Views a-foot Part 17

Thou wert the throne and grave of empires."

The _Virgilio_ was advertised to leave at six o'clock, and I accordingly went out to her in a little boat half an hour beforehand; but we were delayed much longer, and I saw sunset again fade over the glorious amphitheatre of palaces and mountains, with the same orange glow--the same purple and crimson flush, deepening into twilight--as before. An old blind man in a skiff, floated around under the bows of the boat on the gla.s.sy water, singing to the violin a plaintive air that appeared to be an evening hymn to the virgin. There was something very touching in his venerable countenance, with the sightless eyes turned upward to the sunset heaven whose glory he could never more behold.

The lamps were lit on the tower at the end of the mole as we glided out on the open sea; I stood on deck and watched the receding lights of the city, till they and the mountains above them, were blended with the darkened sky. The sea-breeze was fresh and cool, and the stars glittered with a frosty clearness, which would have made the night delicious had not a slight rolling of the waves obliged me to go below. Here, besides being half seasick, I was placed at the mercy of many voracious fleas, who obstinately stayed, persisting in keeping me company. This was the first time I had suffered from these cannibals, and such were my torments, I almost wished some blood-thirsty Italian would come and put an end to them with his stiletto.

The first ray of dawn that stole into the cabin sent me on deck. The hills of Tuscany lay in front, sharply outlined on the reddening sky; near us was the steep and rocky isle of Gorgona; and far to the south-west, like a low mist along the water, ran the sh.o.r.es of Corsica--the birth place of Columbus and Napoleon![***] As the dawn brightened we saw on the southern horizon a cloud-like island, also imperishably connected with the name of the latter--the prison-kingdom of Elba! North of us extended the rugged mountains of Carrarra--that renowned range whence has sprung many a form of almost breathing beauty, and where yet slumber, perhaps, in the unhewn marble, the G.o.d-like shapes of an age of art, more glorious than any the world has ever yet beheld!

[Footnote ***: By recent registers found in Corsica, it has been determined that this island also gave birth to the discoverer of the new world.]

The sun rose from behind the Apennines and masts and towers became visible through the golden haze, as we approached the sh.o.r.e. On a flat s.p.a.ce between the sea and the hills, not far from the foot of Montenero, stands Leghorn. The harbor is protected by a mole, leaving a narrow pa.s.sage, through which we entered, and after waiting two hours for the visit of the health and police officers, we were permitted to go on sh.o.r.e. The first thing that struck me, was the fine broad streets; the second, the motley character of the population. People were hurrying about noisy and bustling--Greeks in their red caps and capotes; grave turbaned and bearded Turks; dark Moors; the Corsair-looking natives of Tripoli and Tunis, and seamen of nearly every nation. At the hotel where I stayed, we had a singular mixture of nations at dinner:--two French, two Swiss, one Genoese, one Roman, one American and one Turk--and we were waited on by a Tuscan and an Arab! We conversed together in four languages, all at once.

To the merchant, Leghorn is of more importance than to the traveler. Its extensive trade, not only in the manufactures of Tuscany, but also in the productions of the Levant, makes it important to the former, while the latter seeks in vain for fine buildings, galleries of art, or in interesting historical reminiscences. Through the kind attention of the Saxon Consul, to whom I had letters, two or three days went by delightfully.

The only place of amus.e.m.e.nt here in summer is a drive along the sea sh.o.r.e, called the Ardenza, which is frequented every evening by all who can raise a vehicle. I visited it twice with a German friend. We met one evening the Princess Corsini, wife of the Governor of Leghorn, on horseback--a young, but not pretty woman. The road leads out along the Mediterranean, past an old fortress, to a large establishment for the sea bathers, where it ends in a large ring, around which the carriages pa.s.s and re-pa.s.s, until sunset has gone out over the sea, when they return to the city in a mad gallop, or as fast as the lean horses can draw them.

In driving around, we met two or three carriages of Turks, in one of which I saw a woman of Tunis, with a curious gilded head-dress, eighteen inches in height.

I saw one night a Turkish funeral. It pa.s.sed me in one of the outer streets, on its way to the Turkish burying ground. Those following the coffin, which was covered with a heavy black pall, wore white turbans and long white robes--the mourning color of the Turks. Torches were borne by attendants, and the whole company pa.s.sed on at a quick pace.

Seen thus by night, it had a strange and spectral appearance.

There is another spectacle here which was exceedingly revolting to me.

The condemned criminals, chained two and two, are kept at work through the city, cleaning the streets. They are dressed in coa.r.s.e garments of a dirty red color, with the name of the crime for which they were convicted, painted on the back. I shuddered to see so many marked with the words--"_omicidio premeditato_." All day they are thus engaged, exposed to the scorn and contumely of the crowd, and at night dragged away to be incarcerated in damp, unwholesome dungeons, excavated under the public thoroughfares.

The employment of criminals in this way is common in Italy. Two days after crossing St. Gothard, we saw a company of abject-looking creatures, eating their dinner by the road-side, near Bellinzona. One of them had a small basket of articles of cotton and linen, and as he rose up to offer them to us, I was startled by the clank of fetters. They were all employed to labor on the road.

On going down to the wharf in Leghorn, in the morning, two or three days ago, I found F---- and B---- just stepping on sh.o.r.e from the steamboat, tired enough of the discomforts of the voyage, yet anxious to set out for Florence as soon as possible. After we had shaken off the crowd of porters, pedlars and vetturini, and taken a hasty breakfast at the _Cafe Americano_, we went to the Police Office to get our pa.s.sports, and had the satisfaction of paying two francs for permission to proceed to Florence. The weather had changed since the preceding day, and the sirocco-wind which blows over from the coast of Africa, filled the streets with clouds of dust, which made walking very unpleasant. The clear blue sky had vanished, and a leaden cloud hung low on the Mediterranean, hiding the sh.o.r.es of Corsica and the rooky isles of Gorgona and Capraja.

The country between Leghorn and Pisa, is a flat marsh, intersected in several places by ca.n.a.ls to carry off the stagnant water which renders this district so unhealthy. It is said that the entire plain between the mountains of Carrarra and the hills back of Leghorn has been gradually formed by the deposits of the Arno and the receding of the Mediterranean, which is so shallow along the whole coast, that large vessels have to anchor several miles out. As we approached Pisa over the level marsh, I could see the dome of the Cathedral and the Leaning Tower rising above the gardens and groves which surround it.

Our baggage underwent another examination at the gate, where we were again a.s.sailed by the vetturini, one of whom hung on us like a leech till we reached a hotel, and there was finally no way of shaking him off except by engaging him to take us to Florence. The bargain having been concluded, we had still a few hours left and set off to hunt the Cathedral. We found it on an open square near the outer wall, and quite remote from the main part of the town. Emerging from the narrow and winding street, one takes in et a glance the Baptistery, the Campo Santo, the n.o.ble Cathedral and the Leaning Tower--forming altogether a view rarely surpa.s.sed in Europe for architectural effect. But the square is melancholy and deserted, and rank, untrampled gra.s.s fills the crevices of its marble pavement.

I was surprised at the beauty of the Leaning Tower. Instead of all old, black, crumbling fabric, as I always supposed, it is a light, airy, elegant structure, of white marble, and its declension, which is interesting as a work of art (or accident,) is at the same time pleasing from its novelty. There have been many conjectures as to the cause of this deviation, which is upwards of fourteen feet from the perpendicular; it is now generally believed that the earth having sunk when the building was half finished, it was continued by the architects in the same angle. The upper gallery, which is smaller than the others, shows a very perceptible inclination back towards the perpendicular, as if in some degree to counterbalance the deviation of the other part.

There are eight galleries in all, supported by marble pillars, but the inside of the Tower is hollow to the very top.

We ascended by the same stairs which were trodden so often by Galileo in going up to make his astronomical observations; in climbing spirally around the hollow cylinder in the dark, it was easy to tell on which side of the Tower we were, from the proportionate steepness of the staircase. There is a fine view from the top, embracing the whole plain as far as Leghorn on one side, with its gardens and grain fields spread out like a vast map. In a valley of the Carrarrese Mountains to the north, we could see the little town of Lucca, much frequented at this season on account of its baths; the blue summits of the Appenines shut in the view to the east. In walking through the city I noticed two other towers, which had nearly as great a deviation from the perpendicular. We met a person who had the key of the Baptistery, which he opened for us.

Two ancient columns covered with rich sculpture form the doorway, and the dome is supported by ma.s.sive pillars of the red marble of Elba. The baptismal font is of the purest Parian marble. The most remarkable thing was the celebrated musical echo. Our cicerone stationed himself at the side of the font and sang a few notes. After a moment's pause they were repeated aloft in the dome, but with a sound of divine sweetness--as clear and pure as the clang of a crystal bell. Another pause--and we heard them again, higher, fainter and sweeter, followed by a dying note, as if they were fading far away into heaven. It seemed as if an angel lingered in the temple, echoing with his melodious lips the common harmonies of earth. Even thus does the music of good deeds, hardly noted in our grosser atmosphere, awake a divine echo in the far world of spirit.

The Campo Santo, on the north side of the Cathedral, was, until lately, the cemetery of the city; the s.p.a.ce enclosed within its marble galleries is filled to the depth of eight or ten feet, with earth from the Holy Land. The vessels which carried the knights of Tuscany to Palestine were filled at Joppa, on returning, with this earth as ballast, and on arriving at Pisa it was deposited in the Cemetery. It has the peculiar property of decomposing all human bodies, in the s.p.a.ce of two days. A colonnade of marble encloses it, with windows of the most exquisite sculpture opening on the inside. They reminded me of the beautiful Gothic oriels of Melrose. At each end are two fine, green cypresses, which thrive remarkably in the soil of Palestine. The dust of a German emperor, among others, rests in this consecrated ground. There are other fine churches in Pisa, but the four buildings I have mentioned, are the princ.i.p.al objects of interest. The tower where Count Ugolino and his sons were starved to death by the citizens of Pisa, who locked them up and threw the keys into the Arno, has lately been destroyed.

An Italian gentleman having made a bargain in the meantime with our vetturino, we found every thing ready on returning to the hotel. On the outside of the town we mounted into the vehicle, a rickety-looking concern, and as it commenced raining, I was afraid we would have a bad night of it. After a great deal of bargaining, the vetturino agreed to take us to Florence that night for five francs a piece, provided one person would sit on the outside with the driver. I accordingly mounted on front, protected by a blouse and umbrella, for it was beginning to rain dismally. The miserable, bare-boned horses were fastened with rope-traces, and the vetturino having taken the rope-lines in his hand, gave a flourish with his whip; one old horse tumbled nearly to the ground, but he jerked him up again and we rattled off.

After riding ten miles in this way, it became so wet and dreary, that I was fain to give the driver two francs extra, for the privilege of an inside seat. Our Italian companion was agreeable and talkative, but as we were still ignorant of the language, I managed to hold a scanty conversation with him in French. He seemed delighted to learn that we were from America; his polite reserve gave place to a friendly familiarity and he was loud in his praises of the Americans. I asked him why it was that he and the Italians generally, were so friendly towards us. "I hardly know," he answered; "you are so different from any other nation; and then, too, you have so much sincerity!"

The Appenines were wreathed and hidden in thick mist, and the prospect over the flat cornfields bordering the road was not particularly interesting. We had made about one-third of the way as night set in, when on ascending a hill soon after dark, F---- happened to look out, and saw one of the axles bent and nearly broken off. we were obliged to get out and walk through the mud to the next village, when after two hours' delay, the vetturino came along with another carriage. Of the rest of the way to Florence, I cannot say much. Cramped up in the narrow vehicle, we jolted along in the dark, rumbling now and then through some silent village, where lamps were burning before the solitary shrines.

Sometimes a blinding light crossed the road, where we saw the tile-makers sitting in the red glare of their kilns, and often the black boughs of trees were painted momentarily on the cloudy sky. If the jolting carriage had even permitted sleep, the horrid cries of the vetturino, urging on his horses, would have prevented it; and I decided, while trying to relieve my aching limbs, that three days' walking in sun and sand was preferable to one night of such travel.

Finally about four o'clock in the morning the carriage stopped; my Italian friend awoke and demanded the cause. "Signor," said the vetturino, "we are in Florence!" I blessed the man, and the city too.

The good-humored officer looked at our pa.s.sports and pa.s.sed our baggage without examination; we gave the gatekeeper a paul and he admitted us.

The carriage rolled through the dark, silent streets--pa.s.sed a public square--came out on the Arno--crossed and entered the city again--and finally stopped at a hotel. The master of the "Lione Bianco" came down in an undress to receive us, and we shut the growing dawn out of our rooms to steal that repose from the day which the night had not given.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

FLORENCE AND ITS GALLERIES.

_Sept. 11._--Our situation here is as agreeable as we could well desire.

We have three large and handsomely furnished rooms, in the centre of the city, for which we pay Signor Lazzeri, a wealthy goldsmith, ten scudo per month--a scudo being a trifle more than an American dollar. We live at the _Cafes_ and _Trattone_ very conveniently for twenty-five cents a day, enjoying moreover, at our dinner in the Trattoria del Cacciatore, the company of several American artists with whom we have become acquainted. The day after our arrival we met at the table d'hote of the "Lione Bianco," Dr. Boardman of New York, through whose a.s.sistance we obtained our present lodgings. There are at present ten or twelve American artists in Florence, and we promise ourselves much pleasure and profit from their acquaintance. B---- and I are so charmed with the place and the beautiful Tuscan dialect, that we shall endeavor to spend three or four months here. F---- returns to Germany in two weeks, to attend the winter term of the University at his favorite Heidelberg.

Our first walk in Florence was to the Royal Gallery--we wished to see the "G.o.ddess living in stone" without delay. Crossing the neighboring _Piazza del Granduca_, we pa.s.sed Michael Angelo's colossal statue of David, and an open gallery containing, besides some antiques, the master-piece of John of Bologna. The palace of the _Uffizii_, fronting on the Arno, extends along both sides of an avenue running back to the Palazzo Vecchio. We entered the portico which pa.s.ses around under the great building, and after ascending three or four flights of steps, came into a long hall, filled with paintings and ancient statuary. Towards the end of this, a door opened into the Tribune--that celebrated room, unsurpa.s.sed by any in the world for the number and value of the gems it contains. I pushed aside a crimson curtain and stood in the presence of the Venus.

It may be considered heresy, but I confess I did not at first go into raptures, nor perceive any traces of superhuman beauty. The predominant feeling, if I may so express it, was satisfaction; the eye dwells on its faultless outline with a gratified sense, that nothing is wanting to render it perfect. It is the ideal of a woman's form--a faultless standard by which all beauty may be measured, but without striking expression, except in the modest and graceful position of the limbs. The face, though regular, is not handsome, and the body appears small, being but five feet in height, which, I think, is a little below the average stature of women. On each side, as if to heighten its elegance by contrast with rude and unrefined nature, are the statues of the Wrestlers, and the slave listening to the conspiracy of Catiline, called also The Whetter.

As if to correspond with the value of the works it holds, the Tribune is paved with precious marbles and the ceiling studded with polished mother-of-pearl. A dim and subdued light fills the hall, which throws over the mind that half-dreamy tone necessary to the full enjoyment of such objects. On each side of the Venus de Medici hangs a Venus by t.i.tian, the size of life, and painted in that rich and gorgeous style of coloring which has been so often and vainly attempted since his time.

Here are six of Raphael's best preserved paintings. I prefer the "St.

John in the Desert" to any other picture in the Tribune. His glorious form, in the fair proportions of ripening boyhood--the grace of his att.i.tude, with the arm lifted eloquently on high--the divine inspiration which illumines his young features--chain the step irresistibly before it. It is one of those triumphs of the pencil which few but Raphael have accomplished--the painting of _spirit_ in its loftiest and purest form.

Near it hangs the Fornarina, which he seems to have painted in as deep a love as he entertained for the original. The face is modest and beautiful, and filled with an expression of ardent and tender attachment. I never tire looking upon either of these two.

Let me not forget, while we are in this peerless hall, to point out Guercino's Samian Sybil. It is a glorious work. With her hands clasped over her volume, she is looking up with a face full of deep and expressive sadness. A picturesque turban is twined around her head, and bands of pearls gleam amidst her rich, dark brown tresses. Her face bears the softness of dawning womanhood, and nearly answers my ideal of female beauty. The same artist has another fine picture here--a sleeping Endymion. The mantle has fallen from his shoulders, as he reclines asleep, with his head on his hand, and his crook beside him. The silver crescent of Dian looks over his shoulder from the sky behind, and no wonder if she should become enamored, for a lovelier shepherd has not been seen since that of King Admetus went back to drive his chariot in the heavens.

The "Drunken Bacchus" of Michael Angelo is greatly admired, and indeed it might pa.s.s for a relic of the palmiest times of Grecian art. The face, amidst its half-vacant, sensual expression, shows traces of its immortal origin, and there is still an air of dignity preserved in the swagger of his beautiful form. It is, in a word, the ancient idea of _a drunken G.o.d_. It may be doubted whether the artist's talents might not have been employed better than in enn.o.bling intoxication. If he had represented Bacchus as he really is--degraded even below the level of humanity--it might be more beneficial to the mind, though less beautiful to the eye. However, this is a question on which artists and moralists cannot agree. Perhaps, too, the rich blood of the Falernian grape produced a more G.o.dlike delirium than the vulgar brandy which oversets the moderns!

At one end of the gallery is a fine copy in marble of the Laoc.o.o.n, by Bandinelli, one of the rivals of Michael Angelo. When it was finished, the former boasted it was better than the original, to which Michael made the apt reply: "It is foolish for those who walk in the footsteps of others, to say they go before them!"

Let us enter the hall of Niobe. One starts back on seeing the many figures in the att.i.tude of flight, for they seem at first about to spring from their pedestals. At the head of the room stands the afflicted mother, bending over the youngest daughter who clings to her knees, with an upturned countenance of deep and imploring agony. In vain! the shafts of Apollo fall thick, and she will soon be childless.

No wonder the strength of that woe depicted on her countenance should change her into stone. One of her sons--a beautiful, boyish form,--is lying on his back, just expiring, with the chill langour of death creeping over his limbs. We seem to hear the quick whistling of the arrows, and look involuntarily into the air to see the hovering figure of the avenging G.o.d. In a chamber near is kept the head of a faun, made by Michael Angelo, at the age of fourteen, in the garden of Lorenzo de Medici, from a piece of marble given him by the workmen.

The portraits of the painters are more than usually interesting. Every countenance is full of character. There is the pale, enthusiastic face of Raphael, the stern vigor of t.i.tian, the majesty and dignity of Leonardo da Vinci, and the fresh beauty of Angelica Kauffmann. I liked best the romantic head of Raphael Mengs. In one of the rooms there is a portrait of Alfieri, with an autograph sonnet of his own on the back of it. The house in which he lived and died, is on the north bank of the Arno, near the Ponte Caraja, and his ashes rest in Santa Croce.

Italy still remains the home of art, and it is but just she should keep these treasures, though the age that brought them forth has pa.s.sed away.

They are her only support now; her people are dependent for their subsistence on the glory of the past. The spirits of the old painters, living still on their canva.s.s, earn from year to year the bread of an indigent and oppressed people. This ought to silence those utilitarians at home, who oppose the cultivation of the fine arts, on the ground of their being useless luxuries. Let them look to Italy, where a picture by Raphael or Correggio is a rich legacy for a whole city. Nothing is useless that gratifies that perception of beauty, which is at once the most delicate and the most intense of our mental sensations, binding us by an unconscious link nearer to nature and to Him, whose every thought is born of Beauty, Truth and Love. I envy not the one who looks with a cold and indifferent spirit on these immortal creations of the old masters--these poems written in marble and on the canva.s.s. They who oppose every thing which can refine and spiritualize the nature of man, by binding him down to the cares of the work-day world alone, cheat life of half its glory.

The eighth of this month was the anniversary of the birth of the Virgin, and the celebration, if such it might be called, commenced the evening before, It is the custom, and Heaven only knows how it originated, for the people of the lower cla.s.s to go through the streets in a company, blowing little penny whistles. We were walking that night in the direction of the Duomo, when we met a band of these men, blowing with all their might on the shrill whistles, so that the whole neighborhood resounded with one continual, piercing, ear-splitting shriek. They marched in a kind of quick trot through the streets, followed by a crowd of boys, and varying the noise occasionally by shouts and howls of the most horrible character. They paraded through all the princ.i.p.al streets of the city, which for an hour sent up such an agonizing scream that you might have fancied it an enormous monster, expiring in great torment.

The people seemed to take the whole thing as a matter of course, but it was to us a novel manner of ushering in a religious festival.

The sky was clear and blue, as it always is in this Italian paradise, when we left Florence a few days ago for Fiesole. In spite of many virtuous efforts to rise early, it was nine o'clock before we left the Porta San Gallo, with its triumphal arch to the Emperor Francis, striding the road to Bologna. We pa.s.sed through the public walk at this end of the city, and followed the road to Fiesole along the dried-up bed of a mountain torrent. The dwellings of the Florentine n.o.bility occupy the whole slope, surrounded with rich and lovely gardens. The mountain and plain are both covered with luxuriant olive orchards, whose foliage of silver gray gives the scene the look of a moonlight landscape.

At the base of the mountain of Fiesole we pa.s.sed one of the summer palaces of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and a little distance beyond, took a foot-path overshadowed by magnificent cypresses, between whose dark trunks we looked down on the lovely Val d'Arno. But I will reserve all description of the view till we arrive at the summit.

The modern village of Fiesole occupies the site of an ancient city, generally supposed to be of Etrurian origin. Just above, on one of the peaks of the mountain, stands the Acropolis, formerly used as a fortress, but now untenanted save by a few monks. From the side of its walls, beneath the shade of a few cypresses, there is a magnificent view of the whole of Val d'Arno, with Florence--the gem of Italy--in the centre. Stand with me a moment on the height, and let us gaze on this grand panorama, around which the Apennines stretch with a majestic sweep, wrapped in a robe of purple air, through which shimmer the villas and villages on their sides! The lovely vale lies below us in its garb of olive groves, among which beautiful villas are sprinkled as plentifully as white anemones in the woods of May. Florence lies in front of us, the magnificent cupola of the Duomo crowning its cl.u.s.tered palaces. We see the airy tower of the Palazzo Vecchio--the new spire of Santa Croce--and the long front of the Palazzo Pitti, with the dark foliage of the Boboli Gardens behind. Beyond, far to the south, are the summits of the mountains near Siena. We can trace the sandy bed of the Arno down the valley till it disappears at the foot of the Lower Apennines, which mingle in the distance with the mountains of Carrara.

Galileo was wont to make observations "at evening from the top of Fiesole," and the square tower of the old church is still pointed out as the spot. Many a night did he ascend to its projecting terrace, and watch the stars as they rolled around through the clearest heaven to which a philosopher ever looked up.

We pa.s.sed through an orchard of fig trees, and vines laden with beautiful purple and golden cl.u.s.ters, and in a few minutes reached the remains of an amphitheatre, in a little nook on the mountain side. This was a work of Roman construction, as its form indicates. Three or four ranges of seats alone, are laid bare, and these have only been discovered within a few years. A few steps further we came to a sort of cavern, overhung with wild fig-trees. After creeping in at the entrance, we found ourselves in an oval chamber, tall enough to admit of our standing upright, and rudely but very strongly built. This was one of the dens in which the wild beasts were kept; they were fed by a hole in the top, now closed up. This cell communicates with four or five others, by apertures broken in the walls. I stepped into one, and could see in the dim light, that it was exactly similar to the first, and opened into another beyond.