake and jerk of the springs, some of their
abundance on the ground. Not to be behindhand in these
essential particulars, we caused two very respectable sacks of
sugar-plums (each about three feet high) and a large
clothes-basket full of flowers to be conveyed into our hired
barouche, with all speed. And from our place of
observation, in one of the upper balconies of the hotel, we
contemplated these arrangements with the liveliest
satisfaction. The carriages now beginning to take up their
company, and move away, we got into ours, and drove off too,
armed with little wire masks for our faces; the sugar-plums, like
Falstaff’s adulterated sack, having lime in their
composition.</p>
<p>The Corso is a street a mile long; a street of shops, and
palaces, and private houses, sometimes opening into a broad
piazza. There are verandahs and balconies, of all shapes
and sizes, to almost every house—not on one story alone,
but often to one room or another on every story—put there
in general with so little order or regularity, that if, year
after year, and season after season, it had rained balconies,
hailed balconies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they could
scarcely have come into existence in a more disorderly
manner.</p>
<p>This is the great fountain-head and focus of the
Carnival. But all the streets in which the Carnival is
held, being vigilantly kept by dragoons, it is necessary for
carriages, in the first instance, to pass, in line, down another
thoroughfare, and so come into the Corso at the end remote from
the Piázza del Popolo; which is one of its
terminations. Accordingly, we fell into the string of
coaches, and, for some time, jogged on quietly enough; now
crawling on at a very slow walk; now trotting half-a-dozen yards;
now backing fifty; and now stopping altogether: as the pressure
in front obliged us. If any impetuous carriage dashed out
of the rank and clattered forward, with the wild idea of getting
on faster, it was suddenly met, or overtaken, by a trooper on
horseback, who, deaf as his own drawn sword to all remonstrances,
immediately escorted it back to the very end of the row, and made
it a dim speck in the remotest perspective. Occasionally,
we interchanged a volley of confétti with the carriage
next in front, or the carriage next behind; but as yet, this
capturing of stray and errant coaches by the military, was the
chief amusement.</p>
<p>Presently, we came into a narrow street, where, besides one
line of carriages going, there was another line of carriages
returning. Here the sugar-plums and the nosegays began to
fly about, pretty smartly; and I was fortunate enough to observe
one gentleman attired as a Greek warrior, catch a light-whiskered
brigand on the nose (he was in the very act of tossing up a
bouquet to a young lady in a first-floor window) with a precision
that was much applauded by the bystanders. As this
victorious Greek was exchanging a facetious remark with a stout
gentleman in a doorway—one-half black and one-half white,
as if he had been peeled up the middle—who had offered him
his congratulations on this achievement, he received an orange
from a housetop, full on his left ear, and was much surprised,
not to say discomfited. Especially, as he was standing up
at the time; and in consequence of the carriage moving on
suddenly, at the same moment, staggered ignominiously, and buried
himself among his flowers.</p>
<p>Some quarter of an hour of this sort of progress, brought us
to the Corso; and anything so gay, so bright, and lively as the
whole scene there, it would be difficult to imagine. From
all the innumerable balconies: from the remotest and highest, no
less than from the lowest and nearest: hangings of bright red,
bright green, bright blue, white and gold, were fluttering in the
brilliant sunlight. From windows, and from parapets, and
tops of houses, streamers of the richest colours, and draperies
of the gaudiest and most sparkling hues, were floating out upon
the street. The buildings seemed to have been literally
turned inside out, and to have all their gaiety towards the
highway. Shop-fronts were taken down, and the windows
filled with company, like boxes at a shining theatre; doors were
carried off their hinges, and long tapestried groves, hung with
garlands of flowers and evergreens, displayed within;
builders’ scaffoldings were gorgeous temples, radiant in
silver, gold, and crimson; and in every nook and corner, from the
pavement to the chimney-tops, where women’s eyes could
glisten, there they danced, and laughed, and sparkled, like the
light in water. Every sort of bewitching madness of dress
was there. Little preposterous scarlet jackets; quaint old
stomachers, more wicked than the smartest bodices; Polish
pelisses, strained and tight as ripe gooseberries; tiny Greek
caps, all awry, and clinging to the dark hair, Heaven knows how;
every wild, quaint, bold, shy, pettish, madcap fancy had its
illustration in a dress; and every fancy was as dead forgotten by
its owner, in the tumult of merriment, as if the three old
aqueducts that still remain entire had brought Lethe into Rome,
upon their sturdy arches, that morning.</p>
<p>The carriages were now three abreast; in broader places four;
often stationary for a long time together, always one close mass
of variegated brightness; showing, the whole street-full, through
the storm of flowers, like flowers of a larger growth
themselves. In some, the horses were richly caparisoned in
magnificent trappings; in others they were decked from head to
tail, with flowing ribbons. Some were driven by coachmen
with enormous double faces: one face leering at the horses: the
other cocking its extraordinary eyes into the carriage: and both
rattling again, under the hail of sugar-plums. Other
drivers were attired as women, wearing long ringlets and no
bonnets, and looking more ridiculous in any real difficulty with
the horses (of which, in such a concourse, there were a great
many) than tongue can tell, or pen describe. Instead of
sitting <i>in</i> the carriages, upon the seats, the handsome
Roman women, to see and to be seen the better, sit in the heads
of the barouches, at this time of general licence, with their
feet upon the cushions—and oh, the flowing skirts and
dainty waists, the blessed shapes and laughing faces, the free,
good-humoured, gallant figures that they make! There were great
vans, too, full of handsome girls—thirty, or more together,
perhaps—and the broadsides that were poured into, and
poured out of, these fairy fire-shops, splashed the air with
flowers and bon-bons for ten minutes at a time. Carriages,
delayed long in one place, would begin a deliberate engagement
with other carriages, or with people at the lower windows; and
the spectators at some upper balcony or window, joining in the
fray, and attacking both parties, would empty down great bags of
confétti, that descended like a cloud, and in an instant
made them white as millers. Still, carriages on carriages,
dresses on dresses, colours on colours, crowds upon crowds,
without end. Men and boys clinging to the wheels of
coaches, and holding on behind, and following in their wake, and
diving in among the horses’ feet to pick up scattered
flowers to sell again; maskers on foot (the drollest generally)
in fantastic exaggerations of court-dresses, surveying the throng
through enormous eye-glasses, and always transported with an
ecstasy of love, on the discovery of any particularly old lady at
a window; long strings of Policinelli, laying about them with
blown bladders at the ends of sticks; a waggon-full of madmen,
screaming and tearing to the life; a coach-full of grave
mamelukes, with their horse-tail standard set up in the midst; a
party of gipsy-women engaged in terrific conflict with a shipful
of sailors; a man-monkey on a pole, surrounded by strange animals
with pigs’ faces, and lions’ tails, carried under
their arms, or worn gracefully over their shoulders; carriages on
carriages, dresses on dresses, colours on colours, crowds upon
crowds, without end. Not many actual characters sustained,
or represented, perhaps, considering the number dressed, but the
main pleasure of the scene consisting in its perfect good temper;
in its bright, and infinite, and flashing variety; and in its
entire abandonment to the mad humour of the time—an
abandonment so perfect, so contagious, so irresistible, that the
steadiest foreigner fights up to his middle in flowers and
sugar-plums, like the wildest Roman of them all, and thinks of
nothing else till half-past four o’clock, when he is
suddenly reminded (to his great regret) that this is not the
whole business of his existence, by hearing the trumpets sound,
and seeing the dragoons begin to clear the street.</p>
<p>How it ever <i>is</i> cleared for the race that takes place at
five, or how the horses ever go through the race, without going
over the people, is more than I can say. But the carriages
get out into the by-streets, or up into the Piázza del
Popolo, and some people sit in temporary galleries in the latter
place, and tens of thousands line the Corso on both sides, when
the horses are brought out into the Piázza—to the
foot of that same column which, for centuries, looked down upon
the games and chariot-races in the Circus Maximus.</p>
<p>At a given signal they are started off. Down the live
lane, the whole length of the Corso, they fly like the wind:
riderless, as all the world knows: with shining ornaments upon
their backs, and twisted in their plaited manes: and with heavy
little balls stuck full of spikes, dangling at their sides, to
goad them on. The jingling of these trappings, and the
rattling of their hoofs upon the hard stones; the dash and fury
of their speed along the echoing street; nay, the very cannon
that are fired—these noises are nothing to the roaring of
the multitude: their shouts: the clapping of their hands.
But it is soon over—almost instantaneously. More
cannon shake the town. The horses have plunged into the
carpets put across the street to stop them; the goal is reached;
the prizes are won (they are given, in part, by the poor Jews, as
a compromise for not running foot-races themselves); and there is
an end to that day’s sport.</p>
<p>But if the scene be bright, and gay, and crowded, on the last
day but one, it attains, on the concluding day, to such a height
of glittering colour, swarming life, and frolicsome uproar, that
the bare recollection of it makes me giddy at this moment.
The same diversions, greatly heightened and intensified in the
ardour with which they are pursued, go on until the same
hour. The race is repeated; the cannon are fired; the
shouting and clapping of hands are renewed; the cannon are fired
again; the race is over; and the prizes are won. But the
carriages: ankle-deep with sugar-plums within, and so be-flowered
and dusty without, as to be hardly recognisable for the same
vehicles that they were, three hours ago: instead of scampering
off in all directions, throng into the Corso, where they are soon
wedged together in a scarcely moving mass. For the
diversion of the Moccoletti, the last gay madness of the
Carnival, is now at hand; and sellers of little tapers like what
are called Christmas candles in England, are shouting lustily on
every side, ‘Moccoli, Moccoli! Ecco
Moccoli!’—a new item in the tumult; quite abolishing
that other item of ‘Ecco Fióri! Ecco
Fior-r-r!’ which has been making itself audible over all
the rest, at intervals, the whole day through.</p>
<p>As the bright hangings and dresses are all fading into one
dull, heavy, uniform colour in the decline of the day, lights
begin flashing, here and there: in the windows, on the housetops,
in the balconies, in the carriages, in the hands of the
foot-passengers: little by little: gradually, gradually: more and
more: until the whole long street is one great glare and blaze of
fire. Then, everybody present has but one engrossing
object; that is, to extinguish other people’s candles, and
to keep his own alight; and everybody: man, woman, or child,
gentleman or lady, prince or peasant, native or foreigner: yells
and screams, and roars incessantly, as a taunt to the subdued,
‘Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccolo!’ (Without a
light! Without a light!) until nothing is heard but a
gigantic chorus of those two words, mingled with peals of
laughter.</p>
<p>The spectacle, at this time, is one of the most extraordinary
that can be imagined. Carriages coming slowly by, with
everybody standing on the seats or on the box, holding up their
lights at arms’ length, for greater safety; some in paper
shades; some with a bunch of undefended little tapers, kindled
altogether; some with blazing torches; some with feeble little
candles; men on foot, creeping along, among the wheels, watching
their opportunity, to make a spring at some particular light, and
dash it out; other people climbing up into carriages, to get hold
of them by main force; others, chasing some unlucky wanderer,
round and round his own coach, to blow out the light he has
begged or stolen somewhere, before he can ascend to his own
company, and enable them to light their extinguished tapers;
others, with their hats off, at a carriage-door, humbly
beseeching some kind-hearted lady to oblige them with a light for
a cigar, and when she is in the fulness of doubt whether to
comply or no, blowing out the candle she is guarding so tenderly
with her little hand; other people at the windows, fishing for
candles with lines and hooks, or letting down long willow-wands
with handkerchiefs at the end, and flapping them out,
dexterously, when the bearer is at the height of his triumph,
others, biding their time in corners, with immense extinguishers
like halberds, and suddenly coming down upon glorious torches;
others, gathered round one coach, and sticking to it; others,
raining oranges and nosegays at an obdurate little lantern, or
regularly storming a pyramid of men, holding up one man among
them, who carries one feeble little wick above his head, with
which he defies them all! Senza Moccolo! Senza
Moccolo! Beautiful women, standing up in coaches, pointing
in derision at extinguished lights, and clapping their hands, as
they pass on, crying, ‘Senza Moccolo! Senza
Moccolo!’; low balconies full of lovely faces and gay
dresses, struggling with assailants in the streets; some
repressing them as they climb up, some bending down, some leaning
over, some shrinking back—delicate arms and
bosoms—graceful figures—glowing lights, fluttering
dresses, Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccoli, Senza
Moc-co-lo-o-o-o!—when in the wildest enthusiasm of the cry,
and fullest ecstasy of the sport, the Ave Maria rings from the
church steeples, and the Carnival is over in an instant—put
out like a taper, with a breath!</p>
<p>There was a masquerade at the theatre at night, as dull and
senseless as a London one, and only remarkable for the summary
way in which the house was cleared at eleven o’clock: which
was done by a line of soldiers forming along the wall, at the
back of the stage, and sweeping the whole company out before
them, like a broad broom. The game of the Moccoletti (the
word, in the singular, Moccoletto, is the diminutive of Moccolo,
and means a little lamp or candlesnuff) is supposed by some to be
a ceremony of burlesque mourning for the death of the Carnival:
candles being indispensable to Catholic grief. But whether
it be so, or be a remnant of the ancient Saturnalia, or an
incorporation of both, or have its origin in anything else, I
shall always remember it, and the frolic, as a brilliant and most
captivating sight: no less remarkable for the unbroken
good-humour of all concerned, down to the very lowest (and among
those who scaled the carriages, were many of the commonest men
and boys), than for its innocent vivacity. For, odd as it
may seem to say so, of a sport so full of thoughtlessness and
personal display, it is as free from any taint of immodesty as
any general mingling of the two sexes can possibly be; and there
seems to prevail, during its progress, a feeling of general,
almost childish, simplicity and confidence, which one thinks of
with a pang, when the Ave Maria has rung it away, for a whole
year.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>Availing ourselves of a part of the quiet interval between the
termination of the Carnival and the beginning of the Holy Week:
when everybody had run away from the one, and few people had yet
begun to run back again for the other: we went conscientiously to
work, to see Rome. And, by dint of going out early every
morning, and coming back late every evening, and labouring hard
all day, I believe we made acquaintance with every post and
pillar in the city, and the country round; and, in particular,
explored so many churches, that I abandoned that part of the
enterprise at last, before it was half finished, lest I should
never, of my own accord, go to church again, as long as I
lived. But, I managed, almost every day, at one time or
other, to get back to the Coliseum, and out upon the open
Campagna, beyond the Tomb of Cecilia Metella.</p>
<p>We often encountered, in these expeditions, a company of
English Tourists, with whom I had an ardent, but ungratified
longing, to establish a speaking acquaintance. They were
one Mr. Davis, and a small circle of friends. It was
impossible not to know Mrs. Davis’s name, from her being
always in great request among her party, and her party being
everywhere. During the Holy Week, they were in every part
of every scene of every ceremony. For a fortnight or three
weeks before it, they were in every tomb, and every church, and
every ruin, and every Picture Gallery; and I hardly ever observed
Mrs. Davis to be silent for a moment. Deep underground,
high up in St. Peter’s, out on the Campagna, and stifling
in the Jews’ quarter, Mrs. Davis turned up, all the
same. I don’t think she ever saw anything, or ever
looked at anything; and she had always lost something out of a
straw hand-basket, and was trying to find it, with all her might
and main, among an immense quantity of English halfpence, which
lay, like sands upon the sea-shore, at the bottom of it.
There was a professional Cicerone always attached to the party
(which had been brought over from London, fifteen or twenty
strong, by contract), and if he so much as looked at Mrs. Davis,
she invariably cut him short by saying, ‘There, God bless
the man, don’t worrit me! I don’t understand a
word you say, and shouldn’t if you was to talk till you was
black in the face!’ Mr. Davis always had a
snuff-coloured great-coat on, and carried a great green umbrella
in his hand, and had a slow curiosity constantly devouring him,
which prompted him to do extraordinary things, such as taking the
covers off urns in tombs, and looking in at the ashes as if they
were pickles—and tracing out inscriptions with the ferrule
of his umbrella, and saying, with intense thoughtfulness,
‘Here’s a B you see, and there’s a R, and this
is the way we goes on in; is it!’ His antiquarian
habits occasioned his being frequently in the rear of the rest;
and one of the agonies of Mrs. Davis, and the party in general,
was an ever-present fear that Davis would be lost. This
caused them to scream for him, in the strangest places, and at
the most improper seasons. And when he came, slowly
emerging out of some sepulchre or other, like a peaceful Ghoule,
saying ‘Here I am!’ Mrs. Davis invariably replied,
‘You’ll be buried alive in a foreign country, Davis,
and it’s no use trying to prevent you!’</p>
<p>Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, had, probably, been
brought from London in about nine or ten days. Eighteen
hundred years ago, the Roman legions under Claudius, protested
against being led into Mr. and Mrs. Davis’s country, urging
that it lay beyond the limits of the world.</p>
<p>Among what may be called the Cubs or minor Lions of Rome,
there was one that amused me mightily. It is always to be
found there; and its den is on the great flight of steps that
lead from the Piazza di Spágna, to the church of
Trínita del Monte. In plainer words, these steps are
the great place of resort for the artists’
‘Models,’ and there they are constantly waiting to be
hired. The first time I went up there, I could not conceive
why the faces seemed familiar to me; why they appeared to have
beset me, for years, in every possible variety of action and
costume; and how it came to pass that they started up before me,
in Rome, in the broad day, like so many saddled and bridled
nightmares. I soon found that we had made acquaintance, and
improved it, for several years, on the walls of various
Exhibition Galleries. There is one old gentleman, with long
white hair and an immense beard, who, to my knowledge, has gone
half through the catalogue of the Royal Academy. This is
the venerable, or patriarchal model. He carries a long
staff; and every knot and twist in that staff I have seen,
faithfully delineated, innumerable times. There is another
man in a blue cloak, who always pretends to be asleep in the sun
(when there is any), and who, I need not say, is always very wide
awake, and very attentive to the disposition of his legs.
This is the <i>dolce far’ niente</i> model. There is
another man in a brown cloak, who leans against a wall, with his
arms folded in his mantle, and looks out of the corners of his
eyes: which are just visible beneath his broad slouched
hat. This is the assassin model. There is another
man, who constantly looks over his own shoulder, and is always
going away, but never does. This is the haughty, or
scornful model. As to Domestic Happiness, and Holy
Families, they should come very cheap, for there are lumps of
them, all up the steps; and the cream of the thing is, that they
are all the falsest vagabonds in the world, especially made up
for the purpose, and having no counterparts in Rome or any other
part of the habitable globe.</p>
<p>My recent mention of the Carnival, reminds me of its being
said to be a mock mourning (in the ceremony with which it
closes), for the gaieties and merry-makings before Lent; and this
again reminds me of the real funerals and mourning processions of
Rome, which, like those in most other parts of Italy, are
rendered chiefly remarkable to a Foreigner, by the indifference
with which the mere clay is universally regarded, after life has
left it. And this is not from the survivors having had time
to dissociate the memory of the dead from their well-remembered
appearance and form on earth; for the interment follows too
speedily after death, for that: almost always taking place within
four-and-twenty hours, and, sometimes, within twelve.</p>
<p>At Rome, there is the same arrangement of Pits in a great,
bleak, open, dreary space, that I have already described as
existing in Genoa. When I visited it, at noonday, I saw a
solitary coffin of plain deal: uncovered by any shroud or pall,
and so slightly made, that the hoof of any wandering mule would
have crushed it in: carelessly tumbled down, all on one side, on
the door of one of the pits—and there left, by itself, in
the wind and sunshine. ‘How does it come to be left
here?’ I asked the man who showed me the place.
‘It was brought here half an hour ago, Signore,’ he
said. I remembered to have met the procession, on its
return: straggling away at a good round pace. ‘When
will it be put in the pit?’ I asked him. ‘When
the cart comes, and it is opened to-night,’ he said.
‘How much does it cost to be brought here in this way,
instead of coming in the cart?’ I asked him.
‘Ten scudi,’ he said (about two pounds,
two-and-sixpence, English). ‘The other bodies, for
whom nothing is paid, are taken to the church of the Santa Maria
della Consolázione,’ he continued, ‘and
brought here altogether, in the cart at night.’ I
stood, a moment, looking at the coffin, which had two initial
letters scrawled upon the top; and turned away, with an
expression in my face, I suppose, of not much liking its exposure
in that manner: for he said, shrugging his shoulders with great
vivacity, and giving a pleasant smile, ‘But he’s
dead, Signore, he’s dead. Why not?’</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>Among the innumerable churches, there is one I must select for
separate mention. It is the church of the Ara Coeli,
supposed to be built on the site of the old Temple of Jupiter
Feretrius; and approached, on one side, by a long steep flight of
steps, which seem incomplete without some group of bearded
soothsayers on the top. It is remarkable for the possession
of a miraculous Bambíno, or wooden doll, representing the
Infant Saviour; and I first saw this miraculous Bambíno,
in legal phrase, in manner following, that is to say:</p>
<p>We had strolled into the church one afternoon, and were
looking down its long vista of gloomy pillars (for all these
ancient churches built upon the ruins of old temples, are dark
and sad), when the Brave came running in, with a grin upon his
face that stretched it from ear to ear, and implored us to follow
him, without a moment’s delay, as they were going to show
the Bambíno to a select party. We accordingly
hurried off to a sort of chapel, or sacristy, hard by the chief
altar, but not in the church itself, where the select party,
consisting of two or three Catholic gentlemen and ladies (not
Italians), were already assembled: and where one hollow-cheeked
young monk was lighting up divers candles, while another was
putting on some clerical robes over his coarse brown habit.
The candles were on a kind of altar, and above it were two
delectable figures, such as you would see at any English fair,
representing the Holy Virgin, and Saint Joseph, as I suppose,
bending in devotion over a wooden box, or coffer; which was
shut.</p>
<p>The hollow-cheeked monk, number One, having finished lighting
the candles, went down on his knees, in a corner, before this
set-piece; and the monk number Two, having put on a pair of
highly ornamented and gold-bespattered gloves, lifted down the
coffer, with great reverence, and set it on the altar.
Then, with many genuflexions, and muttering certain prayers, he
opened it, and let down the front, and took off sundry coverings
of satin and lace from the inside. The ladies had been on
their knees from the commencement; and the gentlemen now dropped
down devoutly, as he exposed to view a little wooden doll, in
face very like General Tom Thumb, the American Dwarf: gorgeously
dressed in satin and gold lace, and actually blazing with rich
jewels. There was scarcely a spot upon its little breast,
or neck, or stomach, but was sparkling with the costly offerings
of the Faithful. Presently, he lifted it out of the box,
and carrying it round among the kneelers, set its face against
the forehead of every one, and tendered its clumsy foot to them
to kiss—a ceremony which they all performed down to a dirty
little ragamuffin of a boy who had walked in from the
street. When this was done, he laid it in the box again:
and the company, rising, drew near, and commended the jewels in
whispers. In good time, he replaced the coverings, shut up
the box, put it back in its place, locked up the whole concern
(Holy Family and all) behind a pair of folding-doors; took off
his priestly vestments; and received the customary ‘small
charge,’ while his companion, by means of an extinguisher
fastened to the end of a long stick, put out the lights, one
after another. The candles being all extinguished, and the
money all collected, they retired, and so did the spectators.</p>
<p>I met this same Bambíno, in the street a short time
afterwards, going, in great state, to the house of some sick
person. It is taken to all parts of Rome for this purpose,
constantly; but, I understand that it is not always as successful
as could be wished; for, making its appearance at the bedside of
weak and nervous people in extremity, accompanied by a numerous
escort, it not unfrequently frightens them to death. It is
most popular in cases of child-birth, where it has done such
wonders, that if a lady be longer than usual in getting through
her difficulties, a messenger is despatched, with all speed, to
solicit the immediate attendance of the Bambíno. It
is a very valuable property, and much confided
in—especially by the religious body to whom it belongs.</p>
<p>I am happy to know that it is not considered immaculate, by
some who are good Catholics, and who are behind the scenes, from
what was told me by the near relation of a Priest, himself a
Catholic, and a gentleman of learning and intelligence.
This Priest made my informant promise that he would, on no
account, allow the Bambíno to be borne into the bedroom of
a sick lady, in whom they were both interested.
‘For,’ said he, ‘if they (the monks) trouble
her with it, and intrude themselves into her room, it will
certainly kill her.’ My informant accordingly looked
out of the window when it came; and, with many thanks, declined
to open the door. He endeavoured, in another case of which
he had no other knowledge than such as he gained as a passer-by
at the moment, to prevent its being carried into a small
unwholesome chamber, where a poor girl was dying. But, he
strove against it unsuccessfully, and she expired while the crowd
were pressing round her bed.</p>
<p>Among the people who drop into St. Peter’s at their
leisure, to kneel on the pavement, and say a quiet prayer, there
are certain schools and seminaries, priestly and otherwise, that
come in, twenty or thirty strong. These boys always kneel
down in single file, one behind the other, with a tall grim
master in a black gown, bringing up the rear: like a pack of
cards arranged to be tumbled down at a touch, with a
disproportionately large Knave of clubs at the end. When
they have had a minute or so at the chief altar, they scramble
up, and filing off to the chapel of the Madonna, or the
sacrament, flop down again in the same order; so that if anybody
did stumble against the master, a general and sudden overthrow of
the whole line must inevitably ensue.</p>
<p>The scene in all the churches is the strangest possible.
The same monotonous, heartless, drowsy chaunting, always going
on; the same dark building, darker from the brightness of the
street without; the same lamps dimly burning; the selfsame people
kneeling here and there; turned towards you, from one altar or
other, the same priest’s back, with the same large cross
embroidered on it; however different in size, in shape, in
wealth, in architecture, this church is from that, it is the same
thing still. There are the same dirty beggars stopping in
their muttered prayers to beg; the same miserable cripples
exhibiting their deformity at the doors; the same blind men,
rattling little pots like kitchen pepper-castors: their
depositories for alms; the same preposterous crowns of silver
stuck upon the painted heads of single saints and Virgins in
crowded pictures, so that a little figure on a mountain has a
head-dress bigger than the temple in the foreground, or adjacent
miles of landscape; the same favourite shrine or figure,
smothered with little silver hearts and crosses, and the like:
the staple trade and show of all the jewellers; the same odd
mixture of respect and indecorum, faith and phlegm: kneeling on
the stones, and spitting on them, loudly; getting up from prayers
to beg a little, or to pursue some other worldly matter: and then
kneeling down again, to resume the contrite supplication at the
point where it was interrupted. In one church, a kneeling
lady got up from her prayer, for a moment, to offer us her card,
as a teacher of Music; and in another, a sedate gentleman with a
very thick walking-staff, arose from his devotions to belabour
his dog, who was growling at another dog: and whose yelps and
howls resounded through the church, as his master quietly
relapsed into his former train of meditation—keeping his
eye upon the dog, at the same time, nevertheless.</p>
<p>Above all, there is always a receptacle for the contributions
of the Faithful, in some form or other. Sometimes, it is a
money-box, set up between the worshipper, and the wooden
life-size figure of the Redeemer; sometimes, it is a little chest
for the maintenance of the Virgin; sometimes, an appeal on behalf
of a popular Bambíno; sometimes, a bag at the end of a
long stick, thrust among the people here and there, and
vigilantly jingled by an active Sacristan; but there it always
is, and, very often, in many shapes in the same church, and doing
pretty well in all. Nor, is it wanting in the open
air—the streets and roads—for, often as you are
walking along, thinking about anything rather than a tin
canister, that object pounces out upon you from a little house by
the wayside; and on its top is painted, ‘For the Souls in
Purgatory;’ an appeal which the bearer repeats a great many
times, as he rattles it before you, much as Punch rattles the
cracked bell which his sanguine disposition makes an organ
of.</p>
<p>And this reminds me that some Roman altars of peculiar
sanctity, bear the inscription, ‘Every Mass performed at
this altar frees a soul from Purgatory.’ I have never
been able to find out the charge for one of these services, but
they should needs be expensive. There are several Crosses
in Rome too, the kissing of which, confers indulgences for
varying terms. That in the centre of the Coliseum, is worth
a hundred days; and people may be seen kissing it from morning to
night. It is curious that some of these crosses seem to
acquire an arbitrary popularity: this very one among them.
In another part of the Coliseum there is a cross upon a marble
slab, with the inscription, ‘Who kisses this cross shall be
entitled to Two hundred and forty days’
indulgence.’ But I saw no one person kiss it, though,
day after day, I sat in the arena, and saw scores upon scores of
peasants pass it, on their way to kiss the other.</p>
<p>To single out details from the great dream of Roman Churches,
would be the wildest occupation in the world. But St.
Stefano Rotondo, a damp, mildewed vault of an old church in the
outskirts of Rome, will always struggle uppermost in my mind, by
reason of the hideous paintings with which its walls are
covered. These represent the martyrdoms of saints and early
Christians; and such a panorama of horror and butchery no man
could imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig
raw, for supper. Grey-bearded men being boiled, fried,
grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, worried by dogs,
buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up small with
hatchets: women having their breasts torn with iron pinchers,
their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws broken,
their bodies stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the stake,
or crackled up and melted in the fire: these are among the
mildest subjects. So insisted on, and laboured at, besides,
that every sufferer gives you the same occasion for wonder as
poor old Duncan awoke, in Lady Macbeth, when she marvelled at his
having so much blood in him.</p>
<p>There is an upper chamber in the Mamertine prisons, over what
is said to have been—and very possibly may have
been—the dungeon of St. Peter. This chamber is now
fitted up as an oratory, dedicated to that saint; and it lives,
as a distinct and separate place, in my recollection, too.
It is very small and low-roofed; and the dread and gloom of the
ponderous, obdurate old prison are on it, as if they had come up
in a dark mist through the floor. Hanging on the walls,
among the clustered votive offerings, are objects, at once
strangely in keeping, and strangely at variance, with the
place—rusty daggers, knives, pistols, clubs, divers
instruments of violence and murder, brought here, fresh from use,
and hung up to propitiate offended Heaven: as if the blood upon
them would drain off in consecrated air, and have no voice to cry
with. It is all so silent and so close, and tomb-like; and
the dungeons below are so black and stealthy, and stagnant, and
naked; that this little dark spot becomes a dream within a dream:
and in the vision of great churches which come rolling past me
like a sea, it is a small wave by itself, that melts into no
other wave, and does not flow on with the rest.</p>
<p>It is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns that are
entered from some Roman churches, and undermine the city.
Many churches have crypts and subterranean chapels of great size,
which, in the ancient time, were baths, and secret chambers of
temples, and what not: but I do not speak of them. Beneath
the church of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, there are the jaws of a
terrific range of caverns, hewn out of the rock, and said to have
another outlet underneath the Coliseum—tremendous
darknesses of vast extent, half-buried in the earth and
unexplorable, where the dull torches, flashed by the attendants,
glimmer down long ranges of distant vaults branching to the right
and left, like streets in a city of the dead; and show the cold
damp stealing down the walls, drip-drop, drip-drop, to join the
pools of water that lie here and there, and never saw, or never
will see, one ray of the sun. Some accounts make these the
prisons of the wild beasts destined for the amphitheatre; some
the prisons of the condemned gladiators; some, both. But
the legend most appalling to the fancy is, that in the upper
range (for there are two stories of these caves) the Early
Christians destined to be eaten at the Coliseum Shows, heard the
wild beasts, hungry for them, roaring down below; until, upon the
<a name="page326"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 326</span>night
and solitude of their captivity, there burst the sudden noon and
life of the vast theatre crowded to the parapet, and of these,
their dreaded neighbours, bounding in!</p>
<p>Below the church of San Sebastiano, two miles beyond the gate
of San Sebastiano, on the Appian Way, is the entrance to the
catacombs of Rome—quarries in the old time, but afterwards
the hiding-places of the Christians. These ghastly passages
have been explored for twenty miles; and form a chain of
labyrinths, sixty miles in circumference.</p>
<p>A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, was our only
guide, down into this profound and dreadful place. The
narrow ways and openings hither and thither, coupled with the
dead and heavy air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any
recollection of the track by which we had come: and I could not
help thinking ‘Good Heaven, if, in a sudden fit of madness,
he should dash the torches out, or if he should be seized with a
fit, what would become of us!’ On we wandered, among
martyrs’ graves: passing great subterranean vaulted roads,
diverging in all directions, and choked up with heaps of stones,
that thieves and murderers may not take refuge there, and form a
population under Rome, even worse than that which lives between
it and the sun. Graves, graves, graves; Graves of men, of
women, of their little children, who ran crying to the
persecutors, ‘We are Christians! We are
Christians!’ that they might be murdered with their
parents; Graves with the palm of martyrdom roughly cut into their
stone boundaries, and little niches, made to hold a vessel of the
martyrs’ blood; Graves of some who lived down here, for
years together, ministering to the rest, and preaching truth, and
hope, and comfort, from the rude altars, that bear witness to
their fortitude at this hour; more roomy graves, but far more
terrible, where hundreds, being surprised, were hemmed in and
walled up: buried before Death, and killed by slow
starvation.</p>
<p>‘The Triumphs of the Faith are not above ground in our
splendid churches,’ said the friar, looking round upon us,
as we stopped to rest in one of the low passages, with bones and
dust surrounding us on every side. ‘They are
here! Among the Martyrs’ Graves!’ He was
a gentle, earnest man, and said it from his heart; but when I
thought how Christian men have dealt with one another; how,
perverting our most merciful religion, they have hunted down and
tortured, burnt and beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and
oppressed each other; I pictured to myself an agony surpassing
any that this Dust had suffered with the breath of life yet
lingering in it, and how these great and constant hearts would
have been shaken—how they would have quailed and
drooped—if a foreknowledge of the deeds that professing
Christians would commit in the Great Name for which they died,
could have rent them with its own unutterable anguish, on the
cruel wheel, and bitter cross, and in the fearful fire.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">
<a href="images/p326b.jpg">
<img alt=
"In the Catacombs"
title=
"In the Catacombs"
src="images/p326s.jpg" />
</a></p>
<p>Such are the spots and patches in my dream of churches, that
remain apart, and keep their separate identity. I have a
fainter recollection, sometimes of the relics; of the fragments
of the pillar of the Temple that was rent in twain; of the
portion of the table that was spread for the Last Supper; of the
well at which the woman of Samaria gave water to Our Saviour; of
two columns from the house of Pontius Pilate; of the stone to
which the Sacred hands were bound, when the scourging was
performed; of the grid-iron of Saint Lawrence, and the stone
below it, marked with the frying of his fat and blood; these set
a shadowy mark on some cathedrals, as an old story, or a fable
might, and stop them for an instant, as they flit before
me. The rest is a vast wilderness of consecrated buildings
of all shapes and fancies, blending one with another; of battered
pillars of old Pagan temples, dug up from the ground, and forced,
like giant captives, to support the roofs of Christian churches;
of pictures, bad, and wonderful, and impious, and ridiculous; of
kneeling people, curling incense, tinkling bells, and sometimes
(but not often) of a swelling organ: of Madonne, with their
breasts stuck full of swords, arranged in a half-circle like a
modern fan; of actual skeletons of dead saints, hideously attired
in gaudy satins, silks, and velvets trimmed with gold: their
withered crust of skull adorned with precious jewels, or with
chaplets of crushed flowers; sometimes of people gathered round
the pulpit, and a monk within it stretching out the crucifix, and
preaching fiercely: the sun just streaming down through some high
window on the sail-cloth stretched above him and across the
church, to keep his high-pitched voice from being lost among the
echoes of the roof. Then my tired memory comes out upon a
flight of steps, where knots of people are asleep, or basking in
the light; and strolls away, among the rags, and smells, and
palaces, and hovels, of an old Italian street.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>On one Saturday morning (the eighth of March), a man was
beheaded here. Nine or ten months before, he had waylaid a
Bavarian countess, travelling as a pilgrim to Rome—alone
and on foot, of course—and performing, it is said, that act
of piety for the fourth time. He saw her change a piece of
gold at Viterbo, where he lived; followed her; bore her company
on her journey for some forty miles or more, on the treacherous
pretext of protecting her; attacked her, in the fulfilment of his
unrelenting purpose, on the Campagna, within a very short
distance of Rome, near to what is called (but what is not) the
Tomb of Nero; robbed her; and beat her to death with her own
pilgrim’s staff. He was newly married, and gave some
of her apparel to his wife: saying that he had bought it at a
fair. She, however, who had seen the pilgrim-countess
passing through their town, recognised some trifle as having
belonged to her. Her husband then told her what he had
done. She, in confession, told a priest; and the man was
taken, within four days after the commission of the murder.</p>
<p>There are no fixed times for the administration of justice, or
its execution, in this unaccountable country; and he had been in
prison ever since. On the Friday, as he was dining with the
other prisoners, they came and told him he was to be beheaded
next morning, and took him away. It is very unusual to
execute in Lent; but his crime being a very bad one, it was
deemed advisable to make an example of him at that time, when
great numbers of pilgrims were coming towards Rome, from all
parts, for the Holy Week. I heard of this on the Friday
evening, and saw the bills up at the churches, calling on the
people to pray for the criminal’s soul. So, I
determined to go, and see him executed.</p>
<p>The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a-half
o’clock, Roman time: or a quarter before nine in the
forenoon. I had two friends with me; and as we did not know
but that the crowd might be very great, we were on the spot by
half-past seven. The place of execution was near the church
of San Giovanni decolláto (a doubtful compliment to Saint
John the Baptist) in one of the impassable back streets without
any footway, of which a great part of Rome is composed—a
street of rotten houses, which do not seem to belong to anybody,
and do not seem to have ever been inhabited, and certainly were
never built on any plan, or for any particular purpose, and have
no window-sashes, and are a little like deserted breweries, and
might be warehouses but for having nothing in them.
Opposite to one of these, a white house, the scaffold was
built. An untidy, unpainted, uncouth, crazy-looking thing
of course: some seven feet high, perhaps: with a tall,
gallows-shaped frame rising above it, in which was the knife,
charged with a ponderous mass of iron, all ready to descend, and
glittering brightly in the morning sun, whenever it looked out,
now and then, from behind a cloud.</p>
<p>There were not many people lingering about; and these were
kept at a considerable distance from the scaffold, by parties of
the Pope’s dragoons. Two or three hundred
foot-soldiers were under arms, standing at ease in clusters here
and there; and the officers were walking up and down in twos and
threes, chatting together, and smoking cigars.</p>
<p>At the end of the street, was an open space, where there would
be a dust-heap, and piles of broken crockery, and mounds of
vegetable refuse, but for such things being thrown anywhere and
everywhere in Rome, and favouring no particular sort of
locality. We got into a kind of wash-house, belonging to a
dwelling-house on this spot; and standing there in an old cart,
and on a heap of cartwheels piled against the wall, looked,
through a large grated window, at the scaffold, and straight down
the street beyond it until, in consequence of its turning off
abruptly to the left, our perspective was brought to a sudden
termination, and had a corpulent officer, in a cocked hat, for
its crowning feature.</p>
<p>Nine o’clock struck, and ten o’clock struck, and
nothing happened. All the bells of all the churches rang as
usual. A little parliament of dogs assembled in the open
space, and chased each other, in and out among the
soldiers. Fierce-looking Romans of the lowest class, in
blue cloaks, russet cloaks, and rags uncloaked, came and went,
and talked together. Women and children fluttered, on the
skirts of the scanty crowd. One large muddy spot was left
quite bare, like a bald place on a man’s head. A
cigar-merchant, with an earthen pot of charcoal ashes in one
hand, went up and down, crying his wares. A pastry-merchant
divided his attention between the scaffold and his
customers. Boys tried to climb up walls, and tumbled down
again. Priests and monks elbowed a passage for themselves
among the people, and stood on tiptoe for a sight of the knife:
then went away. Artists, in inconceivable hats of the
middle-ages, and beards (thank Heaven!) of no age at all, flashed
picturesque scowls about them from their stations in the
throng. One gentleman (connected with the fine arts, I
presume) went up and down in a pair of Hessian-boots, with a red
beard hanging down on his breast, and his long and bright red
hair, plaited into two tails, one on either side of his head,
which fell over his shoulders in front of him, very nearly to his
waist, and were carefully entwined and braided!</p>
<p>Eleven o’clock struck and still nothing happened.
A rumour got about, among the crowd, that the criminal would not
confess; in which case, the priests would keep him until the Ave
Maria (sunset); for it is their merciful custom never finally to
turn the crucifix away from a man at that pass, as one refusing
to be shriven, and consequently a sinner abandoned of the
Saviour, until then. People began to drop off. The
officers shrugged their shoulders and looked doubtful. The
dragoons, who came riding up below our window, every now and
then, to order an unlucky hackney-coach or cart away, as soon as
it had comfortably established itself, and was covered with
exulting people (but never before), became imperious, and
quick-tempered. The bald place hadn’t a straggling
hair upon it; and the corpulent officer, crowning the
perspective, took a world of snuff.</p>
<p>Suddenly, there was a noise of trumpets.
‘Attention!’ was among the foot-soldiers
instantly. They were marched up to the scaffold and formed
round it. The dragoons galloped to their nearer stations
too. The guillotine became the centre of a wood of
bristling bayonets and shining sabres. The people closed
round nearer, on the flank of the soldiery. A long
straggling stream of men and boys, who had accompanied the
procession from the prison, came pouring into the open
space. The bald spot was scarcely distinguishable from the
rest. The cigar and pastry-merchants resigned all thoughts
of business, for the moment, and abandoning themselves wholly to
pleasure, got good situations in the crowd. The perspective
ended, now, in a troop of dragoons. And the corpulent
officer, sword in hand, looked hard at a church close to him,
which he could see, but we, the crowd, could not.</p>
<p>After a short delay, some monks were seen approaching to the
scaffold from this church; and above their heads, coming on
slowly and gloomily, the effigy of Christ upon the cross,
canopied with black. This was carried round the foot of the
scaffold, to the front, and turned towards the criminal, that he
might see it to the last. It was hardly in its place, when
he appeared on the platform, bare-footed; his hands bound; and
with the collar and neck of his shirt cut away, almost to the
shoulder. A young man—six-and-twenty—vigorously
made, and well-shaped. Face pale; small dark moustache; and
dark brown hair.</p>
<p>He had refused to confess, it seemed, without first having his
wife brought to see him; and they had sent an escort for her,
which had occasioned the delay.</p>
<p>He immediately kneeled down, below the knife. His neck
fitting into a hole, made for the purpose, in a cross plank, was
shut down, by another plank above; exactly like the
pillory. Immediately below him was a leathern bag.
And into it his head rolled instantly.</p>
<p>The executioner was holding it by the hair, and walking with
it round the scaffold, showing it to the people, before one quite
knew that the knife had fallen heavily, and with a rattling
sound.</p>
<p>When it had travelled round the four sides of the scaffold, it
was set upon a pole in front—a little patch of black and
white, for the long street to stare at, and the flies to settle
on. The eyes were turned upward, as if he had avoided the
sight of the leathern bag, and looked to the crucifix.
Every tinge and hue of life had left it in that instant. It
was dull, cold, livid, wax. The body also.</p>
<p>There was a great deal of blood. When we left the
window, and went close up to the scaffold, it was very dirty; one
of the two men who were throwing water over it, turning to help
the other lift the body into a shell, picked his way as through
mire. A strange appearance was the apparent annihilation of
the neck. The head was taken off so close, that it seemed
as if the knife had narrowly escaped crushing the jaw, or shaving
off the ear; and the body looked as if there were nothing left
above the shoulder.</p>
<p>Nobody cared, or was at all affected. There was no
manifestation of disgust, or pity, or indignation, or
sorrow. My empty pockets were tried, several times, in the
crowd immediately below the scaffold, as the corpse was being put
into its coffin. It was an ugly, filthy, careless,
sickening spectacle; meaning nothing but butchery beyond the
momentary interest, to the one wretched actor. Yes!
Such a sight has one meaning and one warning. Let me not
forget it. The speculators in the lottery, station
themselves at favourable points for counting the gouts of blood
that spirt out, here or there; and buy that number. It is
pretty sure to have a run upon it.</p>
<p>The body was carted away in due time, the knife cleansed, the
scaffold taken down, and all the hideous apparatus removed.
The executioner: an outlaw <i>ex officio</i> (what a satire on
the Punishment!) who dare not, for his life, cross the Bridge of
St. Angelo but to do his work: retreated to his lair, and the
show was over.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>At the head of the collections in the palaces of Rome, the
Vatican, of course, with its treasures of art, its enormous
galleries, and staircases, and suites upon suites of immense
chambers, ranks highest and stands foremost. Many most
noble statues, and wonderful pictures, are there; nor is it
heresy to say that there is a considerable amount of rubbish
there, too. When any old piece of sculpture dug out of the
ground, finds a place in a gallery because it is old, and without
any reference to its intrinsic merits: and finds admirers by the
hundred, because it is there, and for no other reason on earth:
there will be no lack of objects, very indifferent in the plain
eyesight of any one who employs so vulgar a property, when he may
wear the spectacles of Cant for less than nothing, and establish
himself as a man of taste for the mere trouble of putting them
on.</p>
<p>I unreservedly confess, for myself, that I cannot leave my
natural perception of what is natural and true, at a palace-door,
in Italy or elsewhere, as I should leave my shoes if I were
travelling in the East. I cannot forget that there are
certain expressions of face, natural to certain passions, and as
unchangeable in their nature as the gait of a lion, or the flight
of an eagle. I cannot dismiss from my certain knowledge,
such commonplace facts as the ordinary proportion of men’s
arms, and legs, and heads; and when I meet with performances that
do violence to these experiences and recollections, no matter
where they may be, I cannot honestly admire them, and think it
best to say so; in spite of high critical advice that we should
sometimes feign an admiration, though we have it not.</p>
<p>Therefore, I freely acknowledge that when I see a jolly young
Waterman representing a cherubim, or a Barclay and
Perkins’s Drayman depicted as an Evangelist, I see nothing
to commend or admire in the performance, however great its
reputed Painter. Neither am I partial to libellous Angels,
who play on fiddles and bassoons, for the edification of
sprawling monks apparently in liquor. Nor to those Monsieur
Tonsons of galleries, Saint Francis and Saint Sebastian; both of
whom I submit should have very uncommon and rare merits, as works
of art, to justify their compound multiplication by Italian
Painters.</p>
<p>It seems to me, too, that the indiscriminate and determined
raptures in which some critics indulge, is incompatible with the
true appreciation of the really great and transcendent
works. I cannot imagine, for example, how the resolute
champion of undeserving pictures can soar to the amazing beauty
of Titian’s great picture of the Assumption of the Virgin
at Venice; or how the man who is truly affected by the sublimity
of that exquisite production, or who is truly sensible of the
beauty of Tintoretto’s great picture of the Assembly of the
Blessed in the same place, can discern in Michael Angelo’s
Last Judgment, in the Sistine chapel, any general idea, or one
pervading thought, in harmony with the stupendous subject.
He who will contemplate Raphael’s masterpiece, the
Transfiguration, and will go away into another chamber of that
same Vatican, and contemplate another design of Raphael,
representing (in incredible caricature) the miraculous stopping
of a great fire by Leo the Fourth—and who will say that he
admires them both, as works of extraordinary genius—must,
as I think, be wanting in his powers of perception in one of the
two instances, and, probably, in the high and lofty one.</p>
<p>It is easy to suggest a doubt, but I have a great doubt
whether, sometimes, the rules of art are not too strictly
observed, and whether it is quite well or agreeable that we
should know beforehand, where this figure will be turning round,
and where that figure will be lying down, and where there will be
drapery in folds, and so forth. When I observe heads
inferior to the subject, in pictures of merit, in Italian
galleries, I do not attach that reproach to the Painter, for I
have a suspicion that these great men, who were, of necessity,
very much in the hands of monks and priests, painted monks and
priests a great deal too often. I frequently see, in
pictures of real power, heads quite below the story and the
painter: and I invariably observe that those heads are of the
Convent stamp, and have their counterparts among the Convent
inmates of this hour; so, I have settled with myself that, in
such cases, the lameness was not with the painter, but with the
vanity and ignorance of certain of his employers, who would be
apostles—on canvas, at all events.</p>
<p>The exquisite grace and beauty of Canova’s statues; the
wonderful gravity and repose of many of the ancient works in
sculpture, both in the Capitol and the Vatican; and the strength
and fire of many others; are, in their different ways, beyond all
reach of words. They are especially impressive and
delightful, after the works of Bernini and his disciples, in
which the churches of Rome, from St. Peter’s downward,
abound; and which are, I verily believe, the most detestable
class of productions in the wide world. I would infinitely
rather (as mere works of art) look upon the three deities of the
Past, the Present, and the Future, in the Chinese Collection,
than upon the best of these breezy maniacs; whose every fold of
drapery is blown inside-out; whose smallest vein, or artery, is
as big as an ordinary forefinger; whose hair is like a nest of
lively snakes; and whose attitudes put all other extravagance to
shame. Insomuch that I do honestly believe, there can be no
place in the world, where such intolerable abortions, begotten of
the sculptor’s chisel, are to be found in such profusion,
as in Rome.</p>
<p>There is a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities, in the
Vatican; and the ceilings of the rooms in which they are
arranged, are painted to represent a starlight sky in the
Desert. It may seem an odd idea, but it is very
effective. The grim, half-human monsters from the temples,
look more grim and monstrous underneath the deep dark blue; it
sheds a strange uncertain gloomy air on everything—a
mystery adapted to the objects; and you leave them, as you find
them, shrouded in a solemn night.</p>
<p>In the private palaces, pictures are seen to the best
advantage. There are seldom so many in one place that the
attention need become distracted, or the eye confused. You
see them very leisurely; and are rarely interrupted by a crowd of
people. There are portraits innumerable, by Titian, and
Rembrandt, and Vandyke; heads by Guido, and Domenichino, and
Carlo Dolci; various subjects by Correggio, and Murillo, and
Raphael, and Salvator Rosa, and Spagnoletto—many of which
it would be difficult, indeed, to praise too highly, or to praise
enough; such is their tenderness and grace; their noble
elevation, purity, and beauty.</p>
<p>The portrait of Beatrice di Cenci, in the Palazzo Berberini,
is a picture almost impossible to be forgotten. Through the
transcendent sweetness and beauty of the face, there is a
something shining out, that haunts me. I see it now, as I
see this paper, or my pen. The head is loosely draped in
white; the light hair falling down below the linen folds.
She has turned suddenly towards you; and there is an expression
in the eyes—although they are very tender and
gentle—as if the wildness of a momentary terror, or
distraction, had been struggled with and overcome, that instant;
and nothing but a celestial hope, and a beautiful sorrow, and a
desolate earthly helplessness remained. Some stories say
that Guido painted it, the night before her execution; some other
stories, that he painted it from memory, after having seen her,
on her way to the scaffold. I am willing to believe that,
as you see her on his canvas, so she turned towards him, in the
crowd, from the first sight of the axe, and stamped upon his mind
a look which he has stamped on mine as though I had stood beside
him in the concourse. The guilty palace of the Cenci:
blighting a whole quarter of the town, as it stands withering
away by grains: had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal porch,
and at its black, blind windows, and flitting up and down its
dreary stairs, and growing out of the darkness of the ghostly
galleries. The History is written in the Painting; written,
in the dying girl’s face, by Nature’s own hand.
And oh! how in that one touch she puts to flight (instead of
making kin) the puny world that claim to be related to her, in
right of poor conventional forgeries!</p>
<p>I saw in the Palazzo Spada, the statue of Pompey; the statue
at whose base Cæsar fell. A stern, tremendous
figure! I imagined one of greater finish: of the last
refinement: full of delicate touches: losing its distinctness, in
the giddy eyes of one whose blood was ebbing before it, and
settling into some such rigid majesty as this, as Death came
creeping over the upturned face.</p>
<p>The excursions in the neighbourhood of Rome are charming, and
would be full of interest were it only for the changing views
they afford, of the wild Campagna. But, every inch of
ground, in every direction, is rich in associations, and in
natural beauties. There is Albano, with its lovely lake and
wooded shore, and with its wine, that certainly has not improved
since the days of Horace, and in these times hardly justifies his
panegyric. There is squalid Tivoli, with the river Anio,
diverted from its course, and plunging down, headlong, some
eighty feet in search of it. With its picturesque Temple of
the Sibyl, perched high on a crag; its minor waterfalls glancing
and sparkling in the sun; and one good cavern yawning darkly,
where the river takes a fearful plunge and shoots on, low down
under beetling rocks. There, too, is the Villa
d’Este, deserted and decaying among groves of melancholy
pine and cypress trees, where it seems to lie in state.
Then, there is Frascati, and, on the steep above it, the ruins of
Tusculum, where Cicero lived, and wrote, and adorned his
favourite house (some fragments of it may yet be seen there), and
where Cato was born. We saw its ruined amphitheatre on a
grey, dull day, when a shrill March wind was blowing, and when
the scattered stones of the old city lay strewn about the lonely
eminence, as desolate and dead as the ashes of a long
extinguished fire.</p>
<p>One day we walked out, a little party of three, to Albano,
fourteen miles distant; possessed by a great desire to go there
by the ancient Appian way, long since ruined and overgrown.
We started at half-past seven in the morning, and within an hour
or so were out upon the open Campagna. For twelve miles we
went climbing on, over an unbroken succession of mounds, and
heaps, and hills, of ruin. Tombs and temples, overthrown
and prostrate; small fragments of columns, friezes, pediments;
great blocks of granite and marble; mouldering arches,
grass-grown and decayed; ruin enough to build a spacious city
from; lay strewn about us. Sometimes, loose walls, built up
from these fragments by the shepherds, came across our path;
sometimes, a ditch between two mounds of broken stones,
obstructed our progress; sometimes, the fragments themselves,
rolling from beneath our feet, made it a toilsome matter to
advance; but it was always ruin. Now, we tracked a piece of
the old road, above the ground; now traced it, underneath a
grassy covering, as if that were its grave; but all the way was
ruin. In the distance, ruined aqueducts went stalking on
their giant course along the plain; and every breath of wind that
swept towards us, stirred early flowers and grasses, springing
up, spontaneously, on miles of ruin. The unseen larks above
us, who alone disturbed the awful silence, had their nests in
ruin; and the fierce herdsmen, clad in sheepskins, who now and
then scowled out upon us from their sleeping nooks, were housed
in ruin. The aspect of the desolate Campagna in one
direction, where it was most level, reminded me of an American
prairie; but what is the solitude of a region where men have
never dwelt, to that of a Desert, where a mighty race have left
their footprints in the earth from which they have vanished;
where the resting-places of their Dead, have fallen like their
Dead; and the broken hour-glass of Time is but a heap of idle
dust! Returning, by the road, at sunset! and looking, from
the distance, on the course we had taken in the morning, I almost
feel (as I had felt when I first saw it, at that hour) as if the
sun would never rise again, but looked its last, that night, upon
a ruined world.</p>
<p>To come again on Rome, by moonlight, after such an expedition,
is a fitting close to such a day. The narrow streets,
devoid of footways, and choked, in every obscure corner, by heaps
of dunghill-rubbish, contrast so strongly, in their cramped
dimensions, and their filth, and darkness, with the broad square
before some haughty church: in the centre of which, a
hieroglyphic-covered obelisk, brought from Egypt in the days of
the Emperors, looks strangely on the foreign scene about it; or
perhaps an ancient pillar, with its honoured statue overthrown,
supports a Christian saint: Marcus Aurelius giving place to Paul,
and Trajan to St. Peter. Then, there are the ponderous
buildings reared from the spoliation of the Coliseum, shutting
out the moon, like mountains: while here and there, are broken
arches and rent walls, through which it gushes freely, as the
life comes pouring from a wound. The little town of
miserable houses, walled, and shut in by barred gates, is the
quarter where the Jews are locked up nightly, when the clock
strikes eight—a miserable place, densely populated, and
reeking with bad odours, but where the people are industrious and
money-getting. In the day-time, as you make your way along
the narrow streets, you see them all at work: upon the pavement,
oftener than in their dark and frouzy shops: furbishing old
clothes, and driving bargains.</p>
<p>Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into the
moon once more, the fountain of Trevi, welling from a hundred
jets, and rolling over mimic rocks, is silvery to the eye and
ear. In the narrow little throat of street, beyond, a
booth, dressed out with flaring lamps, and boughs of trees,
attracts a group of sulky Romans round its smoky coppers of hot
broth, and cauliflower stew; its trays of fried fish, and its
flasks of wine. As you rattle round the sharply-twisting
corner, a lumbering sound is heard. The coachman stops
abruptly, and uncovers, as a van comes slowly by, preceded by a
man who bears a large cross; by a torch-bearer; and a priest: the
latter chaunting as he goes. It is the Dead Cart, with the
bodies of the poor, on their way to burial in the Sacred Field
outside the walls, where they will be thrown into the pit that
will be covered with a stone to-night, and sealed up for a
year.</p>
<p>But whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks, or columns
ancient temples, theatres, houses, porticoes, or forums: it is
strange to see, how every fragment, whenever it is possible, has
been blended into some modern structure, and made to serve some
modern purpose—a wall, a dwelling-place, a granary, a
stable—some use for which it never was designed, and
associated with which it cannot otherwise than lamely
assort. It is stranger still, to see how many ruins of the
old mythology: how many fragments of obsolete legend and
observance: have been incorporated into the worship of Christian
altars here; and how, in numberless respects, the false faith and
the true are fused into a monstrous union.</p>
<p>From one part of the city, looking out beyond the walls, a
squat and stunted pyramid (the burial-place of Caius Cestius)
makes an opaque triangle in the moonlight. But, to an
English traveller, it serves to mark the grave of Shelley too,
whose ashes lie beneath a little garden near it. Nearer
still, almost within its shadow, lie the bones of Keats,
‘whose name is writ in water,’ that shines brightly
in the landscape of a calm Italian night.</p>
<p>The Holy Week in Rome is supposed to offer great attractions
to all visitors; but, saving for the sights of Easter Sunday, I
would counsel those who go to Rome for its own interest, to avoid
it at that time. The ceremonies, in general, are of the
most tedious and wearisome kind; the heat and crowd at every one
of them, painfully oppressive; the noise, hubbub, and confusion,
quite distracting. We abandoned the pursuit of these shows,
very early in the proceedings, and betook ourselves to the Ruins
again. But, we plunged into the crowd for a share of the
best of the sights; and what we saw, I will describe to you.</p>
<p>At the Sistine chapel, on the Wednesday, we saw very little,
for by the time we reached it (though we were early) the
besieging crowd had filled it to the door, and overflowed into
the adjoining hall, where they were struggling, and squeezing,
and mutually expostulating, and making great rushes every time a
lady was brought out faint, as if at least fifty people could be
accommodated in her vacant standing-room. Hanging in the
doorway of the chapel, was a heavy curtain, and this curtain,
some twenty people nearest to it, in their anxiety to hear the
chaunting of the Miserere, were continually plucking at, in
opposition to each other, that it might not fall down and stifle
the sound of the voices. The consequence was, that it
occasioned the most extraordinary confusion, and seemed to wind
itself about the unwary, like a Serpent. Now, a lady was
wrapped up in it, and couldn’t be unwound. Now, the
voice of a stifling gentleman was heard inside it, beseeching to
be let out. Now, two muffled arms, no man could say of
which sex, struggled in it as in a sack. Now, it was
carried by a rush, bodily overhead into the chapel, like an
awning. Now, it came out the other way, and blinded one of
the Pope’s Swiss Guard, who had arrived, that moment, to
set things to rights.</p>
<p>Being seated at a little distance, among two or three of the
Pope’s gentlemen, who were very weary and counting the
minutes—as perhaps his Holiness was too—we had better
opportunities of observing this eccentric entertainment, than of
hearing the Miserere. Sometimes, there was a swell of
mournful voices that sounded very pathetic and sad, and died
away, into a low strain again; but that was all we heard.</p>
<p>At another time, there was the Exhibition of Relics in St.
Peter’s, which took place at between six and seven
o’clock in the evening, and was striking from the cathedral
being dark and gloomy, and having a great many people in
it. The place into which the relics were brought, one by
one, by a party of three priests, was a high balcony near the
chief altar. This was the only lighted part of the
church. There are always a hundred and twelve lamps burning
near the altar, and there were two tall tapers, besides, near the
black statue of St. Peter; but these were nothing in such an
immense edifice. The gloom, and the general upturning of
faces to the balcony, and the prostration of true believers on
the pavement, as shining objects, like pictures or
looking-glasses, were brought out and shown, had something
effective in it, despite the very preposterous manner in which
they were held up for the general edification, and the great
elevation at which they were displayed; which one would think
rather calculated to diminish the comfort derivable from a full
conviction of their being genuine.</p>
<p>On the Thursday, we went to see the Pope convey the Sacrament
from the Sistine chapel, to deposit it in the Capella Paolina,
another chapel in the Vatican;—a ceremony emblematical of
the entombment of the Saviour before His Resurrection. We
waited in a great gallery with a great crowd of people
(three-fourths of them English) for an hour or so, while they
were chaunting the Miserere, in the Sistine chapel again.
Both chapels opened out of the gallery; and the general attention
was concentrated on the occasional opening and shutting of the
door of the one for which the Pope was ultimately bound.
None of these openings disclosed anything more tremendous than a
man on a ladder, lighting a great quantity of candles; but at
each and every opening, there was a terrific rush made at this
ladder and this man, something like (I should think) a charge of
the heavy British cavalry at Waterloo. The man was never
brought down, however, nor the ladder; for it performed the
strangest antics in the world among the crowd—where it was
carried by the man, when the candles were all lighted; and
finally it was stuck up against the gallery wall, in a very
disorderly manner, just before the opening of the other chapel,
and the commencement of a new chaunt, announced the approach of
his Holiness. At this crisis, the soldiers of the guard,
who had been poking the crowd into all sorts of shapes, formed
down the gallery: and the procession came up, between the two
lines they made.</p>
<p>There were a few choristers, and then a great many priests,
walking two and two, and carrying—the good-looking priests
at least—their lighted tapers, so as to throw the light
with a good effect upon their faces: for the room was
darkened. Those who were not handsome, or who had not long
beards, carried <i>their</i> tapers anyhow, and abandoned
themselves to spiritual contemplation. Meanwhile, the
chaunting was very monotonous and dreary. The procession
passed on, slowly, into the chapel, and the drone of voices went
on, and came on, with it, until the Pope himself appeared,
walking under a white satin canopy, and bearing the covered
Sacrament in both hands; cardinals and canons clustered round
him, making a brilliant show. The soldiers of the guard
knelt down as he passed; all the bystanders bowed; and so he
passed on into the chapel: the white satin canopy being removed
from over him at the door, and a white satin parasol hoisted over
his poor old head, in place of it. A few more couples
brought up the rear, and passed into the chapel also. Then,
the chapel door was shut; and it was all over; and everybody
hurried off headlong, as for life or death, to see something
else, and say it wasn’t worth the trouble.</p>
<p>I think the most popular and most crowded sight (excepting
those of Easter Sunday and Monday, which are open to all classes
of people) was the Pope washing the feet of Thirteen men,
representing the twelve apostles, and Judas Iscariot. The
place in which this pious office is performed, is one of the
chapels of St. Peter’s, which is gaily decorated for the
occasion; the thirteen sitting, ‘all of a row,’ on a
very high bench, and looking particularly uncomfortable, with the
eyes of Heaven knows how many English, French, Americans, Swiss,
Germans, Russians, Swedes, Norwegians, and other foreigners,
nailed to their faces all the time. They are robed in
white; and on their heads they wear a stiff white cap, like a
large English porter-pot, without a handle. Each carries in
his hand, a nosegay, of the size of a fine cauliflower; and two
of them, on this occasion, wore spectacles; which, remembering
the characters they sustained, I thought a droll appendage to the
costume. There was a great eye to character. St. John
was represented by a good-looking young man. St. Peter, by
a grave-looking old gentleman, with a flowing brown beard; and
Judas Iscariot by such an enormous hypocrite (I could not make
out, though, whether the expression of his face was real or
assumed) that if he had acted the part to the death and had gone
away and hanged himself, he would have left nothing to be
desired.</p>
<p>As the two large boxes, appropriated to ladies at this sight,
were full to the throat, and getting near was hopeless, we posted
off, along with a great crowd, to be in time at the Table, where
the Pope, in person, waits on these Thirteen; and after a
prodigious struggle at the Vatican staircase, and several
personal conflicts with the Swiss guard, the whole crowd swept
into the room. It was a long gallery hung with drapery of
white and red, with another great box for ladies (who are obliged
to dress in black at these ceremonies, and to wear black veils),
a royal box for the King of Naples and his party; and the table
itself, which, set out like a ball supper, and ornamented with
golden figures of the real apostles, was arranged on an elevated
platform on one side of the gallery. The counterfeit
apostles’ knives and forks were laid out on that side of
the table which was nearest to the wall, so that they might be
stared at again, without let or hindrance.</p>
<p>The body of the room was full of male strangers; the crowd
immense; the heat very great; and the pressure sometimes
frightful. It was at its height, when the stream came
pouring in, from the feet-washing; and then there were such
shrieks and outcries, that a party of Piedmontese dragoons went
to the rescue of the Swiss guard, and helped them to calm the
tumult.</p>
<p>The ladies were particularly ferocious, in their struggles for
places. One lady of my acquaintance was seized round the
waist, in the ladies’ box, by a strong matron, and hoisted
out of her place; and there was another lady (in a back row in
the same box) who improved her position by sticking a large pin
into the ladies before her.</p>
<p>The gentlemen about me were remarkably anxious to see what was
on the table; and one Englishman seemed to have embarked the
whole energy of his nature in the determination to discover
whether there was any mustard. ‘By Jupiter
there’s vinegar!’ I heard him say to his friend,
after he had stood on tiptoe an immense time, and had been
crushed and beaten on all sides. ‘And there’s
oil! I saw them distinctly, in cruets! Can any
gentleman, in front there, see mustard on the table? Sir,
will you oblige me! <i>Do</i> you see a
Mustard-Pot?’</p>
<p>The apostles and Judas appearing on the platform, after much
expectation, were marshalled, in line, in front of the table,
with Peter at the top; and a good long stare was taken at them by
the company, while twelve of them took a long smell at their
nosegays, and Judas—moving his lips very
obtrusively—engaged in inward prayer. Then, the Pope,
clad in a scarlet robe, and wearing on his head a skull-cap of
white satin, appeared in the midst of a crowd of Cardinals and
other dignitaries, and took in his hand a little golden ewer,
from which he poured a little water over one of Peter’s
hands, while one attendant held a golden basin; a second, a fine
cloth; a third, Peter’s nosegay, which was taken from him
during the operation. This his Holiness performed, with
considerable expedition, on every man in the line (Judas, I
observed, to be particularly overcome by his condescension); and
then the whole Thirteen sat down to dinner. Grace said by
the Pope. Peter in the chair.</p>
<p>There was white wine, and red wine: and the dinner looked very
good. The courses appeared in portions, one for each
apostle: and these being presented to the Pope, by Cardinals upon
their knees, were by him handed to the Thirteen. The manner
in which Judas grew more white-livered over his victuals, and
languished, with his head on one side, as if he had no appetite,
defies all description. Peter was a good, sound, old man,
and went in, as the saying is, ‘to win;’ eating
everything that was given him (he got the best: being first in
the row) and saying nothing to anybody. The dishes appeared
to be chiefly composed of fish and vegetables. The Pope
helped the Thirteen to wine also; and, during the whole dinner,
somebody read something aloud, out of a large book—the
Bible, I presume—which nobody could hear, and to which
nobody paid the least attention. The Cardinals, and other
attendants, smiled to each other, from time to time, as if the
thing were a great farce; and if they thought so, there is little
doubt they were perfectly right. His Holiness did what he
had to do, as a sensible man gets through a troublesome ceremony,
and seemed very glad when it was all over.</p>
<p>The Pilgrims’ Suppers: where lords and ladies waited on
the Pilgrims, in token of humility, and dried their feet when
they had been well washed by deputy: were very attractive.
But, of all the many spectacles of dangerous reliance on outward
observances, in themselves mere empty forms, none struck me half
so much as the Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase, which I saw
several times, but to the greatest advantage, or disadvantage, on
Good Friday.</p>
<p>This holy staircase is composed of eight-and-twenty steps,
said to have belonged to Pontius Pilate’s house and to be
the identical stair on which Our Saviour trod, in coming down
from the judgment-seat. Pilgrims ascend it, only on their
knees. It is steep; and, at the summit, is a chapel,
reported to be full of relics; into which they peep through some
iron bars, and then come down again, by one of two side
staircases, which are not sacred, and may be walked on.</p>
<p>On Good Friday, there were, on a moderate computation, a
hundred people, slowly shuffling up these stairs, on their knees,
at one time; while others, who were going up, or had come
down—and a few who had done both, and were going up again
for the second time—stood loitering in the porch below,
where an old gentleman in a sort of watch-box, rattled a tin
canister, with a slit in the top, incessantly, to remind them
that he took the money. The majority were country-people,
male and female. There were four or five Jesuit priests,
however, and some half-dozen well-dressed women. A whole
school of boys, twenty at least, were about half-way
up—evidently enjoying it very much. They were all
wedged together, pretty closely; but the rest of the company gave
the boys as wide a berth as possible, in consequence of their
betraying some recklessness in the management of their boots.</p>
<p>I never, in my life, saw anything at once so ridiculous, and
so unpleasant, as this sight—ridiculous in the absurd
incidents inseparable from it; and unpleasant in its senseless
and unmeaning degradation. There are two steps to begin
with, and then a rather broad landing. The more rigid
climbers went along this landing on their knees, as well as up
the stairs; and the figures they cut, in their shuffling progress
over the level surface, no description can paint. Then, to
see them watch their opportunity from the porch, and cut in where
there was a place next the wall! And to see one man with an
umbrella (brought on purpose, for it was a fine day) hoisting
himself, unlawfully, from stair to stair! And to observe a
demure lady of fifty-five or so, looking back, every now and
then, to assure herself that her legs were properly disposed!</p>
<p>There were such odd differences in the speed of different
people, too. Some got on as if they were doing a match
against time; others stopped to say a prayer on every step.
This man touched every stair with his forehead, and kissed it;
that man scratched his head all the way. The boys got on
brilliantly, and were up and down again before the old lady had
accomplished her half-dozen stairs. But most of the
penitents came down, very sprightly and fresh, as having done a
real good substantial deed which it would take a good deal of sin
to counterbalance; and the old gentleman in the watch-box was
down upon them with his canister while they were in this humour,
I promise you.</p>
<p>As if such a progress were not in its nature inevitably droll
enough, there lay, on the top of the stairs, a wooden figure on a
crucifix, resting on a sort of great iron saucer: so rickety and
unsteady, that whenever an enthusiastic person kissed the figure,
with more than usual devotion, or threw a coin into the saucer,
with more than common readiness (for it served in this respect as
a second or supplementary canister), it gave a great leap and
rattle, and nearly shook the attendant lamp out: horribly
frightening the people further down, and throwing the guilty
party into unspeakable embarrassment.</p>
<p>On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding Thursday, the
Pope bestows his benediction on the people, from the balcony in
front of St. Peter’s. This Easter Sunday was a day so
bright and blue: so cloudless, balmy, wonderfully bright: that
all the previous bad weather vanished from the recollection in a
moment. I had seen the Thursday’s Benediction
dropping damply on some hundreds of umbrellas, but there was not
a sparkle then, in all the hundred fountains of Rome—such
fountains as they are!—and on this Sunday morning they were
running diamonds. The miles of miserable streets through
which we drove (compelled to a certain course by the Pope’s
dragoons: the Roman police on such occasions) were so full of
colour, that nothing in them was capable of wearing a faded
aspect. The common people came out in their gayest dresses;
the richer people in their smartest vehicles; Cardinals rattled
to the church of the Poor Fishermen in their state carriages;
shabby magnificence flaunted its thread-bare liveries and
tarnished cocked hats, in the sun; and every coach in Rome was
put in requisition for the Great Piazza of St. Peter’s.</p>
<p>One hundred and fifty thousand people were there at
least! Yet there was ample room. How many carriages
were there, I don’t know; yet there was room for them too,
and to spare. The great steps of the church were densely
crowded. There were many of the Contadini, from Albano (who
delight in red), in that part of the square, and the mingling of
bright colours in the crowd was beautiful. Below the steps
the troops were ranged. In the magnificent proportions of
the place they looked like a bed of flowers. Sulky Romans,
lively peasants from the neighbouring country, groups of pilgrims
from distant parts of Italy, sight-seeing foreigners of all
nations, made a murmur in the clear air, like so many insects;
and high above them all, plashing and bubbling, and making
rainbow colours in the light, the two delicious fountains welled
and tumbled bountifully.</p>
<p>A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of the
balcony; and the sides of the great window were bedecked with
crimson drapery. An awning was stretched, too, over the
top, to screen the old man from the hot rays of the sun. As
noon approached, all eyes were turned up to this window. In
due time, the chair was seen approaching to the front, with the
gigantic fans of peacock’s feathers, close behind.
The doll within it (for the balcony is very high) then rose up,
and stretched out its tiny arms, while all the male spectators in
the square uncovered, and some, but not by any means the greater
part, kneeled down. The guns upon the ramparts of the
Castle of St. Angelo proclaimed, next moment, that the
benediction was given; drums beat; trumpets sounded; arms
clashed; and the great mass below, suddenly breaking into smaller
heaps, and scattering here and there in rills, was stirred like
parti-coloured sand.</p>
<p>What a bright noon it was, as we rode away! The Tiber
was no longer yellow, but blue. There was a blush on the
old bridges, that made them fresh and hale again. The
Pantheon, with its majestic front, all seamed and furrowed like
an old face, had summer light upon its battered walls.
Every squalid and desolate hut in the Eternal City (bear witness
every grim old palace, to the filth and misery of the plebeian
neighbour that elbows it, as certain as Time has laid its grip on
its patrician head!) was fresh and new with some ray of the
sun. The very prison in the crowded street, a whirl of
carriages and people, had some stray sense of the day, dropping
through its chinks and crevices: and dismal prisoners who could
not wind their faces round the barricading of the blocked-up
windows, stretched out their hands, and clinging to the rusty
bars, turned <i>them</i> towards the overflowing street: as if it
were a cheerful fire, and could be shared in, that way.</p>
<p>But, when the night came on, without a cloud to dim the full
moon, what a sight it was to see the Great Square full once more,
and the whole church, from the cross to the ground, lighted with
innumerable lanterns, tracing out the architecture, and winking
and shining all round the colonnade of the piazza! And what
a sense of exultation, joy, delight, it was, when the great bell
struck half-past seven—on the instant—to behold one
bright red mass of fire, soar gallantly from the top of the
cupola to the extremest summit of the cross, and the moment it
leaped into its place, become the signal of a bursting out of
countless lights, as great, and red, and blazing as itself, from
every part of the gigantic church; so that every cornice,
capital, and smallest ornament of stone, expressed itself in
fire: and the black, solid groundwork of the enormous dome seemed
to grow transparent as an egg-shell!</p>
<p>A train of gunpowder, an electric chain—nothing could be
fired, more suddenly and swiftly, than this second illumination;
and when we had got away, and gone upon a distant height, and
looked towards it two hours afterwards, there it still stood,
shining and glittering in the calm night like a jewel! Not
a line of its proportions wanting; not an angle blunted; not an
atom of its radiance lost.</p>
<p>The next night—Easter Monday—there was a great
display of fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo. We
hired a room in an opposite house, and made our way, to our
places, in good time, through a dense mob of people choking up
the square in front, and all the avenues leading to it; and so
loading the bridge by which the castle is approached, that it
seemed ready to sink into the rapid Tiber below. There are
statues on this bridge (execrable works), and, among them, great
vessels full of burning tow were placed: glaring strangely on the
faces of the crowd, and not less strangely on the stone
counterfeits above them.</p>
<p>The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon; and
then, for twenty minutes or half an hour, the whole castle was
one incessant sheet of fire, and labyrinth of blazing wheels of
every colour, size, and speed: while rockets streamed into the
sky, not by ones or twos, or scores, but hundreds at a
time. The concluding burst—the Girandola—was
like the blowing up into the air of the whole massive castle,
without smoke or dust.</p>
<p>In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse had
dispersed; the moon was looking calmly down upon her wrinkled
image in the river; and half-a-dozen men and boys, with bits of
lighted candle in their hands: moving here and there, in search
of anything worth having, that might have been dropped in the
press: had the whole scene to themselves.</p>
<p>By way of contrast we rode out into old ruined Rome, after all
this firing and booming, to take our leave of the Coliseum.
I had seen it by moonlight before (I could never get through a
day without going back to it), but its tremendous solitude that
night is past all telling. The ghostly pillars in the
Forum; the Triumphal Arches of Old Emperors; those enormous
masses of ruins which were once their palaces; the grass-grown
mounds that mark the graves of ruined temples; the stones of the
Via Sacra, smooth with the tread of feet in ancient Rome; even
these were dimmed, in their transcendent melancholy, by the dark
ghost of its bloody holidays, erect and grim; haunting the old
scene; despoiled by pillaging Popes and fighting Princes, but not
laid; wringing wild hands of weed, and grass, and bramble; and
lamenting to the night in every gap and broken arch—the
shadow of its awful self, immovable!</p>
<p>As we lay down on the grass of the Campagna, next day, on our
way to Florence, hearing the larks sing, we saw that a little
wooden cross had been erected on the spot where the poor Pilgrim
Countess was murdered. So, we piled some loose stones about
it, as the beginning of a mound to her memory, and wondered if we
should ever rest there again, and look back at Rome.</p>
<h2><a name="page345"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 345</span>A
RAPID DIORAMA</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">We</span> are bound for Naples! And
we cross the threshold of the Eternal City at yonder gate, the
Gate of San Giovanni Laterano, where the two last objects that
attract the notice of a departing visitor, and the two first
objects that attract the notice of an arriving one, are a proud
church and a decaying ruin—good emblems of Rome.</p>
<p>Our way lies over the Campagna, which looks more solemn on a
bright blue day like this, than beneath a darker sky; the great
extent of ruin being plainer to the eye: and the sunshine through
the arches of the broken aqueducts, showing other broken arches
shining through them in the melancholy distance. When we
have traversed it, and look back from Albano, its dark,
undulating surface lies below us like a stagnant lake, or like a
broad, dull Lethe flowing round the walls of Rome, and separating
it from all the world! How often have the Legions, in
triumphant march, gone glittering across that purple waste, so
silent and unpeopled now! How often has the train of
captives looked, with sinking hearts, upon the distant city, and
beheld its population pouring out, to hail the return of their
conqueror! What riot, sensuality and murder, have run mad
in the vast palaces now heaps of brick and shattered
marble! What glare of fires, and roar of popular tumult,
and wail of pestilence and famine, have come sweeping over the
wild plain where nothing is now heard but the wind, and where the
solitary lizards gambol unmolested in the sun!</p>
<p>The train of wine-carts going into Rome, each driven by a
shaggy peasant reclining beneath a little gipsy-fashioned canopy
of sheep-skin, is ended now, and we go toiling up into a higher
country where there are trees. The next day brings us on
the Pontine Marshes, wearily flat and lonesome, and overgrown
with brushwood, and swamped with water, but with a fine road made
across them, shaded by a long, long avenue. Here and there,
we pass a solitary guard-house; here and there a hovel, deserted,
and walled up. Some herdsmen loiter on the banks of the
stream beside the road, and sometimes a flat-bottomed boat, towed
by a man, comes rippling idly along it. A horseman passes
occasionally, carrying a long gun cross-wise on the saddle before
him, and attended by fierce dogs; but there is nothing else astir
save the wind and the shadows, until we come in sight of
Terracina.</p>
<p>How blue and bright the sea, rolling below the windows of the
inn so famous in robber stories! How picturesque the great
crags and points of rock overhanging to-morrow’s narrow
road, where galley-slaves are working in the quarries above, and
the sentinels who guard them lounge on the sea-shore! All
night there is the murmur of the sea beneath the stars; and, in
the morning, just at daybreak, the prospect suddenly becoming
expanded, as if by a miracle, reveals—in the far distance,
across the sea there!—Naples with its islands, and Vesuvius
spouting fire! Within a quarter of an hour, the whole is
gone as if it were a vision in the clouds, and there is nothing
but the sea and sky.</p>
<p>The Neapolitan frontier crossed, after two hours’
travelling; and the hungriest of soldiers and custom-house
officers with difficulty appeased; we enter, by a gateless
portal, into the first Neapolitan town—Fondi. Take
note of Fondi, in the name of all that is wretched and
beggarly.</p>
<p>A filthy channel of mud and refuse meanders down the centre of
the miserable streets, fed by obscene rivulets that trickle from
the abject houses. There is not a door, a window, or a
shutter; not a roof, a wall, a post, or a pillar, in all Fondi,
but is decayed, and crazy, and rotting away. The wretched
history of the town, with all its sieges and pillages by
Barbarossa and the rest, might have been acted last year.
How the gaunt dogs that sneak about the miserable streets, come
to be alive, and undevoured by the people, is one of the enigmas
of the world.</p>
<p>A hollow-cheeked and scowling people they are! All
beggars; but that’s nothing. Look at them as they
gather round. Some, are too indolent to come down-stairs,
or are too wisely mistrustful of the stairs, perhaps, to venture:
so stretch out their lean hands from upper windows, and howl;
others, come flocking about us, fighting and jostling one
another, and demanding, incessantly, charity for the love of God,
charity for the love of the Blessed Virgin, charity for the love
of all the Saints. A group of miserable children, almost
naked, screaming forth the same petition, discover that they can
see themselves reflected in the varnish of the carriage, and
begin to dance and make grimaces, that they may have the pleasure
of seeing their antics repeated in this mirror. A crippled
idiot, in the act of striking one of them who drowns his
clamorous demand for charity, observes his angry counterpart in
the panel, stops short, and thrusting out his tongue, begins to
wag his head and chatter. The shrill cry raised at this,
awakens half-a-dozen wild creatures wrapped in frowsy brown
cloaks, who are lying on the church-steps with pots and pans for
sale. These, scrambling up, approach, and beg
defiantly. ‘I am hungry. Give me
something. Listen to me, Signor. I am
hungry!’ Then, a ghastly old woman, fearful of being
too late, comes hobbling down the street, stretching out one
hand, and scratching herself all the way with the other, and
screaming, long before she can be heard, ‘Charity,
charity! I’ll go and pray for you directly, beautiful
lady, if you’ll give me charity!’ Lastly, the
members of a brotherhood for burying the dead: hideously masked,
and attired in shabby black robes, white at the skirts, with the
splashes of many muddy winters: escorted by a dirty priest, and a
congenial cross-bearer: come hurrying past. Surrounded by
this motley concourse, we move out of Fondi: bad bright eyes
glaring at us, out of the darkness of every crazy tenement, like
glistening fragments of its filth and putrefaction.</p>
<p>A noble mountain-pass, with the ruins of a fort on a strong
eminence, traditionally called the Fort of Fra Diavolo; the old
town of Itrí, like a device in pastry, built up, almost
perpendicularly, on a hill, and approached by long steep flights
of steps; beautiful Mola di Gaëta, whose wines, like those
of Albano, have degenerated since the days of Horace, or his
taste for wine was bad: which is not likely of one who enjoyed it
so much, and extolled it so well; another night upon the road at
St. Agatha; a rest next day at Capua, which is picturesque, but
hardly so seductive to a traveller now, as the soldiers of
Prætorian Rome were wont to find the ancient city of that
name; a flat road among vines festooned and looped from tree to
tree; and Mount Vesuvius close at hand at last!—its cone
and summit whitened with snow; and its smoke hanging over it, in
the heavy atmosphere of the day, like a dense cloud. So we
go, rattling down hill, into Naples.</p>
<p>A funeral is coming up the street, towards us. The body,
on an open bier, borne on a kind of palanquin, covered with a gay
cloth of crimson and gold. The mourners, in white gowns and
masks. If there be death abroad, life is well represented
too, for all Naples would seem to be out of doors, and tearing to
and fro in carriages. Some of these, the common
Vetturíno vehicles, are drawn by three horses abreast,
decked with smart trappings and great abundance of brazen
ornament, and always going very fast. Not that their loads
are light; for the smallest of them has at least six people
inside, four in front, four or five more hanging on behind, and
two or three more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree, where
they lie half-suffocated with mud and dust. Exhibitors of
Punch, buffo singers with guitars, reciters of poetry, reciters
of stories, a row of cheap exhibitions with clowns and showmen,
drums, and trumpets, painted cloths representing the wonders
within, and admiring crowds assembled without, assist the whirl
and bustle. Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in doorways,
archways, and kennels; the gentry, gaily dressed, are dashing up
and down in carriages on the Chiaji, or walking in the Public
Gardens; and quiet letter-writers, perched behind their little
desks and inkstands under the Portico of the Great Theatre of San
Carlo, in the public street, are waiting for clients.</p>
<p>Here is a galley-slave in chains, who wants a letter written
to a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting
under the corner arch, and makes his bargain. He has
obtained permission of the sentinel who guards him: who stands
near, leaning against the wall and cracking nuts. The
galley-slave dictates in the ear of the letter-writer, what he
desires to say; and as he can’t read writing, looks
intently in his face, to read there whether he sets down
faithfully what he is told. After a time, the galley-slave
becomes discursive—incoherent. The secretary pauses
and rubs his chin. The galley-slave is voluble and
energetic. The secretary, at length, catches the idea, and
with the air of a man who knows how to word it, sets it down;
stopping, now and then, to glance back at his text
admiringly. The galley-slave is silent. The soldier
stoically cracks his nuts. Is there anything more to say?
inquires the letter-writer. No more. Then listen,
friend of mine. He reads it through. The galley-slave
is quite enchanted. It is folded, and addressed, and given
to him, and he pays the fee. The secretary falls back
indolently in his chair, and takes a book. The galley-slave
gathers up an empty sack. The sentinel throws away a
handful of nut-shells, shoulders his musket, and away they go
together.</p>
<p>Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with their
right hands, when you look at them? Everything is done in
pantomime in Naples, and that is the conventional sign for
hunger. A man who is quarrelling with another, yonder, lays
the palm of his right hand on the back of his left, and shakes
the two thumbs—expressive of a donkey’s
ears—whereat his adversary is goaded to desperation.
Two people bargaining for fish, the buyer empties an imaginary
waistcoat pocket when he is told the price, and walks away
without a word: having thoroughly conveyed to the seller that he
considers it too dear. Two people in carriages, meeting,
one touches his lips, twice or thrice, holding up the five
fingers of his right hand, and gives a horizontal cut in the air
with the palm. The other nods briskly, and goes his
way. He has been invited to a friendly dinner at half-past
five o’clock, and will certainly come.</p>
<p>All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the
wrist, with the forefinger stretched out, expresses a
negative—the only negative beggars will ever
understand. But, in Naples, those five fingers are a
copious language.</p>
<p>All this, and every other kind of out-door life and stir, and
macaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selling all day long, and
begging and stealing everywhere and at all hours, you see upon
the bright sea-shore, where the waves of the bay sparkle
merrily. But, lovers and hunters of the picturesque, let us
not keep too studiously out of view the miserable depravity,
degradation, and wretchedness, with which this gay Neapolitan
life is inseparably associated! It is not well to find
Saint Giles’s so repulsive, and the Porta Capuana so
attractive. A pair of naked legs and a ragged red scarf, do
not make <i>all</i> the difference between what is interesting
and what is coarse and odious? Painting and poetising for
ever, if you will, the beauties of this most beautiful and lovely
spot of earth, let us, as our duty, try to associate a new
picturesque with some faint recognition of man’s destiny
and capabilities; more hopeful, I believe, among the ice and snow
of the North Pole, than in the sun and bloom of Naples.</p>
<p>Capri—once made odious by the deified beast
Tiberius—Ischia, Procida, and the thousand distant beauties
of the Bay, lie in the blue sea yonder, changing in the mist and
sunshine twenty times a-day: now close at hand, now far off, now
unseen. The fairest country in the world, is spread about
us. Whether we turn towards the Miseno shore of the
splendid watery amphitheatre, and go by the Grotto of Posilipo to
the Grotto del Cane and away to Baiæ: or take the other
way, towards Vesuvius and Sorrento, it is one succession of
delights. In the last-named direction, where, over doors
and archways, there are countless little images of San Gennaro,
with his Canute’s hand stretched out, to check the fury of
the Burning Mountain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on
the beautiful Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, built
upon the ashes of the former town destroyed by an eruption of
Vesuvius, within a hundred years; and past the flat-roofed
houses, granaries, and macaroni manufactories; to Castel-a-Mare,
with its ruined castle, now inhabited by fishermen, standing in
the sea upon a heap of rocks. Here, the railroad
terminates; but, hence we may ride on, by an unbroken succession
of enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, sloping from the
highest summit of Saint Angelo, the highest neighbouring
mountain, down to the water’s edge—among vineyards,
olive-trees, gardens of oranges and lemons, orchards, heaped-up
rocks, green gorges in the hills—and by the bases of
snow-covered heights, and through small towns with handsome,
dark-haired women at the doors—and pass delicious summer
villas—to Sorrento, where the Poet Tasso drew his
inspiration from the beauty surrounding him. Returning, we
may climb the heights above Castel-a-Mare, and looking down among
the boughs and leaves, see the crisp water glistening in the sun;
and clusters of white houses in distant Naples, dwindling, in the
great extent of prospect, down to dice. The coming back to
the city, by the beach again, at sunset: with the glowing sea on
one side, and the darkening mountain, with its smoke and flame,
upon the other: is a sublime conclusion to the glory of the
day.</p>
<p>That church by the Porta Capuana—near the old
fisher-market in the dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the
revolt of Masaniello began—is memorable for having been the
scene of one of his earliest proclamations to the people, and is
particularly remarkable for nothing else, unless it be its waxen
and bejewelled Saint in a glass case, with two odd hands; or the
enormous number of beggars who are constantly rapping their chins
there, like a battery of castanets. The cathedral with the
beautiful door, and the columns of African and Egyptian granite
that once ornamented the temple of Apollo, contains the famous
sacred blood of San Gennaro or Januarius: which is preserved in
two phials in a silver tabernacle, and miraculously liquefies
three times a-year, to the great admiration of the people.
At the same moment, the stone (distant some miles) where the
Saint suffered martyrdom, becomes faintly red. It is said
that the officiating priests turn faintly red also, sometimes,
when these miracles occur.</p>
<p>The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance of these
ancient catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem
waiting here, to be buried themselves, are members of a curious
body, called the Royal Hospital, who are the official attendants
at funerals. Two of these old spectres totter away, with
lighted tapers, to show the caverns of death—as unconcerned
as if they were immortal. They were used as burying-places
for three hundred years; and, in one part, is a large pit full of
skulls and bones, said to be the sad remains of a great mortality
occasioned by a plague. In the rest there is nothing but
dust. They consist, chiefly, of great wide corridors and
labyrinths, hewn out of the rock. At the end of some of
these long passages, are unexpected glimpses of the daylight,
shining down from above. It looks as ghastly and as
strange; among the torches, and the dust, and the dark vaults: as
if it, too, were dead and buried.</p>
<p>The present burial-place lies out yonder, on a hill between
the city and Vesuvius. The old Campo Santo with its three
hundred and sixty-five pits, is only used for those who die in
hospitals, and prisons, and are unclaimed by their friends.
The graceful new cemetery, at no great distance from it, though
yet unfinished, has already many graves among its shrubs and
flowers, and airy colonnades. It might be reasonably
objected elsewhere, that some of the tombs are meretricious and
too fanciful; but the general brightness seems to justify it
here; and Mount Vesuvius, separated from them by a lovely slope
of ground, exalts and saddens the scene.</p>
<p>If it be solemn to behold from this new City of the Dead, with
its dark smoke hanging in the clear sky, how much more awful and
impressive is it, viewed from the ghostly ruins of Herculaneum
and Pompeii!</p>
<p>Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, and
look up the silent streets, through the ruined temples of Jupiter
and Isis, over the broken houses with their inmost sanctuaries
open to the day, away to Mount Vesuvius, bright and snowy in the
peaceful distance; and lose all count of time, and heed of other
things, in the strange and melancholy sensation of seeing the
Destroyed and the Destroyer making this quiet picture in the
sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at every turn, the little
familiar tokens of human habitation and every-day pursuits; the
chafing of the bucket-rope in the stone rim of the exhausted
well; the track of carriage-wheels in the pavement of the street;
the marks of drinking-vessels on the stone counter of the
wine-shop; the amphoræ in private cellars, stored away so
many hundred years ago, and undisturbed to this hour—all
rendering the solitude and deadly lonesomeness of the place, ten
thousand times more solemn, than if the volcano, in its fury, had
swept the city from the earth, and sunk it in the bottom of the
sea.</p>
<p>After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded the
eruption, workmen were employed in shaping out, in stone, new
ornaments for temples and other buildings that had
suffered. Here lies their work, outside the city gate, as
if they would return to-morrow.</p>
<p>In the cellar of Diomede’s house, where certain
skeletons were found huddled together, close to the door, the
impression of their bodies on the ashes, hardened with the ashes,
and became stamped and fixed there, after they had shrunk,
inside, to scanty bones. So, in the theatre of Herculaneum,
a comic mask, floating on the stream when it was hot and liquid,
stamped its mimic features in it as it hardened into stone; and
now, it turns upon the stranger the fantastic look it turned upon
the audiences in that same theatre two thousand years ago.</p>
<p>Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, and in
and out of the houses, and traversing the secret chambers of the
temples of a religion that has vanished from the earth, and
finding so many fresh traces of remote antiquity: as if the
course of Time had been stopped after this desolation, and there
had been no nights and days, months, years, and centuries, since:
nothing is more impressive and terrible than the many evidences
of the searching nature of the ashes, as bespeaking their
irresistible power, and the impossibility of escaping them.
In the wine-cellars, they forced their way into the earthen
vessels: displacing the wine and choking them, to the brim, with
dust. In the tombs, they forced the ashes of the dead from
the funeral urns, and rained new ruin even into them. The
mouths, and eyes, and skulls of all the skeletons, were stuffed
with this terrible hail. In Herculaneum, where the flood
was of a different and a heavier kind, it rolled in, like a
sea. Imagine a deluge of water turned to marble, at its
height—and that is what is called ‘the lava’
here.</p>
<p>Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the brink of
which we now stand, looking down, when they came on some of the
stone benches of the theatre—those steps (for such they
seem) at the bottom of the excavation—and found the buried
city of Herculaneum. Presently going down, with lighted
torches, we are perplexed by great walls of monstrous thickness,
rising up between the benches, shutting out the stage, obtruding
their shapeless forms in absurd places, confusing the whole plan,
and making it a disordered dream. We cannot, at first,
believe, or picture to ourselves, that <span
class="smcap">This</span> came rolling in, and drowned the city;
and that all that is not here, has been cut away, by the axe,
like solid stone. But this perceived and understood, the
horror and oppression of its presence are indescribable.</p>
<p>Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless chambers of
both cities, or carefully removed to the museum at Naples, are as
fresh and plain, as if they had been executed yesterday.
Here are subjects of still life, as provisions, dead game,
bottles, glasses, and the like; familiar classical stories, or
mythological fables, always forcibly and plainly told; conceits
of cupids, quarrelling, sporting, working at trades; theatrical
rehearsals; poets reading their productions to their friends;
inscriptions chalked upon the walls; political squibs,
advertisements, rough drawings by schoolboys; everything to
people and restore the ancient cities, in the fancy of their
wondering visitor. Furniture, too, you see, of every
kind—lamps, tables, couches; vessels for eating, drinking,
and cooking; workmen’s tools, surgical instruments, tickets
for the theatre, pieces of money, personal ornaments, bunches of
keys found clenched in the grasp of skeletons, helmets of guards
and warriors; little household bells, yet musical with their old
domestic tones.</p>
<p>The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell the
interest of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect
fascination. The looking, from either ruined city, into the
neighbouring grounds overgrown with beautiful vines and luxuriant
trees; and remembering that house upon house, temple on temple,
building after building, and street after street, are still lying
underneath the roots of all the quiet cultivation, waiting to be
turned up to the light of day; is something so wonderful, so full
of mystery, so captivating to the imagination, that one would
think it would be paramount, and yield to nothing else. To
nothing but Vesuvius; but the mountain is the genius of the
scene. From every indication of the ruin it has worked, we
look, again, with an absorbing interest to where its smoke is
rising up into the sky. It is beyond us, as we thread the
ruined streets: above us, as we stand upon the ruined walls, we
follow it through every vista of broken columns, as we wander
through the empty court-yards of the houses; and through the
garlandings and interlacings of every wanton vine. Turning
away to Pæstum yonder, to see the awful structures built,
the least aged of them, hundreds of years before the birth of
Christ, and standing yet, erect in lonely majesty, upon the wild,
malaria-blighted plain—we watch Vesuvius as it disappears
from the prospect, and watch for it again, on our return, with
the same thrill of interest: as the doom and destiny of all this
beautiful country, biding its terrible time.</p>
<p>It is very warm in the sun, on this early spring-day, when we
return from Pæstum, but very cold in the shade: insomuch,
that although we may lunch, pleasantly, at noon, in the open air,
by the gate of Pompeii, the neighbouring rivulet supplies thick
ice for our wine. But, the sun is shining brightly; there
is not a cloud or speck of vapour in the whole blue sky, looking
down upon the bay of Naples; and the moon will be at the full
to-night. No matter that the snow and ice lie thick upon
the summit of Vesuvius, or that we have been on foot all day at
Pompeii, or that croakers maintain that strangers should not be
on the mountain by night, in such an unusual season. Let us
take advantage of the fine weather; make the best of our way to
Resina, the little village at the foot of the mountain; prepare
ourselves, as well as we can, on so short a notice, at the
guide’s house; ascend at once, and have sunset half-way up,
moonlight at the top, and midnight to come down in!</p>
<p>At four o’clock in the afternoon, there is a terrible
uproar in the little stable-yard of Signior Salvatore, the
recognised head-guide, with the gold band round his cap; and
thirty under-guides who are all scuffling and screaming at once,
are preparing half-a-dozen saddled ponies, three litters, and
some stout staves, for the journey. Every one of the
thirty, quarrels with the other twenty-nine, and frightens the
six ponies; and as much of the village as can possibly squeeze
itself into the little stable-yard, participates in the tumult,
and gets trodden on by the cattle.</p>
<p>After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than would
suffice for the storming of Naples, the procession starts.
The head-guide, who is liberally paid for all the attendants,
rides a little in advance of the party; the other thirty guides
proceed on foot. Eight go forward with the litters that are
to be used by-and-by; and the remaining two-and-twenty beg.</p>
<p>We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad flights
of stairs, for some time. At length, we leave these, and
the vineyards on either side of them, and emerge upon a bleak
bare region where the lava lies confusedly, in enormous rusty
masses; as if the earth had been ploughed up by burning
thunderbolts. And now, we halt to see the sun set.
The change that falls upon the dreary region, and on the whole
mountain, as its red light fades, and the night comes
on—and the unutterable solemnity and dreariness that reign
around, who that has witnessed it, can ever forget!</p>
<p>It is dark, when after winding, for some time, over the broken
ground, we arrive at the foot of the cone: which is extremely
steep, and seems to rise, almost perpendicularly, from the spot
where we dismount. The only light is reflected from the
snow, deep, hard, and white, with which the cone is
covered. It is now intensely cold, and the air is
piercing. The thirty-one have brought no torches, knowing
that the moon will rise before we reach the top. Two of the
litters are devoted to the two ladies; the third, to a rather
heavy gentleman from Naples, whose hospitality and good-nature
have attached him to the expedition, and determined him to assist
in doing the honours of the mountain. The rather heavy
gentleman is carried by fifteen men; each of the ladies by
half-a-dozen. We who walk, make the best use of our staves;
and so the whole party begin to labour upward over the
snow,—as if they were toiling to the summit of an
antediluvian Twelfth-cake.</p>
<p>We are a long time toiling up; and the head-guide looks oddly
about him when one of the company—not an Italian, though an
habitué of the mountain for many years: whom we will call,
for our present purpose, Mr. Pickle of Portici—suggests
that, as it is freezing hard, and the usual footing of ashes is
covered by the snow and ice, it will surely be difficult to
descend. But the sight of the litters above, tilting up and
down, and jerking from this side to that, as the bearers
continually slip and tumble, diverts our attention; more
especially as the whole length of the rather heavy gentleman is,
at that moment, presented to us alarmingly foreshortened, with
his head downwards.</p>
<p>The rising of the moon soon afterwards, revives the flagging
spirits of the bearers. Stimulating each other with their
usual watchword, ‘Courage, friend! It is to eat
macaroni!’ they press on, gallantly, for the summit.</p>
<p>From tingeing the top of the snow above us, with a band of
light, and pouring it in a stream through the valley below, while
we have been ascending in the dark, the moon soon lights the
whole white mountain-side, and the broad sea down below, and tiny
Naples in the distance, and every village in the country
round. The whole prospect is in this lovely state, when we
come upon the platform on the mountain-top—the region of
Fire—an exhausted crater formed of great masses of gigantic
cinders, like blocks of stone from some tremendous waterfall,
burnt up; from every chink and crevice of which, hot, sulphurous
smoke is pouring out: while, from another conical-shaped hill,
the present crater, rising abruptly from this platform at the
end, great sheets of fire are streaming forth: reddening the
night with flame, blackening it with smoke, and spotting it with
red-hot stones and cinders, that fly up into the air like
feathers, and fall down like lead. What words can paint the
gloom and grandeur of this scene!</p>
<p>The broken ground; the smoke; the sense of suffocation from
the sulphur: the fear of falling down through the crevices in the
yawning ground; the stopping, every now and then, for somebody
who is missing in the dark (for the dense smoke now obscures the
moon); the intolerable noise of the thirty; and the hoarse
roaring of the mountain; make it a scene of such confusion, at
the same time, that we reel again. But, dragging the ladies
through it, and across another exhausted crater to the foot of
the present Volcano, we approach close to it on the windy side,
and then sit down among the hot ashes at its foot, and look up in
silence; faintly estimating the action that is going on within,
from its being full a hundred feet higher, at this minute, than
it was six weeks ago.</p>
<p>There is something in the fire and roar, that generates an
irresistible desire to get nearer to it. We cannot rest
long, without starting off, two of us, on our hands and knees,
accompanied by the head-guide, to climb to the brim of the
flaming crater, and try to look in. Meanwhile, the thirty
yell, as with one voice, that it is a dangerous proceeding, and
call to us to come back; frightening the rest of the party out of
their wits.</p>
<p>What with their noise, and what with the trembling of the thin
crust of ground, that seems about to open underneath our feet and
plunge us in the burning gulf below (which is the real danger, if
there be any); and what with the flashing of the fire in our
faces, and the shower of red-hot ashes that is raining down, and
the choking smoke and sulphur; we may well feel giddy and
irrational, like drunken men. But, we contrive to climb up
to the brim, and look down, for a moment, into the Hell of
boiling fire below. Then, we all three come rolling down;
blackened, and singed, and scorched, and hot, and giddy: and each
with his dress alight in half-a-dozen places.</p>
<p>You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of
descending, is, by sliding down the ashes: which, forming a
gradually-increasing ledge below the feet, prevent too rapid a
descent. But, when we have crossed the two exhausted
craters on our way back and are come to this precipitous place,
there is (as Mr. Pickle has foretold) no vestige of ashes to be
seen; the whole being a smooth sheet of ice.</p>
<p>In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously join
hands, and make a chain of men; of whom the foremost beat, as
well as they can, a rough track with their sticks, down which we
prepare to follow. The way being fearfully steep, and none
of the party: even of the thirty: being able to keep their feet
for six paces together, the ladies are taken out of their
litters, and placed, each between two careful persons; while
others of the thirty hold by their skirts, to prevent their
falling forward—a necessary precaution, tending to the
immediate and hopeless dilapidation of their apparel. The
rather heavy gentleman is abjured to leave his litter too, and be
escorted in a similar manner; but he resolves to be brought down
as he was brought up, on the principle that his fifteen bearers
are not likely to tumble all at once, and that he is safer so,
than trusting to his own legs.</p>
<p>In this order, we begin the descent: sometimes on foot,
sometimes shuffling on the ice: always proceeding much more
quietly and slowly, than on our upward way: and constantly
alarmed by the falling among us of somebody from behind, who
endangers the footing of the whole party, and clings
pertinaciously to anybody’s ankles. It is impossible
for the litter to be in advance, too, as the track has to be
made; and its appearance behind us, overhead—with some one
or other of the bearers always down, and the rather heavy
gentleman with his legs always in the air—is very
threatening and frightful. We have gone on thus, a very
little way, painfully and anxiously, but quite merrily, and
regarding it as a great success—and have all fallen several
times, and have all been stopped, somehow or other, as we were
sliding away—when Mr. Pickle of Portici, in the act of
remarking on these uncommon circumstances as quite beyond his
experience, stumbles, falls, disengages himself, with quick
presence of mind, from those about him, plunges away head
foremost, and rolls, over and over, down the whole surface of the
cone!</p>
<p>Sickening as it is to look, and be so powerless to help him, I
see him there, in the moonlight—I have had such a dream
often—skimming over the white ice, like a
cannon-ball. Almost at the same moment, there is a cry from
behind; and a man who has carried a light basket of spare cloaks
on his head, comes rolling past, at the same frightful speed,
closely followed by a boy. At this climax of the chapter of
accidents, the remaining eight-and-twenty vociferate to that
degree, that a pack of wolves would be music to them!</p>
<p>Giddy, and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is Pickle of
Portici when we reach the place where we dismounted, and where
the horses are waiting; but, thank God, sound in limb! And
never are we likely to be more glad to see a man alive and on his
feet, than to see him now—making light of it too, though
sorely bruised and in great pain. The boy is brought into
the Hermitage on the Mountain, while we are at supper, with his
head tied up; and the man is heard of, some hours
afterwards. He too is bruised and stunned, but has broken
no bones; the snow having, fortunately, covered all the larger
blocks of rock and stone, and rendered them harmless.</p>
<p>After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing fire,
we again take horse, and continue our descent to
Salvatore’s house—very slowly, by reason of our
bruised friend being hardly able to keep the saddle, or endure
the pain of motion. Though it is so late at night, or early
in the morning, all the people of the village are waiting about
the little stable-yard when we arrive, and looking up the road by
which we are expected. Our appearance is hailed with a
great clamour of tongues, and a general sensation for which in
our modesty we are somewhat at a loss to account, until, turning
into the yard, we find that one of a party of French gentlemen
who were on the mountain at the same time is lying on some straw
in the stable, with a broken limb: looking like Death, and
suffering great torture; and that we were confidently supposed to
have encountered some worse accident.</p>
<p>So ‘well returned, and Heaven be praised!’ as the
cheerful Vetturíno, who has borne us company all the way
from Pisa, says, with all his heart! And away with his
ready horses, into sleeping Naples!</p>
<p>It wakes again to Policinelli and pickpockets, buffo singers
and beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness, dirt, and
universal degradation; airing its Harlequin suit in the sunshine,
next day and every day; singing, starving, dancing, gaming, on
the sea-shore; and leaving all labour to the burning mountain,
which is ever at its work.</p>
<p>Our English dilettanti would be very pathetic on the subject
of the national taste, if they could hear an Italian opera half
as badly sung in England as we may hear the Foscari performed,
to-night, in the splendid theatre of San Carlo. But, for
astonishing truth and spirit in seizing and embodying the real
life about it, the shabby little San Carlino Theatre—the
rickety house one story high, with a staring picture outside:
down among the drums and trumpets, and the tumblers, and the lady
conjurer—is without a rival anywhere.</p>
<p>There is one extraordinary feature in the real life of Naples,
at which we may take a glance before we go—the
Lotteries.</p>
<p>They prevail in most parts of Italy, but are particularly
obvious, in their effects and influences, here. They are
drawn every Saturday. They bring an immense revenue to the
Government; and diffuse a taste for gambling among the poorest of
the poor, which is very comfortable to the coffers of the State,
and very ruinous to themselves. The lowest stake is one
grain; less than a farthing. One hundred numbers—from
one to a hundred, inclusive—are put into a box. Five
are drawn. Those are the prizes. I buy three
numbers. If one of them come up, I win a small prize.
If two, some hundreds of times my stake. If three, three
thousand five hundred times my stake. I stake (or play as
they call it) what I can upon my numbers, and buy what numbers I
please. The amount I play, I pay at the lottery office,
where I purchase the ticket; and it is stated on the ticket
itself.</p>
<p>Every lottery office keeps a printed book, an Universal
Lottery Diviner, where every possible accident and circumstance
is provided for, and has a number against it. For instance,
let us take two carlini—about sevenpence. On our way
to the lottery office, we run against a black man. When we
get there, we say gravely, ‘The Diviner.’ It is
handed over the counter, as a serious matter of business.
We look at black man. Such a number. ‘Give us
that.’ We look at running against a person in the
street. ‘Give us that.’ We look at the
name of the street itself. ‘Give us
that.’ Now, we have our three numbers.</p>
<p>If the roof of the theatre of San Carlo were to fall in, so
many people would play upon the numbers attached to such an
accident in the Diviner, that the Government would soon close
those numbers, and decline to run the risk of losing any more
upon them. This often happens. Not long ago, when
there was a fire in the King’s Palace, there was such a
desperate run on fire, and king, and palace, that further stakes
on the numbers attached to those words in the Golden Book were
forbidden. Every accident or event, is supposed, by the
ignorant populace, to be a revelation to the beholder, or party
concerned, in connection with the lottery. Certain people
who have a talent for dreaming fortunately, are much sought
after; and there are some priests who are constantly favoured
with visions of the lucky numbers.</p>
<p>I heard of a horse running away with a man, and dashing him
down, dead, at the corner of a street. Pursuing the horse
with incredible speed, was another man, who ran so fast, that he
came up, immediately after the accident. He threw himself
upon his knees beside the unfortunate rider, and clasped his hand
with an expression of the wildest grief. ‘If you have
life,’ he said, ‘speak one word to me! If you
have one gasp of breath left, mention your age for Heaven’s
sake, that I may play that number in the lottery.’</p>
<p>It is four o’clock in the afternoon, and we may go to
see our lottery drawn. The ceremony takes place every
Saturday, in the Tribunale, or Court of Justice—this
singular, earthy-smelling room, or gallery, as mouldy as an old
cellar, and as damp as a dungeon. At the upper end is a
platform, with a large horse-shoe table upon it; and a President
and Council sitting round—all judges of the Law. The
man on the little stool behind the President, is the Capo
Lazzarone, a kind of tribune of the people, appointed on their
behalf to see that all is fairly conducted: attended by a few
personal friends. A ragged, swarthy fellow he is: with long
matted hair hanging down all over his face: and covered, from
head to foot, with most unquestionably genuine dirt. All
the body of the room is filled with the commonest of the
Neapolitan people: and between them and the platform, guarding
the steps leading to the latter, is a small body of soldiers.</p>
<p>There is some delay in the arrival of the necessary number of
judges; during which, the box, in which the numbers are being
placed, is a source of the deepest interest. When the box
is full, the boy who is to draw the numbers out of it becomes the
prominent feature of the proceedings. He is already dressed
for his part, in a tight brown Holland coat, with only one (the
left) sleeve to it, which leaves his right arm bared to the
shoulder, ready for plunging down into the mysterious chest.</p>
<p>During the hush and whisper that pervade the room, all eyes
are turned on this young minister of fortune. People begin
to inquire his age, with a view to the next lottery; and the
number of his brothers and sisters; and the age of his father and
mother; and whether he has any moles or pimples upon him; and
where, and how many; when the arrival of the last judge but one
(a little old man, universally dreaded as possessing the Evil
Eye) makes a slight diversion, and would occasion a greater one,
but that he is immediately deposed, as a source of interest, by
the officiating priest, who advances gravely to his place,
followed by a very dirty little boy, carrying his sacred
vestments, and a pot of Holy Water.</p>
<p>Here is the last judge come at last, and now he takes his
place at the horse-shoe table.</p>
<p>There is a murmur of irrepressible agitation. In the
midst of it, the priest puts his head into the sacred vestments,
and pulls the same over his shoulders. Then he says a
silent prayer; and dipping a brush into the pot of Holy Water,
sprinkles it over the box—and over the boy, and gives them
a double-barrelled blessing, which the box and the boy are both
hoisted on the table to receive. The boy remaining on the
table, the box is now carried round the front of the platform, by
an attendant, who holds it up and shakes it lustily all the time;
seeming to say, like the conjurer, ‘There is no deception,
ladies and gentlemen; keep your eyes upon me, if you
please!’</p>
<p>At last, the box is set before the boy; and the boy, first
holding up his naked arm and open hand, dives down into the hole
(it is made like a ballot-box) and pulls out a number, which is
rolled up, round something hard, like a bonbon. This he
hands to the judge next him, who unrolls a little bit, and hands
it to the President, next to whom he sits. The President
unrolls it, very slowly. The Capo Lazzarone leans over his
shoulder. The President holds it up, unrolled, to the Capo
Lazzarone. The Capo Lazzarone, looking at it eagerly, cries
out, in a shrill, loud voice, ‘Sessantadue!’
(sixty-two), expressing the two upon his fingers, as he calls it
out. Alas! the Capo Lazzarone himself has not staked on
sixty-two. His face is very long, and his eyes roll
wildly.</p>
<p>As it happens to be a favourite number, however, it is pretty
well received, which is not always the case. They are all
drawn with the same ceremony, omitting the blessing. One
blessing is enough for the whole multiplication-table. The
only new incident in the proceedings, is the gradually deepening
intensity of the change in the Cape Lazzarone, who has,
evidently, speculated to the very utmost extent of his means; and
who, when he sees the last number, and finds that it is not one
of his, clasps his hands, and raises his eyes to the ceiling
before proclaiming it, as though remonstrating, in a secret
agony, with his patron saint, for having committed so gross a
breach of confidence. I hope the Capo Lazzarone may not
desert him for some other member of the Calendar, but he seems to
threaten it.</p>
<p>Where the winners may be, nobody knows. They certainly
are not present; the general disappointment filling one with pity
for the poor people. They look: when we stand aside,
observing them, in their passage through the court-yard down
below: as miserable as the prisoners in the gaol (it forms a part
of the building), who are peeping down upon them, from between
their bars; or, as the fragments of human heads which are still
dangling in chains outside, in memory of the good old times, when
their owners were strung up there, for the popular
edification.</p>
<p>Away from Naples in a glorious sunrise, by the road to Capua,
and then on a three days’ journey along by-roads, that we
may see, on the way, the monastery of Monte Cassino, which is
perched on the steep and lofty hill above the little town of San
Germano, and is lost on a misty morning in the clouds.</p>
<p>So much the better, for the deep sounding of its bell, which,
as we go winding up, on mules, towards the convent, is heard
mysteriously in the still air, while nothing is seen but the grey
mist, moving solemnly and slowly, like a funeral
procession. Behold, at length the shadowy pile of building
close before us: its grey walls and towers dimly seen, though so
near and so vast: and the raw vapour rolling through its
cloisters heavily.</p>
<p>There are two black shadows walking to and fro in the
quadrangle, near the statues of the Patron Saint and his sister;
and hopping on behind them, in and out of the old arches, is a
raven, croaking in answer to the bell, and uttering, at
intervals, the purest Tuscan. How like a Jesuit he
looks! There never was a sly and stealthy fellow so at home
as is this raven, standing now at the refectory door, with his
head on one side, and pretending to glance another way, while he
is scrutinizing the visitors keenly, and listening with fixed
attention. What a dull-headed monk the porter becomes in
comparison!</p>
<p>‘He speaks like us!’ says the porter: ‘quite
as plainly.’ Quite as plainly, Porter. Nothing
could be more expressive than his reception of the peasants who
are entering the gate with baskets and burdens. There is a
roll in his eye, and a chuckle in his throat, which should
qualify him to be chosen Superior of an Order of Ravens. He
knows all about it. ‘It’s all right,’ he
says. ‘We know what we know. Come along, good
people. Glad to see you!’ How was this
extraordinary structure ever built in such a situation, where the
labour of conveying the stone, and iron, and marble, so great a
height, must have been prodigious? ‘Caw!’ says
the raven, welcoming the peasants. How, being despoiled by
plunder, fire and earthquake, has it risen from its ruins, and
been again made what we now see it, with its church so sumptuous
and magnificent? ‘Caw!’ says the raven,
welcoming the peasants. These people have a miserable
appearance, and (as usual) are densely ignorant, and all beg,
while the monks are chaunting in the chapel.
‘Caw!’ says the raven, ‘Cuckoo!’</p>
<p>So we leave him, chuckling and rolling his eye at the convent
gate, and wind slowly down again through the cloud. At last
emerging from it, we come in sight of the village far below, and
the flat green country intersected by rivulets; which is pleasant
and fresh to see after the obscurity and haze of the
convent—no disrespect to the raven, or the holy friars.</p>
<p>Away we go again, by muddy roads, and through the most
shattered and tattered of villages, where there is not a whole
window among all the houses, or a whole garment among all the
peasants, or the least appearance of anything to eat, in any of
the wretched hucksters’ shops. The women wear a
bright red bodice laced before and behind, a white skirt, and the
Neapolitan head-dress of square folds of linen, primitively meant
to carry loads on. The men and children wear anything they
can get. The soldiers are as dirty and rapacious as the
dogs. The inns are such hobgoblin places, that they are
infinitely more attractive and amusing than the best hotels in
Paris. Here is one near Valmontone (that is Valmontone the
round, walled town on the mount opposite), which is approached by
a quagmire almost knee-deep. There is a wild colonnade
below, and a dark yard full of empty stables and lofts, and a
great long kitchen with a great long bench and a great long form,
where a party of travellers, with two priests among them, are
crowding round the fire while their supper is cooking.
Above stairs, is a rough brick gallery to sit in, with very
little windows with very small patches of knotty glass in them,
and all the doors that open from it (a dozen or two) off their
hinges, and a bare board on tressels for a table, at which thirty
people might dine easily, and a fireplace large enough in itself
for a breakfast-parlour, where, as the faggots blaze and crackle,
they illuminate the ugliest and grimmest of faces, drawn in
charcoal on the whitewashed chimney-sides by previous
travellers. There is a flaring country lamp on the table;
and, hovering about it, scratching her thick black hair
continually, a yellow dwarf of a woman, who stands on tiptoe to
arrange the hatchet knives, and takes a flying leap to look into
the water-jug. The beds in the adjoining rooms are of the
liveliest kind. There is not a solitary scrap of
looking-glass in the house, and the washing apparatus is
identical with the cooking utensils. But the yellow dwarf
sets on the table a good flask of excellent wine, holding a quart
at least; and produces, among half-a-dozen other dishes,
two-thirds of a roasted kid, smoking hot. She is as
good-humoured, too, as dirty, which is saying a great deal.
So here’s long life to her, in the flask of wine, and
prosperity to the establishment.</p>
<p>Rome gained and left behind, and with it the Pilgrims who are
now repairing to their own homes again—each with his
scallop shell and staff, and soliciting alms for the love of
God—we come, by a fair country, to the Falls of Terni,
where the whole Velino river dashes, headlong, from a rocky
height, amidst shining spray and rainbows. Perugia,
strongly fortified by art and nature, on a lofty eminence, rising
abruptly from the plain where purple mountains mingle with the
distant sky, is glowing, on its market-day, with radiant
colours. They set off its sombre but rich Gothic buildings
admirably. The pavement of its market-place is strewn with
country goods. All along the steep hill leading from the
town, under the town wall, there is a noisy fair of calves,
lambs, pigs, horses, mules, and oxen. Fowls, geese, and
turkeys, flutter vigorously among their very hoofs; and buyers,
sellers, and spectators, clustering everywhere, block up the road
as we come shouting down upon them.</p>
<p>Suddenly, there is a ringing sound among our horses. The
driver stops them. Sinking in his saddle, and casting up
his eyes to Heaven, he delivers this apostrophe, ‘Oh Jove
Omnipotent! here is a horse has lost his shoe!’</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the tremendous nature of this accident, and
the utterly forlorn look and gesture (impossible in any one but
an Italian Vetturíno) with which it is announced, it is
not long in being repaired by a mortal Farrier, by whose
assistance we reach Castiglione the same night, and Arezzo next
day. Mass is, of course, performing in its fine cathedral,
where the sun shines in among the clustered pillars, through rich
stained-glass windows: half revealing, half concealing the
kneeling figures on the pavement, and striking out paths of
spotted light in the long aisles.</p>
<p>But, how much beauty of another kind is here, when, on a fair
clear morning, we look, from the summit of a hill, on
Florence! See where it lies before us in a sun-lighted
valley, bright with the winding Arno, and shut in by swelling
hills; its domes, and towers, and palaces, rising from the rich
country in a glittering heap, and shining in the sun like
gold!</p>
<p>Magnificently stern and sombre are the streets of beautiful
Florence; and the strong old piles of building make such heaps of
shadow, on the ground and in the river, that there is another and
a different city of rich forms and fancies, always lying at our
feet. Prodigious palaces, constructed for defence, with
small distrustful windows heavily barred, and walls of great
thickness formed of huge masses of rough stone, frown, in their
old sulky state, on every street. In the midst of the
city—in the Piazza of the Grand Duke, adorned with
beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune—rises the
Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging battlements, and
the Great Tower that watches over the whole town. In its
court-yard—worthy of the Castle of Otranto in its ponderous
gloom—is a massive staircase that the heaviest waggon and
the stoutest team of horses might be driven up. Within it,
is a Great Saloon, faded and tarnished in its stately
decorations, and mouldering by grains, but recording yet, in
pictures on its walls, the triumphs of the Medici and the wars of
the old Florentine people. The prison is hard by, in an
adjacent court-yard of the building—a foul and dismal
place, where some men are shut up close, in small cells like
ovens; and where others look through bars and beg; where some are
playing draughts, and some are talking to their friends, who
smoke, the while, to purify the air; and some are buying wine and
fruit of women-vendors; and all are squalid, dirty, and vile to
look at. ‘They are merry enough, Signore,’ says
the jailer. ‘They are all blood-stained here,’
he adds, indicating, with his hand, three-fourths of the whole
building. Before the hour is out, an old man, eighty years
of age, quarrelling over a bargain with a young girl of
seventeen, stabs her dead, in the market-place full of bright
flowers; and is brought in prisoner, to swell the number.</p>
<p>Among the four old bridges that span the river, the Ponte
Vecchio—that bridge which is covered with the shops of
Jewellers and Goldsmiths—is a most enchanting feature in
the scene. The space of one house, in the centre, being
left open, the view beyond is shown as in a frame; and that
precious glimpse of sky, and water, and rich buildings, shining
so quietly among the huddled roofs and gables on the bridge, is
exquisite. Above it, the Gallery of the Grand Duke crosses
the river. It was built to connect the two Great Palaces by
a secret passage; and it takes its jealous course among the
streets and houses, with true despotism: going where it lists,
and spurning every obstacle away, before it.</p>
<p>The Grand Duke has a worthier secret passage through the
streets, in his black robe and hood, as a member of the Compagnia
della Misericordia, which brotherhood includes all ranks of
men. If an accident take place, their office is, to raise
the sufferer, and bear him tenderly to the Hospital. If a
fire break out, it is one of their functions to repair to the
spot, and render their assistance and protection. It is,
also, among their commonest offices, to attend and console the
sick; and they neither receive money, nor eat, nor drink, in any
house they visit for this purpose. Those who are on duty
for the time, are all called together, on a moment’s
notice, by the tolling of the great bell of the Tower; and it is
said that the Grand Duke has been seen, at this sound, to rise
from his seat at table, and quietly withdraw to attend the
summons.</p>
<p>In this other large Piazza, where an irregular kind of market
is held, and stores of old iron and other small merchandise are
set out on stalls, or scattered on the pavement, are grouped
together, the Cathedral with its great Dome, the beautiful
Italian Gothic Tower the Campanile, and the Baptistery with its
wrought bronze doors. And here, a small untrodden square in
the pavement, is ‘the Stone of <span
class="smcap">Dante</span>,’ where (so runs the story) he
was used to bring his stool, and sit in contemplation. I
wonder was he ever, in his bitter exile, withheld from cursing
the very stones in the streets of Florence the ungrateful, by any
kind remembrance of this old musing-place, and its association
with gentle thoughts of little Beatrice!</p>
<p>The chapel of the Medici, the Good and Bad Angels, of
Florence; the church of Santa Croce where Michael Angelo lies
buried, and where every stone in the cloisters is eloquent on
great men’s deaths; innumerable churches, often masses of
unfinished heavy brickwork externally, but solemn and serene
within; arrest our lingering steps, in strolling through the
city.</p>
<p>In keeping with the tombs among the cloisters, is the Museum
of Natural History, famous through the world for its preparations
in wax; beginning with models of leaves, seeds, plants, inferior
animals; and gradually ascending, through separate organs of the
human frame, up to the whole structure of that wonderful
creation, exquisitely presented, as in recent death. Few
admonitions of our frail mortality can be more solemn and more
sad, or strike so home upon the heart, as the counterfeits of
Youth and Beauty that are lying there, upon their beds, in their
last sleep.</p>
<p>Beyond the walls, the whole sweet Valley of the Arno, the
convent at Fiesole, the Tower of Galileo, <span
class="smcap">Boccaccio’s</span> house, old villas and
retreats; innumerable spots of interest, all glowing in a
landscape of surpassing beauty steeped in the richest light; are
spread before us. Returning from so much brightness, how
solemn and how grand the streets again, with their great, dark,
mournful palaces, and many legends: not of siege, and war, and
might, and Iron Hand alone, but of the triumphant growth of
peaceful Arts and Sciences.</p>
<p>What light is shed upon the world, at this day, from amidst
these rugged Palaces of Florence! Here, open to all comers,
in their beautiful and calm retreats, the ancient Sculptors are
immortal, side by side with Michael Angelo, Canova, Titian,
Rembrandt, Raphael, Poets, Historians, Philosophers—those
illustrious men of history, beside whom its crowned heads and
harnessed warriors show so poor and small, and are so soon
forgotten. Here, the imperishable part of noble minds
survives, placid and equal, when strongholds of assault and
defence are overthrown; when the tyranny of the many, or the few,
or both, is but a tale; when Pride and Power are so much
cloistered dust. The fire within the stern streets, and
among the massive Palaces and Towers, kindled by rays from
Heaven, is still burning brightly, when the flickering of war is
extinguished and the household fires of generations have decayed;
as thousands upon thousands of faces, rigid with the strife and
passion of the hour, have faded out of the old Squares and public
haunts, while the nameless Florentine Lady, preserved from
oblivion by a Painter’s hand, yet lives on, in enduring
grace and youth.</p>
<p>Let us look back on Florence while we may, and when its
shining Dome is seen no more, go travelling through cheerful
Tuscany, with a bright remembrance of it; for Italy will be the
fairer for the recollection. The summer-time being come:
and Genoa, and Milan, and the Lake of Como lying far behind us:
and we resting at Faido, a Swiss village, near the awful rocks
and mountains, the everlasting snows and roaring cataracts, of
the Great Saint Gothard: hearing the Italian tongue for the last
time on this journey: let us part from Italy, with all its
miseries and wrongs, affectionately, in our admiration of the
beauties, natural and artificial, of which it is full to
overflowing, and in our tenderness towards a people, naturally
well-disposed, and patient, and sweet-tempered. Years of
neglect, oppression, and misrule, have been at work, to change
their nature and reduce their spirit; miserable jealousies,
fomented by petty Princes to whom union was destruction, and
division strength, have been a canker at their root of
nationality, and have barbarized their language; but the good
that was in them ever, is in them yet, and a noble people may be,
one day, raised up from these ashes. Let us entertain that
hope! And let us not remember Italy the less regardfully,
because, in every fragment of her fallen Temples, and every stone
of her deserted palaces and prisons, she helps to inculcate the
lesson that the wheel of Time is rolling for an end, and that the
world is, in all great essentials, better, gentler, more
forbearing, and more hopeful, as it rolls!</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p style="text-align: center">THE END</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">PRINTED
BY</span><br />
<span class="GutSmall">WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,
LIMITED,</span><br />
<span class="GutSmall">LONDON AND BECCLES.</span></p>
<h2>FOOTNOTES</h2>
<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1"
class="footnote">[1]</a> This Project Gutenberg eText
contains just <i>Pictures from Italy</i>. <i>American
Notes</i> is also available from Project Gutenberg as a separate
eText.—DP.</p>
<p><a name="footnote216"></a><a href="#citation216"
class="footnote">[216]</a> This was written in 1846.</p>
<p><a name="footnote272"></a><a href="#citation272"
class="footnote">[272]</a> A far more liberal and just
recognition of the public has arisen in Westminster Abbey since
this was written.</p>
<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICTURES FROM ITALY***</p>
<pre>
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