Italy, the Magic Land Part 10

At the tomb of Sarah B. Greenough, the wife of Richard S. Greenough, the monument is designed to represent Psyche escaping from the bondage of mortality. This Psyche is emerging from her garments and she holds in her hand a lamp. On this is the inscription: "Her loss was that as of a keystone to an arch."

Mrs. Greenough was a very accomplished musician, and she had the unique honor of having been made a member of the "Arcadians."

The memorial sculpture over the grave of Mrs. Franklin Simmons is, as elsewhere noted, the work of her husband, a figure called "The Angel of the Resurrection." The angel is represented as a male figure (Gabriel) holding in the left hand a golden trumpet while the right is outstretched. His wings are spread, his face partly turned to the right.

The form is partially draped and in every detail is instinct with a complete harmony; every fold of the drapery, every curve of the body, and the lofty and triumphant expression of the face in its ineffable glory of achievement proclaim the triumph of immortality. It stands on a pedestal that gives it, from the base of the pedestal to the tip of the outstretched wings, a height of some twenty-one feet. This monument, seen against a background of dark cypress trees, speaks the word of positive and complete faith in the divine promise of eternal life.

"Then life is--to wake, not sleep, Rise and not rest, but press From earth's level where blindly creep Things perfected, more or less, In the heaven's height--far and steep."

The visitor lingers over the grave of that interesting painter, J.

Rollin Tilton, whose landscapes from Egypt and Italian scenes were so vivid and picturesque.

Richard Henry Dana, the elder, born in Boston in 1815, came to Rome to die in 1882.

Very near the tomb of William Wetmore and Emelyn Story is that of Constance Fenimore Woolson. Over the graves of William and Mary Howitt is the inscription: "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in G.o.d, believe also in me."

On the wall just back of the new tomb erected over the ashes of Sh.e.l.ley by Onslow Ford in 1891 is a memorial tablet placed to Frederick W. H.

Myers, bearing this inscription:--

"This tablet is placed to the memory of Frederick William Henry Myers, born at Keswick, c.u.mberland, Feb. 6, 1843; died in Rome, Jan. 17, 1901. 'He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest him long life ever and forever.'"

Over the grave of John Addington Symonds, whose best monument is in his admirable History of the Renaissance in Italy, is a Latin inscription written by Professor Jowett of Oxford, and a stanza from the Greek of Cleanthes, translated by Mr. Symonds as follows:--

"Lead thou, our G.o.d, law, reason, motion, life; All names for Thee alike are vain and hollow; Lead me, for I will follow without strife, Or, if I strive, still more I blindly follow."

John Addington Symonds, who certainly ranks as the most gifted interpreter of Italy, in her art, her legends and a.s.sociations, and her landscape loveliness, died in the Rome he so loved in 1893. His wife was ill in Venice, but his daughter, Margaret,--his inseparable companion and his helper in his work,--was with him. It is Miss Symonds who prefaced a memorial volume to her father with the exquisite lines:--

"O Love; we two shall go no longer To lands of summer beyond the sea."

Near the graves of Keats and of his friend, Joseph Severn, are those of Augustus William Hare and John Gibson, the sculptor, who died in 1868.

Some ten years before Hawthorne, meeting Gibson at a dinner given by T.

Buchanan Read, wrote of him that it was whispered about the table that he had been in Rome for forty-two years and that he had a quiet, self-contained aspect as of one who had spent a calm life among his clay and marble.

Dwight Benton, an American painter and writer, who was for some time in the diplomatic service and whose home had been in Rome for more than a quarter of a century, lies buried here. For many years he was the editor of _The Roman World_, which still sustains the interesting character that marked it during his editorship. Of his work in art a friend wrote:--

"In painting, as in literature, Dwight Benton took his inspiration from nature. His paintings of Italian scenery are true and faithful representations of its character and atmospheric effects. His tramps on the Roman Campagna were long and often tiring, but he worked with all an artist's enthusiasm, unmindful of cold, rain, and even hunger. He would delight, as all true artists, in an old convent, a tree, a tower, a cross, which he would reproduce with a peculiar and striking perfection of tone and color. In his paintings of Keats's and Sh.e.l.ley's tombs, not only are the slabs and marble there, but there, also, in all their naturalness, are the stately pines and cypresses above, with the sunshine and shadows alternating between them, and in the background the turreted top of St. Paul's Gateway, the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, all lending effect and picturesqueness to the whole."

The present King of Italy purchased one of Mr. Benton's paintings, called "Giornata di tristezza."

While art abounds in Rome, less can be said for literature. There is a large and admirable selected Italian library in connection with the Collegio Romano; but while these books circulate, under certain conditions, to visitors, and the courtesy of the librarian and his staff is generously kind, the location and the Italian methods render it a matter of some difficulty to avail one's self of its resources. In the Piazza di Spagna there are two circulating libraries, but although one of these claims twenty-five thousand volumes, the majority are of mediocre fiction and almost none, if any, of the important modern works are to be found here. The visitor who is a subscriber to this library pa.s.ses into a small, dark room, where one window looking on the street hardly does more than make the darkness visible, and he must take the catalogue to the window and stand in order to decipher the list, which is hardly, indeed, worth the trouble, as there are very few volumes of any pretension to importance in the collection, and of late years no additions, apparently, have ever been made. The other circulating library, while far preferable, is still in crowded rooms and the a.s.sortment is limited. The visitor in Rome who cares for reading matter looks forward with delight to Florence, with its n.o.ble circulating library, to which access is so easy and whose conduct in all ways is so convenient and grateful to the guest.

In Rome, however, one finds his romance embodied in life and his history written in the streets and in the marvellous structures. His poetry is in her art, her ruins, her magical loveliness of hillside vistas, her infinite views over the Campagna, her sapphire skies, and her luminous, golden atmosphere.

"_Here Ischia smiles O'er liquid miles, And yonder, bluest of the isles, Calm Capri waits Her sapphire gates, Beguiling to her bright estates._"

"_Oh, Signor! thine the amber hand, And mine the distant sea Obedient to the least command Thine eyes impose on me._"

III

DAY-DREAMS IN NAPLES, AMALFI, AND CAPRI

"With dreamful eyes My spirit lies Where summer sings but never dies."

Naples is the paradise of excursions. It is set in the heart of incomparable loveliness. Over its sapphire sea one sails away--to the Fortunate Isles, or some others equally alluring. Its heights and adjacent mountains offer views that one might well cross the ocean to enjoy. Its atmosphere is full of cla.s.sic interest; of song, and story, and legend, and romance; of history, too, which in its tragic and exciting episodes is not less vivid in color and in strange studies of human life than is any romance. Naples is the city of fascination. Rome is stately and impressive; Florence is all beauty and enchantment; Genoa is picturesque; Venice is a dream city; but Naples is simply--fascinating. There is the common life of the streets and the populace continually _en scene_; the people who are at home on the sunny side in winter, or the shady side in summer; there is the social life of the n.o.bility, which is brilliant and vivacious. The excursions, of which Naples is the centre, are the chief interest to travellers, and these, while possible in winter, are far more enjoyable in the early spring.

Still even in midwinter the days are sunny, and while the air is crisp and cool, it is not cold. The gra.s.s is as green as in June; but the foliage and flowers are more or less withered. Naples has the high and the lower town, the former the more desirable, and the fine hotels perched on the terraces, with the view all over the Bay of Naples, Capri, Sorrento, and Vesuvius, offer a vista hardly to be duplicated in the entire world. The lower town has its fine hotels on the water's edge, with a beautiful view over the bay, less enchanting than when seen from above. The Bay of Naples is enclosed in two semicircular arms that extend far out at sea, the southern reaching nearly to Capri, while near the termination of the northern,

"Fair Ischia smiles O'er liquid miles."

Far out at sea the sun shines dazzlingly on the blue Mediterranean. The landscape is full of those curious formations that are always inherent in volcanic regions. The region surrounding Naples is abrupt, picturesque, with the same irregular outline of hills that characterizes the elevations in the Tonto basin in Arizona. The vegetation is of the tropical type. The cactus is common, although it grows to no such monstrous heights as in Arizona. Orange and lemon groves prevail as far as the eye can see. On every height towns and villages crown the crests and sweep in winding terraces around the hillsides. Olive orchards abound. Castles and ruins gleam white in the sunshine on the ledge of rocky precipices. The curved sh.o.r.es shine like broken lines of silver, with deep indentations at Naples and at Castellammare. Between these two points rises Vesuvius, the thin blue smoke constantly curling from the summit that, since the eruption of 1906, has lost much of its elevation.

In many places there is hardly the width of a roadway between the low mountains and the coast, but the cliffs are tropically luxurious in vegetation. Everywhere the habitations of the people crowd the s.p.a.ce.

From the monasteries and the castles that crown the heights, both distant and near to the cl.u.s.tered villages of the plain and those clinging to the hillsides, the scene is one unending panorama of human life. For Naples is only the focussing point of these densely populated regions of Southern Italy. The city stretches along the coast on both sides her semicircular bay; but the terraced hills, the stretches of land beyond, and every peak and valley are thickly sown with human habitations. Its commanding heights, two of which rise in the middle of the town, and its beautiful mirrored expanse of water give to it the most unparalleled variety and beauty of landscape loveliness.

"What words can a.n.a.lyze," says George S. Hillard, "the parts and details of this matchless panorama, or unravel that magic web of beauty into which palaces, villas, forests, gardens, vineyards, the mountains, and the sea are woven? What pen can paint the soft curves, the gentle undulations, the flowing outlines, the craggy steeps, and the far-seen heights, which, in their combination, are so full of grace and, at the same time, expression? Words here are imperfect instruments, and must yield their place to the pencil and the graver. But no canvas can reproduce the light and color which play round this enchanting region.

No skill can catch the changing hues of the distant mountains, the star-points of the playing waves, the films of purple and green which spread themselves over the calm waters, the sunsets of gold and orange, and the aerial veils of rose and amethyst which drop upon the hills from the skies of morning and evening. The author of the book of Ecclesiasticus seems to have described Naples, when he speaks of 'the pride of the height, the clear firmament, the beauty of heaven, with his glorious show.' 'See Naples and then die,' is a well-known Italian saying; but it should read, 'See Naples and then live.' One glance at such a scene stamps upon the memory an image which, forever after, gives a new value to life."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CASTEL SANT'ELMO, NAPLES _Page 231_]

Naples gives to the visitor the impression of being a city without a past. If she has a history, it is not written in her streets. She is poetic and picturesque, not historic. The heights of Capodimonte and Sant'Elmo divide her into unequal parts, and there is the old Naples which only the antiquarian or the political economist would wish to see, and the new and modern city which is such a miracle of beauty that one longs to stay forever, and fails to wonder that the siren sought these sh.o.r.es. Naples has either been very much misrepresented as to its prevailing manners and customs, or else it has changed within the past decade, for, as a rule, the gentle courtesy and kindness of the people are especially appealing. Augustus often sojourned in Naples, and it was an especially poetic haunt of Virgil, whose tomb is here. Although the poverty and the primitive life of the great ma.s.ses of the people have been widely discussed, it is yet true that Naples has a very charming social life, and that the University is a centre of learning and culture. One of the oldest universities in Europe, it has a faculty of over one hundred and twenty professors and more than five thousand students. A large and valuable library, and a mineralogical collection which specialists from all over the world come to study, are among the treasures of this University, which was founded in the early part of the thirteenth century by Emperor Frederick William II. There is now in process of erection a new group of buildings which will embody the latest laboratory and library and other privileges. Archaeology is, naturally, a special feature of the University of Naples, and the proximity to Pompeii, Herculaneum, and to the wonderful Pompeian collection in the Museum of Naples affords peculiar and unrivalled advantages to students. A bust of Thomas Aquinas, during his life a lecturer at this University, is one of the interesting treasures. The Archives of the Kingdom of Naples attract many a scholar and savant to this city. There are in this collection (which is kept in the monastery adjoining the Church of San Severino) over forty thousand Greek ma.n.u.scripts, some of which date back to the year 700. The Naples Museum is the great repository of all Pompeian art, and it is rich in sculpture; but it is badly arranged and the vast series of galleries and the long flights of stairs make any study of its work so fatiguing that a visit to it might rank as one of the seven labors of Hercules.

In the royal museum of the Palazzo di Capodimonte, which is located on the beautiful height bearing that name, there are some pictures that are well worth visiting, not because they are particularly good art, but because of the interest attaching to the subjects. This gallery is largely the work of modern Neapolitan artists. Here is the celebrated picture of Michael Angelo bending over the dead body of Vittoria Colonna, kissing only her hand, and haunted by the after-regret that he did not kiss her forehead. Virginia Lebrun has here portraits of Maria Theresa and of the d.u.c.h.ess of Parma; there is one canvas (by Celentano) showing Benvenuto Cellini at the Castel Sant'Angelo; a scene depicting the death of Caesar and a few others of some degree of interest.

Curiously, Naples has never produced great art. Salvator Rosa was, to be sure, a Neapolitan, but his is almost the only name that has made itself immortal in the art of this city. Domenico Morelli, who has recently died, made himself felt as an original painter with certain claims that arrested attention. He is not a draughtsman, but he is a colorist of pa.s.sionate intensity; he has original power and, more than all, he has a curious endowment of what may be called artistic clairvoyance.

Transporting himself by the magic of thought to places on which his eye never rested, he yet sees as in vision their special characteristics.

In one of his most important works, the motive of which is the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, he has painted the desert with a startling reality. Here is a great plain, the stony, parched Judean plain, with the very feeling of its desolation pervading the atmosphere.

The Royal Chapel in Naples was decorated by Morelli, the ceiling painted with an "a.s.sumption of the Virgin," which stands alone in all the interpretations of this theme; not by virtue of superior artistic excellence,--on the contrary its art does not make a strong appeal,--but by its originality of treatment. The "Salve Regina" and the "Da Scala d'Oro" are among the more interesting works of this artist, whose recent death has removed a figure of exceptional character in modern art, one who had, pre-eminently, the courage of his convictions. Some few years ago Morelli's "Temptation of St. Anthony" was exhibited in both Paris and Florence, and was generally condemned, perhaps because not wholly understood. The form of the temptation was supposed to be the shapes taken by a morbid and diseased imagination; but while as a psychological conception it was not without value, it was yet far from attractive as a work of art. The finest conception, perhaps, ever depicted of the temptation of St. Anthony--a subject that has haunted many an artist--is that painted by the late Carl Guthers of Washington, a lofty and gifted spirit whose too brief stay on earth ended in the early months of 1907. In this picture the temptation of the saint appears as a vision of all that is purest and sweetest in life,--wife, children, home; it was from all this peace and loveliness that St.

Anthony turned, sacrificing personal happiness to the duty of consecrated service to his Master, in the exquisite conception of Mr.

Guthers. Edoardo Dalbano is the typical leader of the Neapolitan school of painting of the present day, and his fascinating picture, called the "Isle of Sirens," representing the sirens singing in the sunlit Bay of Naples, might well be held as the keynote to all this enchanting region.

Surely, if the sirens sing not in those blue waters, it were useless to search elsewhere for them. Buono is an artist of the Neapolitan sh.o.r.es, who paints its fisher-folk; Brancaccio catches the very spirit and animated atmosphere of the street scenes of Naples; Campriani and Pratello are landscapists of note; Esposito, too, despite his Spanish name, is a Neapolitan marine painter whose work is often most arresting in its power to catch the flickering sunshine over blue water that bathes the rocks rising out of the sea,--these isles of the sirens from which float the melodies that enchanted Odysseus.

The traveller may be surprised to find that in size Naples ranks fourth on the European Continent,--Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, only, exceeding it. Naples should be, not only a port, a pleasure haunt, and a paradise for excursions, but one of the great cities of the world in commercial and in social importance. It has one of the finest natural harbors of the world; it has a beautiful and attractive adjoining country in which to extend, indefinitely, its residence and trade districts; it has the most enchanting fairyland of views that ever were seen this side the ethereal world; it has an atmosphere of song and story and a climate that is far from being objectionable. Naples is seldom the possessor of a higher temperature in summer than is New York or Boston; the winters are mild, and they offer weeks of sunny loveliness when Rome is swept by the icy tramontana from the snow-clad Alban hills. Naples offers, too, exceedingly good facilities for living; the groups of excellent hotels, both on the terraces and on the water's edge in the lower town and along the Villa n.a.z.ionale, offer every comfort, and the politeness and courtesy of the Neapolitans, as a rule, are among the alluring features of this enchanting city.

What shall be said of one hotel, especially, perched on the cliffs, to which one ascends by an elevator, finding it the most luxurious fairyland that imagination can conjure? Leaving the street one walks through a marble tunnel lighted with electricity, wondering if he is, indeed, in the grotto of the Muses. Entering a "lift" truly American in its comfort and speed, he is wafted up the heights and steps out in--is it paradise? Here is a large salon entirely of gla.s.s with an incomparable view all over the gleaming bay, with Capri and Sorrento shining fair on the opposite sides and Vesuvius, a purple peak, in the near distance. The great city of Naples lies spread out below, with its interior heights of Capodimonte and others. It is a view for which alone one might well sail the four thousand miles of sea from the American sh.o.r.es. Through open French windows one may step out on the terrace. If it is cold he may still enjoy this sublimely wonderful view behind the gla.s.s walls that reveal all its beauty and protect him from wind or chill. Elsewhere adjoining salons stretch away, where sunshine, music, reading matter, and dainty writing-desks allure the guest and create for him, indeed, an earthly paradise.

Of the drive on the Strada Nuova di Posilipo, skirting the coast while following the winding rise of the hill, with the sumptuous villas and gardens on one side and the blue sea on the other,--what words can suggest its charm? On a jutting promontory on the ruins of the Palazzo di Donna Ana are seen the palace whose convenient location made it possible for the royal hosts to throw their guests into the sea whenever they became tiresome, an accommodation that the modern hostess might, at times, appreciate. On this road, winding up the Posilipo, is the villa where Garibaldi pa.s.sed the last winter of his life and which is marked by a tablet. And everywhere and at every turn are the beautiful views, commanding Bagnoli, Camaldoli, Ischia, Baia and Procida, Capri, Nisida and the Neapolitan waters. The hill slopes are overgrown with myrtles and orange trees and roses. Here and there a defile is filled with a vineyard under careful culture.

In the presence of all this marvel of nature's loveliness the visitor hardly remembers the historic interest; yet it was on the little island of Nisida that Brutus and Ca.s.sius concocted the conspiracy against Caesar. The vast Phlegraean Plain before the eye is invested with h.e.l.lenic traditions and is the region of many scenes in the poems of Virgil and Homer. In the years of the first and second centuries this plain was dotted with the rich villas of the Roman aristocracy. Here, too, lay the celebrated Lacus Avernus, a volcanic lake which the ancients regarded as the entrance to Avernus itself. Truly it required little imagination to see here the approach to the infernal regions. The air was so poisonous that no bird could fly over the lake and live. Virgil's scene of the descent of aeneas, guided by the sibyl, into the infernal depths is laid here; and near this lake are resorts of the latter-day tourist, known as the "Sibyl's Grotto," the "Grotto della Pace," the "Bagni di Sibyl,"

and the "Inferno."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANCIENT TEMPLE, BAIae _Page 241_]

Baia, on the coast, was the Newport of Rome in the days of Augustus, Hadrian, Cicero, and Nero. It was then the most magnificent summer watering-place known to the world. The glory of the Roman Empire was reflected in the glory of Baia. In one of the Epistles of Horace a Roman n.o.ble is made to say: "Nothing in the world can be compared with the lovely bay of Baia." Some five hundred years ago this region became so malarial that no one could dwell in it. Fragments and ruins still remain of the imposing baths and villas of the Roman occupancy. An old crater called the Capo Miseno is described by Virgil as the burial place of Misenus:--

"_At pius aeneas ingenti mole sepulcrum Inponit, suaque arma viro remumque tubamque Monte sub aereo, qui nunc Misenus ab illo Dicitur aeternumque tenet per saecula nomen._"