Pencillings by the Way Part 22

LETTER LII.

SIENNA--POGGIOBONSI--BONCONVENTO--ENCOURAGEMENT OF FRENCH ARTISTS BY THEIR GOVERNMENT--ACQUAPENDENTE--POOR BEGGAR, THE ORIGINAL OF A SKETCH BY COLE--BOLSENA--VOLSCENIUM--SCENERY-- CURIOUS STATE OF THE CHESTNUT WOODS.

SIENNA.--A day and a half on my second journey to Rome. With a party of four nations inside, and two strangers, probably Frenchmen, in the cabriolet, we have jogged on at some three miles in the hour, enjoying the lovely scenery of these lower Appenines at our leisure. We slept last night at Poggiobonsi, a little village on a hill-side, and arrived at Sienna for our mid-day rest. I pencil this note after an hour's ramble over the city, visiting once more the cathedral, with its encrusted marbles and naked graces, and the sh.e.l.l-shaped square in the centre of the city, at the rim of which the eight princ.i.p.al streets terminate. There is a fountain in the midst, surrounded with _ba.s.si relievi_ much disfigured. It was mentioned by Dante. The streets were deserted, it being Sunday, and all the people at the Corso, to see the racing of horses without riders.

BONCONVENTO.--We sit, with the remains of a traveller's supper on the table--six very social companions. Our cabriolet friends are two French artists, on their way to study at Rome. They are both pensioners of the government, each having gained the annual prize at the academy in his separate branch of art, which ent.i.tles him to five years' support in Italy. They are full of enthusiasm, and converse with all the amusing vivacity of their nation. The academy of France send out in this manner five young men annually, who have gained the prizes for painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and engraving.

This is the place where Henry the Seventh of Germany was poisoned by a monk, on his way to Rome. The drug was given to him in the communion cup. The "Ave Marie" was ringing when we drove into town, and I left the carriage and followed the crowd, in the hope of finding an old church where the crime might have been committed. But the priest was mumbling the service in a new chapel, which no romance that I could summon would picture as the scene of a tragedy.

ACQUAPENDENTE.--While the dirty customhouse officer is deciphering our pa.s.sports, in a hole a dog would live in unwillingly, I take out my pencil to mark once more the pleasure I have received from the exquisite scenery of this place. The wild rocks enclosing the little narrow valley below, the waterfalls, the town on its airy perch above, the just starting vegetation of spring, the roads lined with snowdrops, crocuses and violets, have renewed, in a tenfold degree, the delight with which I saw this romantic spot on my former journey to Rome.

We crossed the mountain of Radicofani yesterday, in so thick a mist that I could not even distinguish the ruin of the old castle, towering into the clouds above. The wild, half-naked people thronged about us as before, and I gave another paul to the old beggar with whom I became acquainted by Mr. Cole's graphic sketch. The winter had, apparently, gone hard with him. He was scarce able to come to the carriage window, and coughed so hollowly that I thought he had nearly begged his last pittance.

BOLSENA.--we walked in advance of the vetturino along the borders of this lovely and beautiful lake till we are tired. Our artists have taken off their coats with the heat, and sit, a quarter of a mile further on, pointing in every direction at these unparalleled views.

The water is as still as a mirror, with a soft mist on its face, and the water-fowl in thousands are diving and floating within gunshot of us. An afternoon in June could not be more summer-like, and this, to a lover of soft climate, is no trifling pleasure.

A mile behind us lies the town, the seat of ancient _Volscinium_, the capital of the Volscians. The country about is one quarry of ruins, mouldering away in the moss. n.o.body can live in health in the neighborhood, and the poor pale wretches who call it a home are in melancholy contrast to the smiling paradise about them. Before us, in the bosom of the lake, lie two green islands, those which Pliny records to have floated in his time and one of which, _Martana_, a small conical isle, was the scene of the murder of the queen of the Goths, by her cousin Theodatus. She was taken there and strangled. It is difficult to imagine, with such a sea of sunshine around and over it, that it was ever anything but a spot of delight.

The whole neighborhood is covered with rotten trunks of trees--a thing which at first surprised me in a country where wood is so economised.

It is accounted for in the French guide-book of one of our party by the fact, that the chestnut woods of Bolsena are considered sacred by the people, from their antiquity, and are never cut. The trees have ripened and fallen and rotted thus for centuries--one cause, perhaps, of the deadly change in the air.

The vetturino comes lumbering up, and I must pocket my pencil and remount.

LETTER LIII.

MONTEFIASCONE--ANECDOTE OF THE WINE--VITERBO--MOUNT CIMINO--TRADITION--VIEW OF ST. PETER'S--ENTRANCE INTO ROME--A STRANGER'S IMPRESSIONS OF THE CITY.

MONTEFIASCONE.--We have stopped for the night at the hotel of this place, so renowned for its wine--the remnant of a bottle of which stands, at this moment, twinkling between me and my French companions.

The ladies of our party have gone to bed, and left us in the room where sat _Jean Defoucris_, the merry German monk, who died of excess in drinking the same liquor that flashes through this straw-covered flask. The story is told more fully in the French guide-books. A prelate of Augsbourg, on a pilgrimage to Rome, sent forward his servant with orders to mark every tavern where the wine was good with the word _est_, in large letters of chalk. On arriving at this hotel, the monk saw the signal thrice written over the door--_Est! Est! Est!_ He put up his mule, and drank of Montefiascone till he died. His servant wrote his epitaph, which is still seen in the church of St.

Florian:--

"Propter minium EST, EST, Dominus meus mortuus EST!"

"_Est, Est, Est!_" is the motto upon the sign of the hotel to this day.

In wandering about Viterbo in search of amus.e.m.e.nt, while the horses were baiting, I stumbled upon the shop of an antiquary. After looking over his medals, Etruscan vases, cameos, &c., a very interesting collection, I inquired into the state of trade for such things in Viterbo. He was a cadaverous, melancholy looking old man, with his pockets worn quite out with the habit of thrusting his hands into them, and about his mouth and eye there was the proper virtuoso expression of inquisitiveness and discrimination. He kept also a small _cafe_ adjoining his shop, into which we pa.s.sed, as he shrugged his shoulders at my question. I had wondered to find a vender of costly curiosities in a town of such poverty, and I was not surprised at the sad fortunes which had followed upon his enterprise. They were a base herd, he said, of the people, utterly ignorant of the value of the precious objects he had for sale and he had been compelled to open a _cafe_, and degrade himself by waiting on them for a contemptible _crazie_ worth of coffee, while his lovely antiquities lay unappreciated within. The old gentleman was eloquent upon his misfortunes. He had not been long in trade, and had collected his museum originally for his own amus.e.m.e.nt. He was an odd specimen, in a small way, of a man who was quite above his sphere, and suffered for his superiority. I bought a pretty _intaglio_, and bade him farewell, after an hour's acquaintance, with quite the feeling of a friend.

Mount Cimino rose before us soon after leaving Viterbo, and we walked up most of the long and gentle ascent, inhaling the odor of the spicy plants for which it is famous, and looking out sharply for the brigands with which it is always infested. English carriages are constantly robbed on this part of the route of late. The robbers are met usually in parties of ten and twelve, and, a week before we pa.s.sed, Lady Berwick (the widow of an English n.o.bleman, and a sister of the famous Harriet Wilson) was stopped and plundered in broad mid-day. The excessive distress among the peasantry of these misgoverned States accounts for these things, and one only wonders why there is not even more robbing among such a starving population. This mountain, by the way, and the pretty lake below it, are spoken of in the aeneid: "_Cimini c.u.m monte loc.u.m_," etc. There is an ancient tradition, that in the crescent-shaped valley which the lake fills, there was formerly a city, which was overwhelmed by the rise of the water, and certain authors state that when the lake is clear, the ruins are still to be seen at the bottom.

The sun rose upon us as we reached the mountain above Baccano, on the sixth day of our journey, and, by its clear golden flood, we saw the dome of St. Peter's, at a distance of sixteen miles, towering amid the campagna in all its majestic beauty. We descended into the vast plain, and traversed its gentle undulations for two or three hours. With the forenoon well advanced, we turned into the valley of the Tiber, and saw the home of Raphael, a n.o.ble chateau on the side of a hill, near the river, and, in the little plain between, the first peach-trees we had seen, in full blossom. The tomb of Nero is on one side of the road, before crossing the Tiber, and on the other a newly painted and staring _restaurant_, where the modern Roman c.o.c.kneys drive for punch and ices. The bridge of Pontemolle, by which we pa.s.sed into the immediate suburb of Rome, was the ancient _Pons aemilius_, and here Cicero arrested the conspirators on their way to join Catiline in his camp. It was on the same bridge, too, that Constantine saw his famous vision, and gained his victory over the tyrant Maxentius.

Two miles over the _Via Flaminia_, between garden walls that were ornamented with sculpture and inscription in the time of Augustus, brought us to the _Porta del Popolo_. The square within this n.o.ble gate is modern, but very imposing. Two streets diverge before you, as far away as you can see into the heart of the city, a magnificent fountain sends up its waters in the centre, the facades of two handsome churches face you as you enter, and on the right and left are gardens and palaces of princely splendor. Gay and sumptuous equipages cross it in every direction, driving out to the villa Borghese, and up to the Pincian mount, the splendid troops of the Pope are on guard, and the busy and stirring population of modern Rome swell out to its limit like the ebb and flow of the sea. All this disappoints while it impresses the stranger. He has come to Rome--but it was _old_ Rome that he had pictured to his fancy. The Forum, the ruins of her temples, the palaces of her emperors, the homes of her orators, poets, and patriots, the majestic relics of the once mistress of the world, are the features in his antic.i.p.ation. But he enters by a modern gate to a modern square, and pays his modern coin to a whiskered officer of customs; and in the place of a venerable Belisarius begging an obolus in cla.s.sic Latin, he is beset by a troop of l.u.s.ty and filthy lazzaroni entreating for a _baioch_ in the name of the Madonna, and in effeminate Italian. He drives down the Corso, and reads nothing but French signs, and sees all the familiar wares of his own country exposed for sale, and every other person on the _pave_ is an Englishman, with a narrow-rimmed hat and whalebone stick, and with an hour at the Dogama, where his baggage is turned inside out by a snuffy old man who speaks French, and a reception at a hotel where the porter addresses him in his own language, whatever it may be; he goes to bed under Parisian curtains, and tries to dream of the Rome he could not realize while awake.

LETTER LIV.

APPIAN WAY--TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA--ALBANO--TOMB OF THE CURIATII--ARICIA--TEMPLE OF DIANA--FOUNTAIN OF EGERIA--LAKE OF NEMI--VELLETRI--PONTINE MARSHES--CONVENT--Ca.n.a.l--TERRACINA-- SAN FELICE--FONDI--STORY OF JULIA GONZAGA--CICERO'S GARDEN AND TOMB--MOLA--MINTURNA--RUINS OF AN AMPHITHEATRE AND TEMPLE-- FALERNIAN MOUNT AND WINE--THE DOCTOR OF ST. AGATHA--CAPUA-- ENTRANCE INTO NAPLES--THE QUEEN.

With the intention of returning to Rome for the ceremonies of the holy week, I have merely pa.s.sed through on my way to Naples. We left it the morning after our arrival, going by the "Appian way" to mount Albano, which borders the Campagna on the south, at a distance of fifteen miles. This celebrated road is lined with the ruined tombs of the Romans. Off at the right, some four or five miles from the city, rises the fortress-like _tomb of Cecilia Metella_, so exquisitely mused upon by Childe Harold. This, says Sismondi, with the tombs of Adrian and Augustus, became fortresses of banditti, in the thirteenth century, and were taken by Brancallone, the Bolognese governor of Rome, who hanged the marauders from the walls. It looks little like "a woman's grave."

We changed horses at the pretty village of Albano, and, on leaving it, pa.s.sed an ancient mausoleum, believed to be the tomb of the Curiatii who fought the Horatii on this spot. It is a large structure, and had originally four pyramids on the corners, two of which only remain.

A mile from Albano lies Aricia, in a country of the loveliest rural beauty. Here was the famous temple of Diana, and here were the lake and grove sacred to the "virgin huntress," and consecrated as her home by peculiar worship. The fountain of Egeria is here, where Numa communed with the nymph, and the lake of Nemi, on the borders of which the temple stood, and which was called _Diana's mirror_ (_speculum Dianae_), is at this day, perhaps, one of the sweetest gems of natural scenery in the world.

We slept at Velletri, a pretty town of some twelve thousand inhabitants, which stands on a hill-side, leaning down to the Pontine marshes. It was one of the grand days of carnival, and the streets were full of masks, walking up and down in their ridiculous dresses, and committing every sort of foolery. The next morning, by daylight, we were upon the Pontine marshes, the long thirty miles level of which we pa.s.sed in an unbroken trot, one part of a day's journey of seventy-five miles, done by the _same horses_, at the rate of six miles in the hour! They are small, compact animals, and look in good condition, though they do as much habitually.

At a distance of fifteen miles from Velletri, we pa.s.sed a convent, which is built opposite the spot where St. Paul was met by his friends, on his journey from the seaside to Rome. The ca.n.a.l upon which Horace embarked on his celebrated journey to Brundusium, runs parallel with the road for its whole distance. This marshy desert is inhabited by a race of as wretched beings, perhaps, as are to be found upon the face of the earth. The pestiferous miasma of the pools is certain destruction to health, and the few who are needed at the distant post-houses, crawl out to the road-side like so many victims from a pest-house, stooping with weakness, hollow-eyed, and apparently insensible to everything. The feathered race seems exempt from its influence, and the quant.i.ties of game of every known description are incredible. The ground was alive with wild geese, turkeys, pigeons, plover, ducks, and numerous birds we did not know, as far as the eye could distinguish. The travelling books caution against sleeping in the carriage while pa.s.sing these marshes, but we found it next to impossible to resist the heavy drowsiness of the air.

At Terracina the marshes end, and the long avenue of elms terminates at the foot of a romantic precipice, which is washed by the Mediterranean. The town is most picturesquely built between the rocky wall and the sea. We dined with the hollow murmur of the surf in our ears, and then, presenting our pa.s.sports, entered the kingdom of Naples. This Terracina, by the way, was the ancient _Anxur_, which Horace describes in his line--

"Impositum late saxis candentibus Anxur."

For twenty or thirty miles before arriving at Terracina, we had seen before us the headland of Circoeum, lying like a mountain island off the sh.o.r.e. It is usually called San Felice, from the small town seated upon it. This was the ancient abode of the "daughter of the sun," and here were imprisoned, according to Homer, the champions of Ulysses, after their metamorphoses.

From Terracina to Fondi, we followed the old Appian way, a road hedged with flowering myrtles and orange trees laden with fruit. Fondi itself is dirtier than imagination could picture it, and the scowling men in the streets look like myrmidons of Fra Diavolo, their celebrated countryman. This town, however, was the scene of the romantic story of the beautiful Julia Gonzaga, and was destroyed by the corsair Barbarossa, who had intended to present the rarest beauty of Italy to the Sultan. It was to the rocky mountains above the town that she escaped in her night-dress, and lay concealed till the pirate's departure.

In leaving Fondi, we pa.s.sed the ruined walls of a garden said to have belonged to Cicero, whose tomb is only three leagues distant. Night came on before we reached the tomb, and we were compelled to promise ourselves a pilgrimage to it on our return.

We slept at Mola, and here Cicero was a.s.sa.s.sinated. The ruins of his country-house are still here. The town lies in the lap of a graceful bay, and in all Italy, it is said, there is no spot more favored by nature. The mountains shelter it from the winds of the north; the soil produces, spontaneously, the orange, the myrtle, the olive, delicious grapes, jasmine, and many odoriferous herbs. This and its neighborhood was called, by the great orator and statesman who selected it for his retreat, "the most beautiful patrimony of the Romans." The Mediterranean spreads out from its bosom, the lovely islands near Naples bound its view, Vesuvius sends up its smoke and fire in the south, and back from its hills stretches a country fertile and beautiful as a paradise. This is a place of great resort for the English and other travellers in the summer. The old palaces are turned into hotels, and we entered our inn through an avenue of shrubs that must have been planted and trimmed for a century.

We left Mola before dawn and crossed the small river Garigliano as the sun rose. A short distance from the southern bank, we found ourselves in the midst of ruins, the golden beams of the sun pouring upon us through the arches of some once magnificent structure, whose area is now crossed by the road. This was the ancient Minturna, and the ruins are those of an amphitheatre, and a temple of Venus. Some say that it was in the marshes about the now waste city, that the soldier sent by Sylla to kill Marius, found the old hero, and, struck with his n.o.ble mien, fell with respect at his feet.

The road soon enters a chain of hills, and the scenery becomes enchanting. At the left of the first ascent lies the Falernian mount, whose wines are immortalized by Horace. It is a beautiful hill, which throws round its shoulder to the south, and is covered with vineyards.

I dismounted and walked on while the horses breathed at the post-house of St. Agatha, and was overtaken by a good-natured-looking man, mounted on a mule, of whom I made some inquiry respecting the modern Falernian. He said it was still the best wine of the neighborhood, but was far below its ancient reputation, because never kept long enough to ripen. It is at its prime from the fifteenth to the twentieth year, and is usually drank the first or second. My new acquaintance, I soon found, was the physician of the two or three small villages nested about among the hills and a man of some pretensions to learning. I was delighted with his frank good-humor, and a certain spice of drollery in his description of his patients. The peasants at work in the fields saluted him from any distance as he pa.s.sed; and the pretty contadini going to St. Agatha with their baskets on their heads, smiled as he nodded, calling them all by name, and I was rather amused than offended with the inquisitiveness he manifested about my age, family, pursuits, and even morals. His mule stopped of its own will, at the door of the apothecary of the small village on the summit of the hill, and as the carriage came in sight the doctor invited me, seizing my hand with a look of friendly sincerity, to stop at St. Agatha on my return, to shoot, and drink Falernian with him for a month. The apothecary stopped the vetturino at the door; and, to the astonishment of my companions within, the doctor seized me in his arms and kissed me on both sides of my face with a volume of blessings and compliments, which I had no breath in my surprise to return. I have made many friends on the road in this country of quick feelings, but the doctor of St. Agatha had a readiness of sympathy which threw all my former experience into the shade.

We dined at Capua, the city whose luxuries enervated Hannibal and his soldiers--the "_dives, amorosa, felix_" Capua. It is in melancholy contrast with the description now--its streets filthy, and its people looking the antipodes of luxury. The climate should be the same, as we dined with open doors, and with the branch of an orange tree heavy with fruit hanging in at the window, in a month that with us is one of the wintriest.

From Capua to Naples, the distance is but fifteen miles, over a flat, uninteresting country. We entered "this third city in the world" in the middle of the afternoon, and were immediately surrounded with beggars of every conceivable degree of misery. We sat an hour at the gate while our pa.s.sports were recorded, and the vetturino examined, and then pa.s.sing up a n.o.ble street, entered a dense crowd, through which was creeping slowly a double line of carriages. The mounted dragoons compelled our postillion to fall into the line, and we were two hours following in a fashionable corso with our mud-spattered vehicle and tired horses, surrounded by all that was brilliant and gay in Naples. It was the last day of carnival. Everybody was abroad, and we were forced, however unwillingly to see all the rank and beauty of the city. The carriages in this fine climate are all open, and the ladies were in full dress. As we entered the Toledo, the cavalcade came to a halt, and with hats off and handkerchiefs flying in every direction about them, the young new-married Queen of Naples rode up the middle of the street preceded and followed by outriders in the gayest livery. She has been married about a month, is but seventeen, and is acknowledged to be the most beautiful woman in the kingdom. The description I had heard of her, though very extravagant, had hardly done her justice. She is a little above the middle height, with a fine lift to her head and neck, and a countenance only less modest and maidenly than n.o.ble.