Pencillings by the Way Part 17

LETTER x.x.xIX.

VENICE--SAN MARC'S CHURCH--RECOLLECTIONS OF HOME--FESTA AT THE LIDO--A POETICAL SCENE--AN ITALIAN SUNSET--PALACE OF MANFRINI--PESARO'S PALACE AND COUNTRY RESIDENCE--CHURCH OF SAINT MARY OF NAZARETH--PADUA--THE UNIVERSITY--STATUES OF DISTINGUISHED FOREIGNERS THE PUBLIC PALACE--BUST OF t.i.tUS LIVY--BUST OF PETRARCH--CHURCH OF ST. ANTONY DURING Ma.s.s--THE SAINT'S CHIN AND TONGUE--MARTYRDOM OF ST. AGATHA--AUSTRIAN AND GERMAN SOLDIERS--TRAVELLER'S RECORD-BOOK--PETRARCH'S COTTAGE AND TOMB--ITALIAN SUMMER AFTERNOON--THE POET'S HOUSE--A FINE VIEW--THE ROOM WHERE PETRARCH DIED, ETC.

I was loitering down one of the gloomy aisles of San Marc's church, just at twilight this evening, listening to the far-off Ave Maria in one of the distant chapels, when a Boston gentleman, who I did not know was abroad, entered with his family, and pa.s.sed up to the altar.

It is difficult to conceive with what a tide the half-forgotten circ.u.mstances of a home, so far away, rush back upon one's heart in a strange land, after a long absence, at the sight of familiar faces. I could realize nothing about me after it--the glittering mosaic of precious stones under my feet, the gold and splendid colors of the roof above me, the echoes of the monotonous chant through the arches--foreign and strange as these circ.u.mstances all were. I was irresistibly at home, the familiar pictures of my native place filling my eye, and the recollections of those whom I love and honor there crowding upon my heart with irresistible emotion. The feeling is a painful one, and with the necessity for becoming again a forgetful wanderer, remembering home only as a dream, one shrinks from such things. The reception of a letter, even, destroys a day.

There has been a grand _festa_ to-day at the _Lido_. This, you know, is a long island, forming part of the sea-wall of Venice. It is, perhaps, five or six miles long, covered in part with groves of small trees, and a fine green sward; and to the Venetians, to whom leaves and gra.s.s are holyday novelties, is the scene of their gayest _festas_. They were dancing and dining under the trees; and in front of the fort which crowns the island, the Austrian commandant had pitched his tent, and with a band of military music, the officers were waltzing with ladies in a circle of green sward, making altogether a very poetical scene. We pa.s.sed an hour or two wandering among this gay and unconscious people, and came home by one of the loveliest sunsets that ever melted sea and sky together. Venice looked like a vision of a city hanging in mid-air.

We have been again to that delightful _palace of Manfrini_. The "Portia swallowing fire," the Rembrandt portrait, the far-famed "Giorgione, son and wife," and twenty others, which to see is to be charmed, delighted me once more. I believe the surviving Manfrini is the only n.o.ble left in Venice. _Pesaro_, who disdained to live in his country after its liberty was gone, died lately in London. His palace here is the finest structure I have seen, and his country-house on the Brenta is a paradise. It must have been a strong feeling which exiled him from them for eighteen years.

In coming from the Manfrini, we stopped at the church of "St. Mary of Nazareth." This is one of those whose cost might buy a kingdom. Its gold and marbles oppress one with their splendor. In the centre of the ceiling is a striking fresco of the bearing of "Loretto's chapel through the air;" and in one of the corners a lovely portrait of a boy looking over a bal.u.s.trade, done by the artist _fourteen years of age_!

PADUA.--We have pa.s.sed two days in this venerable city of learning, including a visit to Petrarch's tomb at Arqua. The university here is still in its glory, with fifteen hundred students. It has never declined, I believe, since Livy's time. The beautiful inner court has two or three galleries, crowded with the arms of the n.o.bles and distinguished individuals who have received its honors. It has been the "cradle of princes" from every part of Europe.

Around one of the squares of the city, stand forty or fifty statues of the great and distinguished foreigners who have received their education here. It happened to be the month of vacation, and we could not see the interior.

At a public palace, so renowned for the size and singular architecture of its princ.i.p.al hall, we saw a very antique bust of t.i.tus Livy--a fine, cleanly-chiselled, scholastic old head, that looked like the spirit of Latin embodied. We went thence to the Duomo, where they show a beautiful bust of Petrarch, who lived at Padua some of the latter years of his life. It is a softer and more voluptuous countenance than is given him in the pictures.

The church of Saint Antony here has stood just six hundred years. It occupied a century in building, and is a rich and n.o.ble old specimen of the taste of the times, with eight cupolas and towers, twenty-seven chapels inside, four immense organs, and countless statues and pictures. Saint Antony's body lies in the midst of the princ.i.p.al chapel, which is surrounded with relievos representing his miracles, done in the best manner of the glorious artists of antiquity. We were there during ma.s.s, and the people were nearly suffocating themselves in the press to touch the altar and tomb of the saint. This chapel was formerly lit by ma.s.sive silver lamps, which Napoleon took, presenting them with their models in gilt. He also exacted from them three thousand sequins for permission to retain the chin and tongue of St.

Antony, which works miracles still, and are preserved in a splendid chapel with immense brazen doors. Behind the main altar I saw a harrowing picture by Tiepoli, of the martyrdom of St. Agatha. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are cut off, and lying in a dish. The expression in the face of the dying woman is painfully well done.

Returning to the inn, we pa.s.sed a magnificent palace on one of the squares, upon whose marble steps and column-bases, sat hundreds of brutish Austrian troops, smoking and laughing at the pa.s.sers-by. This is a sight you may see now through all Italy. The palaces of the proudest n.o.bles are turned into barracks for foreign troops, and there is scarce a n.o.ble old church or monastery that is not defiled with their filth. The German soldiers are, without exception, the most stolid and disagreeable looking body of men I ever saw; and they have little to soften the indignant feeling with which one sees them rioting in this lovely and oppressed country.

We pa.s.sed an hour before bedtime in the usual amus.e.m.e.nt of travellers in a foreign hotel--reading the traveller's record-book. Walter Scott's name was written there, and hundreds of distinguished names besides. I was pleased to find, on a leaf far back, "Edward Everett,"

written in his own round legible hand. There were at least the names of fifty Americans within the dates of the year past--such a wandering nation we are. Foreigners express their astonishment always at their numbers in these cities.

On the afternoon of the next day, we went to Arqua, on a pilgrimage to Petrarch's cottage and tomb. It was an Italian summer afternoon, and the Euganean hills were rising green and lovely, with the sun an hour high above them, and the yellow of the early sunset already commencing to glow about the horizon.

We left the carriage at the "pellucid lake," and went into the hills a mile, plucking the ripe grapes which hung over the road in profusion.

We were soon at the little village and the tomb, which stands just before the church door, "reared in air." The four laurels Byron mentions are dead. We pa.s.sed up the hill to the poet's house, a rural stone cottage, commanding a lovely view of the campagna from the portico. Sixteen villages may be counted from the door, and the two large towns of Rovigo and Ferrara are distinguishable in a clear atmosphere. It was a retreat fit for a poet. We went through the rooms, and saw the poet's cat, stuffed and exhibited behind a wire grating, his chair and desk, his portrait in fresco, and Laura's, and the small closet-like room where he died. It was an interesting visit, and we returned by the golden twilight of this heavenly climate, repeating Childe Harold, and wishing for his pen to describe afresh the scene about us.

LETTER XL.

EXCURSION FROM VENICE TO VERONA--TRUTH OF BYRON'S DESCRIPTION OF ITALIAN SCENERY--THE LOMBARDY PEASANTRY--APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY--MANNER OF CULTIVATING THE VINE ON LIVING TREES--THE VINTAGE--ANOTHER VISIT TO JULIET'S TOMB--THE OPERA AT VERONA--THE PRIMA DONNA--ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE--BOLOGNA AGAIN--MADAME MALIBRAN IN LA GAZZA LADRA--CHEAP LUXURIES--THE PALACE OF THE LAMBACCARI--A MAGDALEN OF GUIDO CARRACCI-- CHARLES THE SECOND'S BEAUTIES--VALLEY OF THE ARNO--FLORENCE ONCE MORE.

Our gondola set us on sh.o.r.e at Fusina an hour or two before sunset, with a sky (such as we have had for five months) without a cloud, and the same promise of a golden sunset, to which I have now become so accustomed, that rain and a dark heaven would seem to me almost unnatural. It was the hour and the spot at which Childe Harold must have left Venice, and we look at the "blue Friuli mountains," the "deep-died Brenta," and the "Rhoetian hill," and feel the truth of his description as well as its beauty. The two banks of the Brenta are studded with the palaces of the Venetian n.o.bles for almost twenty miles, and the road runs close to the water on the northern side, following all its graceful windings, and, at every few yards, surprising the traveller with some fresh scene of cultivated beauty, church, palace, or garden, while the gondolas on the stream, and the fair "damas" of Italy sitting under the porticoes, enliven and brighten the picture. These people live out of doors, and the road was thronged with the _contadini_; and here and there rolled by a carriage, with servants in livery; or a family of the better cla.s.s on their evening walk, sauntered along at the Italian pace of indolence, and a finer or happier looking race of people would not easily be found. It is difficult to see the athletic frames and dark flashing eyes of the Lombardy peasantry, and remember their degraded condition.

You cannot believe it will remain so. If they think at all, they must, in time, feel too deeply to endure.

The guide-book says, the "traveller wants words to express his sensations at the beauty of the country from Padua to Verona." Its beauty is owing to the perfection of a method of cultivation universal in Italy. The fields are divided into handsome squares, by rows of elms or other forest trees, and the vines are trained upon these with all the elegance of holyday festoons, winding about the trunks, and hanging with their heavy cl.u.s.ters from one to the other, the foliage of vine and tree mingled so closely that it appears as if they sprung from the same root. Every square is perfectly enclosed with these fantastic walls of vine-leaves and grapes, and the imagination of a poet could conceive nothing more beautiful for a festival of Bacchus.

The ground between is sown with gra.s.s or corn. The vines are luxuriant always, and often send their tendrils into the air higher than the topmost branch of the tree, and this extends the whole distance from Padua to Verona, with no interruption except the palaces and gardens of the n.o.bles lying between.

It was just the season for gathering and pressing the grape, and the romantic vineyards were full of the happy peasants, of all ages, mounting the ladders adventurously for the tall cl.u.s.ters, heaping the baskets and carts, driving in the stately gray oxen with their loads, and talking and singing as merrily as if it were Arcadia. Oh how beautiful these scenes are in Italy. The people are picturesque, the land is like the poetry of nature, the habits are all as they were described centuries ago, and as the still living pictures of the glorious old masters represent them. The most every-day traveller smiles and wonders, as he lets down his carriage windows to look at the vintage.

We have been three or four days in Verona, visiting Juliet's tomb, and riding through the lovely environs. The opera here is excellent, and we went last night to see "Romeo and Juliet" performed in the city renowned by their story. The _prima donna_ was one of those syrens found often in Italy--a young singer of great promise, with that daring brilliancy which practice and maturer science discipline, to my taste, too severely. It was like the wild, ungovernable trill of a bird, and my ear is not so nice yet, that I even would not rather feel a roughness in the harmony than lose it. Malibran delighted me more in America than in Paris.

The opera was over at twelve, and, as we emerged from the crowded lobby, the moon full, and as clear and soft as the eye of a child, burst through the arches of the portico. The theatre is opposite the celebrated Roman amphitheatre, and the wish to visit it by moonlight was expressed spontaneously by the whole party. The _custode_ was roused, and we entered the vast arena and stood in the midst, with the gigantic ranges of stone seats towering up in a receding circle, as if to the very sky, and the lofty arches and echoing dens lying black and silent in the dead shadows of the moon. A hundred thousand people could sit here; and it was in these arenas, scattered through the Roman provinces, that the b.l.o.o.d.y gladiator fights, and the ma.s.sacre of Christians, and every scene of horror, amused the subjects of the mighty mistress of the world. You would never believe it, if you could have seen how peacefully the moonlight now sleeps on the moss-gathering walls, and with what untrimmed grace the vines and flowers creep and blossom on the rocky crevices of the windows.

We arrived at Bologna just in time to get to the opera. Malibran in _La Gazza Ladra_ was enough to make one forget more than the fatigue of a day's travel. She sings as well as ever and plays much better, though she had been ill, and looked thin. In the prison scene, she was ghastlier even than the character required. There are few pleasures in Europe like such singing as hers, and the Italians, in their excellent operas, and the cheap rate at which they can be frequented, have a resource corresponding to everything else in their delightful country.

Every comfort and luxury is better and cheaper in Italy than elsewhere, and it is a pity that he who can get his wine for three cents a bottle, his dinner and his place at the opera for ten, and has lodgings for anything he chooses to pay, can not find leisure, and does not think it worth the trouble, to look about for means to be free. It is vexatious to see nature lavishing such blessings on slaves.

The next morning we visited a palace, which, as it is not mentioned in the guide-books of travel, I had not before seen--the _Lambaccari_. It was full of glorious pictures, most of them for sale. Among others we were captivated with a Magdalen of unrivalled sweetness by _Guido Carracci_. It has been bought since by Mr. Cabot, of Boston, who pa.s.sed through Bologna the day after, and will be sent to America, I am happy to say, immediately. There were also six of "Charles the Second's beauties,"--portraits of the celebrated women of that gay monarch's court, by Sir Peter Lely--ripe, glowing English women, more voluptuous than chary-looking, but pictures of exquisite workmanship.

There were nine or ten apartments to this splendid palace, all crowded with paintings by the first masters, and the surviving Lambaccari is said to be selling them one by one for bread. It is really melancholy to go through Italy, and see how her people are suffering, and her n.o.bles starving under oppression.

We crossed the Appenines in two of the finest days that ever shone, and descending through clouds and mist to the Tuscan frontier, entered the lovely valley of the Arno, sparkling in the sunshine, with all its palaces and spires, as beautiful as ever. I am at Florence once more, and parting from the delightful party with whom I have travelled for two months. I start for Rome to-morrow, in company with five artists.

LETTER XLI.

JOURNEY TO THE ETERNAL CITY--TWO ROADS TO ROME--SIENNA--THE PUBLIC SQUARE--AN ITALIAN FAIR--THE CATHEDRAL--THE LIBRARY--THE THREE GRECIAN GRACES--DANDY OFFICERS--PUBLIC PROMENADE--LANDSCAPE VIEW--LONG GLEN--A WATERFALL--A CULTIVATED VALLEY--THE TOWN OF AQUAPENDENTE--SAN LORENZO--PLINY'S FLOATING ISLANDS--MONTEFIASCONE-- VITERBO--PROCESSION OF FLOWER AND DANCING GIRLS TO THE VINTAGE--ASCENT OF THE MONTECIMINO--THE ROAD OF THIEVES--LAKE VICO--BACCANO--MOUNT SORACTE--DOME OF ST. PETER'S, ETC.

I left Florence in company with the five artists mentioned in my last letter, one of them an Englishman, and the other four pensioners of the royal academy at Madrid. The Spaniards had but just arrived in Italy, and could not speak a syllable of the language. The Englishman spoke everything but French, which he avoided learning _from principle_. He "hated a Frenchman!"

There are two roads to Rome. One goes by Sienna, and is a day shorter; the other by Perugia, the Falls of Terni, Lake Thrasymene, and the c.l.i.tumnus. Childe Harold took the latter, and his ten or twelve best cantos describe it. I was compelled to go by Sienna, and shall return, of course, by the other road.

I was at Sienna on the following day. As the second capital of Tuscany, this should be a place of some interest, but an hour or two is more than enough to see all that is attractive. The public square was a gay scene. It was rather singularly situated, lying fifteen or twenty feet lower than the streets about it. I should think there were several thousand people in its area--all buying or selling, and vociferating, as usual, at the top of their voices. We heard the murmur, like the roar of the sea, in all the distant streets. There are few sights more picturesque than an Italian fair, and I strolled about in the crowd for an hour, amused with the fanciful costumes, and endeavoring to make out with the a.s.sistance of the eye, what rather distracted my unaccustomed ear--the cries of the various wandering venders of merchandise. The women, who were all from the country, were coa.r.s.e, and looked well only at a distance.

The cathedral is the great sight of Sienna. It has a rich exterior, encrusted with curiously wrought marbles, and the front, as far as I can judge, is in beautiful taste. The pavement of the interior is very precious, and covered with a wooden platform, which is removed but once a year. The servitor raised a part of it, to show us the workmanship. It was like a drawing in India ink, quite as fine as if pencilled, and representing, as is customary, some miracle of a saint.

A ma.s.sive iron door, made ingeniously to imitate a rope-netting, opens from the side of the church into the _library_. It contained some twenty volumes in black letter, bound with enormous clasps and placed upon inclined shelves. It would have been a task for a man of moderate strength to lift either of them from the floor. The little sacristan found great difficulty in only opening one to show us the letter.

In the centre of the chapel on a high pedestal, stands the original antique group, so often copied, of the three Grecian Graces. It is shockingly mutilated; but its original beauty is still in a great measure discernable. Three naked women are an odd ornament for the private chapel of a cathedral.[1] One often wonders, however, in Italian churches, whether his devotion is most called upon by the arts or the Deity.

As we were leaving the church, four young officers pa.s.sed us in gay uniform, their long steel scabbards rattling on the pavement, and their heavy tread disturbing visibly every person present. As I turned to look after them, with some remark on their c.o.xcombry, they dropped on their knees at the bases of the tall pillars about the altar, and burying their faces in their caps, bowed their heads nearly to the floor, in att.i.tudes of the deepest devotion. Sincere or not, Catholic worshippers of all cla.s.ses _seem_ absorbed in their religious duties.

You can scarce withdraw the attention even of a child in such places.

In the six months that I have been in Italy, I never saw anything like irreverence within the church walls.

The public promenade, on the edge of the hill upon which the town is beautifully situated, commands a n.o.ble view of the country about. The peculiar landscape of Italy lay before us in all its loveliness--the far-off hills lightly tinted with the divided colors of distance, the atmosphere between absolutely clear and invisible, and villages cl.u.s.tered about, each with its ancient castle on the hill-top above, just as it was settled in feudal times, and as painters and poets would imagine it. You never get a view in this "garden of the world"

that would not excuse very extravagant description.

Sienna is said to be the best place for learning the language. Just between Florence and Rome, it combines the "_lingua Toscano_," with the "_bocca Romano_"--the Roman p.r.o.nunciation with the Florentine purity of language. It looks like a dull place, however, and I was very glad after dinner to resume my pa.s.sport at the gate and get on.

The next morning, after toiling up a considerable ascent, we suddenly rounded the shoulder of a mountain, and found ourselves at the edge of a long glen, walled up at one extremity by a precipice with an old town upon its brow, and a waterfall pouring off at its side, and opening away at the other into a broad, gently-sloped valley, cultivated like a garden as far as the eye could distinguish. I think I have seen an engraving of it in the Landscape Annual. Taken together, it is positively the most beautiful view I ever saw, from the road edge, as you wind up into the town of _Acquapendente_. The precipice might be a hundred feet, and from its immediate edge were built up the walls of the houses, so that a child at the window might throw its plaything into the bottom of the ravine. It is scarce a pistol-shot across the glen, and the two hills on either side lean off from the level of the town in one long soft declivity to the valley--the little river which pours off the rock at the very base of the church, fretting and fuming its way between to the meadows--its stony bed quite hidden by the thick vegetation of its banks. The bells were ringing to ma.s.s, and the echoes came back to us at long distances with every modulation. The streets, as we entered the town, were full of people hurrying to the churches; the women with their red shawls thrown about their heads, and the men with their immense dingy cloaks flung romantically over their shoulders, with a grace, one and all, that in a Parisian dandy, would be attributed to a consummate study of effect. For outline merely, I think there is nothing in costume which can surpa.s.s the closely-stockinged leg, heavy cloak, and slouched hat of an Italian peasant. It is added to by his indolent, and, consequently, graceful motion and att.i.tudes. Johnson, in his book on the climate of Italy, says their sloth is induced by _malaria_. You will see a man watching goats or sheep, with his back against a rock, quite motionless for hours together. His dog feels, apparently, the same influence, and lies couched in his long white hair, with his eyes upon the flock, as lifeless, and almost as picturesque, as his master.