CHAPTER IV.

“Where the mountainsLift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and luminous summits.”Evangeline.

Wallenstadt—Sargans—Gorge of the Tamina—Ragatz—Chur—Ems—Reichenau—Thusis—Zillis—Andeer—Splügen—The Splügen Pass—The Custom-house—Cascade of the Medessimo—Campo Dolcino.

THEstorm of the evening gave no kind augury of sunshine on the morrow, and with rather anxious thoughts we listened as it roared among the mountains which overhung our hostelry. But it seemed that we had suffered enough, and when we woke we found that, though the clouds had not yet cleared off from the sides of the mountains, there was nevertheless every prospect of a fine day.

We were obliged to leave by an inexorably early steamer at half-past five for Wallenstadt, and so lost all but the suggestion only of the magnificence of the mountains which tower up so grandly over the north shore of the lake. Like Goethe on his way into Italy, we might exclaim, “What do we not pass over, both on the right hand and on the left, in order to carry out the one thought which has become almost too old for the soul!” But our time was limited, and our chief anxiety to spend as much of our short holiday as we could in Italy; and so, sad though we were to miss what was doubtless so well worthy of being seen, on we were bound to go without delay.

Before we started I had secured a voiturier whose carriage was at Wallenstadt to take us on to Chur, so that on this score I had no trouble before me. Our voyage was only too soon made. Unlike the Lake of Zurich, where the traveller rather hopes that each place at which he stops may be the last, on this lake, as the tiny steamer ploughs its way rapidly over its surface, with its goal always in view, and with not a place to stop at on its road, he ceases not to long that his pleasure may be prolonged!

By seven o’clock we were in our carriage, anden route. The sun began to shine, and every minute the clouds rose higher and higher; so that, before we finally lost—by turning into the valley of the Rhine—the last view of the valley of the lake, we could see the peaks of the mountains which we so wished to have seen before, the Sieben-Churfürsten, which tower so grandly over the lake.

Wallenstadt is but a poor place, its situation being unwholesome, and its inns not much to be commended. It has a church of modern character, with an old-looking tower in the position of a transept, with a saddle-back roof, gabled north and south. On the lower part of the south side of this tower are paintings of the Crucifixion and some other subjects, apparently of some antiquity. Just above the town, on the right, we passed the ruins of an old castle; and at a slight rise in the road had a beautiful view of the calm waters of the lake, looking blue, but very much smaller than it really is. This, no doubt, is owing to the great height of the precipitous rocks on its north side, which we now saw for the first time, the clouds having at last risen and disclosed some of the beauties which they had been concealing from us.

The valley from Wallenstadt to Sargans, just beyond which our route, after crossing the very low watershed, joined the valley of the Rhine, was strikingly beautiful.Its ecclesiological features were not, however, remarkable, if I except the constant repetition of what I have often noticed in the Catholic cantons of Switzerland and in Tyrol—the occurrence, namely, of grated openings on either side of the western door-way, commanding the interior and protected by an open porch, through which passers-by, though not able to enter, might still see the altar. On our journey from Basel to Zurich we passed a church the altar of which was lighted up, and the doors behind these gratings left open very late at night. It was in a lonely place, and when I passed there was no one in or near the church. I never see this arrangement without wishing to introduce it in England. There are so many of our Churches which cannot conveniently be left always open, and where such a provision might suggest to passers-by, as it does here, the propriety of using a church at other times than those of public service.

The cultivation of this valley is not so uninteresting as its ecclesiology. Here we first found the vines trained about in the horizontal Italian fashion, whilst under them great gourds and pumpkins developed themselves to a prodigious size.

Sargans is a very picturesque old town, and has some capital examples of good Swiss carpentry in its houses; in addition to which there is a picturesque and antique-looking castle, rising high above the houses on a rock, guarding the eastern entrance to the town, and commanding the junction of our road with that of the valley of the Rhine leading to the Lake of Constance.

Our coachman was under a bond to travel as fast as a diligence which lumbered on slowly in advance of us, and as far as Ragatz was quite true to his word; there, however, we determined to pause for a few hours, not willing to pass anything so famous as the baths of Pfefferswithout a visit. Leaving our carriage, we mounted a light car, and were soon ascending the beautiful gorge of the Tamina to the baths. The road is capitally made, and follows the windings of the mountain torrent so closely as to require some nerve in those who drive rapidly along on their road to or from the baths. The ascent is steep, but in rather less than an hour we found ourselves at the baths. The rocks rise nearly perpendicularly behind the ledge of rock on which they stand, and the only mode of access to the upper and more wonderful part of the chasm was by passing through the long corridors, which betokened the once religious object of the building. These passed, and in charge of a guide, we crossed the torrent by a rude bridge, and then by a rather precarious path made our way, as it seemed, almost into the bowels of the mountain. The gorge is so very narrow that in many parts the light of the sky is no longer visible, the rocks overhanging each other above the head. All the while the torrent is roaring by our sides, and we feel that we are indeed enjoying an excursion into the very heart of the rocky earth. At last we reach the end of the path, are compelled by our guide to ensconce ourselves, one by one, in a small kind of box formed round the source of the spring—to pronounce it very hot and very nasty (its two most eminent qualities)—and then, still admiring the matchless grandeur of the rocky way, we regain our car, and are soon again whirled down the hill to Ragatz.

Our driver is a cheerful, pleasant fellow, talks German much better than the man we brought from Wesen, is communicative, moreover, and seems to enjoy a laugh and a joke uncommonly. Of course we become friends, and with no trouble on our parts, though with some little on his, it is arranged that our old driver shall remain where he is, and that our new friend, proud in the possession ofthe then very necessary Austrian passport, shall take us on as far at any rate as Chiavenna. A hurried Swiss luncheon—wine, honey, bread and butter—is soon despatched, and again we are on our way under the auspices of our new voiturier.

But we must not leave Ragatz without noticing its church, remarkable for its exceedingly good octagonal wooden spire springing in an unusual manner out of a square wooden belfry stage, and another church at (I think) Vilters, close to Ragatz, which has a lofty tower finished on each side with a sharp gable, and a thin octagonal spire rising from the intersection of the cross-gabled roof; both these steeples are in a position which for some reason is very popular in this district—the south side of the chancel.

WOODEN SPIRE—RAGATZ.

From Ragatz to Chur the churches are all very similar; they have tall towers generally in the same position as those near Ragatz, and capped with bulbous roofs, or sharp spires covered with metal. The road is not quite the most agreeable we have travelled; some of the views, it is true, are most lovely, and the mountains—among which towers pre-eminent the grand outline of the Falkniss—are very noble; but, despite all this, the valley is too wide, and the Rhine, by periodical inundations, manages to secure so nearly its whole extent to itself, that there is a waste, desolate, and pestilential look in the foreground which is not prepossessing. We arrived at Chur at about half-past

3.—CATHEDRAL. CHUR. Page 33.3.—CATHEDRAL. CHUR.Page 33.

one, and, not sorry that our horses required rest, betook ourselves to the inspection of this very curious town.

It is entered by old gateways, and many of the streets are still full of ancient houses. The curious feature of the place is however its complete division into two quarters—the Protestant and the Catholic—the latter walled off, and entered by its own gates.[2]It occupies the upper part of the town, and contains in the cathedral church of S. Lucius an attraction for architects which has unusual merit and interest. Its plan consists of a nave of three bays, a choir of one bay raised by twelve steps above the nave, and a sanctuary much narrower than the nave and choir, and also of one bay. The steps from the nave to the choir are narrow and on each side, and between them is a very flat wide arch, under which access is obtained to the crypt, the floor of which is a few steps below the nave, and extends under the choir and sanctuary. The plan is, it will be seen, not unlike that of the Cathedral at Zurich, save that here there are no apsidal terminations at all.

A sketch of the interior of so singular a church cannot be uninteresting, and it will be seen from this that the whole is of the very earliest pointed work, and good of its kind; the crypt is supported in the centre by a column resting upon a grotesque animal. Two of the altars have fine shrines of metal of the thirteenth century, and two otheraltars have ancient pricket candlesticks, and there are some fine brass standard candlesticks also; the choir stalls are old, and there is a late triptych behind the high altar, and a very fine Sakramentshaus with metal doors just below the northern flight of steps to the choir, which reminded me of the very fine example in a similar position in the cathedral at Ulm. The altar is of stone of the thirteenth century, with five detached shafts in front, supporting the slab or mensa. The whole church is groined. It is worthy of notice that the choir makes a great bend out of the straight line towards the north—so much, indeed, that it is impossible to avoid noticing it as one enters the church. The steps from the nave to the choir lack dignity. But it is true that if they had been in the centre, and the entrances to the crypt on each side, the crypt would not have been seen, as it now is, from the nave, and a striking effect would have been lost. The west end has a fine round-arched doorway with several shafts in each jamb, above this a large window of the same character, and in the gable a small middle-pointed window. About ten feet in advance of the west doorway is a curious remnant of a gateway with piers and shafts resting upon monsters, looking, however, very much as though it had been removed from elsewhere.

Service commenced just as I was obliged to think of leaving the church; the priests wore red cassocks and tippets, and very short surplices edged with lace, and looked unclean and untidy; there was no one in the body of the church, and the sacristan, after the service had commenced, walked backwards and forwards about the choir, down the steps into the nave, and then—after a little attention bestowed on some matter there—out of the church. On a subsequent visit to this church (in 1872) I found repairs in progress, which bade fair to destroy some of its great archæological interest.

Descending from the melancholy and squalid-looking Catholic quarter, we soon came upon the Protestant church, dedicated in honour of S. Martin, which is now somewhat remarkable. It is old, but it has been plastered, whitewashed, and then painted by some original artist over its whole exterior, in an extraordinary imitation of all kinds of inconsistent architectural devices; pilasters, cornices, mouldings, tracery, and the like, are all boldly represented with black paint, and in such style that we all stopped the moment we saw it, struck by the conviction that it must be a scene from some play, so utterly absurd, flat, and out of all perspective did the whole look.

The situation of Chur is very lovely, placed as it is just at the point where the Schalfiker Thal joins the valley of the Rhine, and upon the steep and rugged bottom slope of the mountains.

The weather was every moment becoming more glorious, and just as we left Chur, along the road which leads to Reichenau, we had one of the most lovely views we had enjoyed. It is not always the case, however beautiful may be the scenery, or however lovely the weather, that one finds everything group together perfectly; here, however, it did, and I commend the subject to the pencils of those who follow me on this route.

We soon reached Ems, whose church, situated upon a green knoll above the village, has the peculiarity of a small apsidal building east of the chancel apse. The key was not to be found, so that I could not go in to examine what this building was. This church had an octangular steeple, whilst another church in the same village had one of the bulbous coverings of which I have before complained. At Reichenau it is proper to go to see the house in which Louis Philippe acted in 1793 as schoolmaster under a Monsieur Jost, and I fear we fell rather in the good opinionof our driver when we neglected so proper and regular a custom; but so it was. The garden of the inn is charming, and from its edge you obtain the best view of the junction of the Vorder and Hinter Rhine, and having enjoyed this thoroughly, we passed rapidly through Reichenau, across its two quaint covered wooden bridges, and by the beautiful meeting of the waters, until we found ourselves following the course of the Hinter Rhine and fairly on the Splügen road.

We only wished to reach Thusis by sunset, and so our time was ample for enjoyment; we walked much of the way, detecting eagerly every here and there patches of snow on the mountains in the distance, each of which is hailed as a discovery by every fresh traveller, who feels himself transported with delight by the distant view of the pure white against the sky.

Castles are here as numerous as ever upon the Rhine, and at least a dozen, I should think, might be reckoned perched on every favourable spot between Reichenau and Thusis. As the road advances the valley widens out into a kind of basin, into which flow two streams, the one through the as yet unperceived gorge of the Via Mala rather to the right, the other through an opening in the mountains directly in front of us, which allows us a charming view of the snowy heights above the Julier Pass, drinking in the last red rays of the setting sun, long since passed away from the ground on which we stand; then there is a long ascent, and, passing peasants coming in from hay-making, merrily laughing and singing, we drive up the straight ugly street of Thusis to the Via Mala Hotel. But the evening is too glorious to lose, and in five minutes we are out again on foot to explore the commencement of the black defile; and until we are absolutely turning into it, so narrow is the gorge that it is not seen, but when seen, and by such a light, how grand and beautiful it is! Weascended some distance and then stood and admired. Above us tremendous rocks towered high into the air, riven in two for the narrow chasm in which we stood, at whose bottom we heard the distant roar of the Rhine, and down below and beyond, framed as it were between the grand outline of rocky crag and pine-covered mountain, lay the valley of Domleschg, still retaining, by contrast with the gloom around us, some light upon its fields, and castles, and villages. Rest was well earned after such a pleasant and actively spent day, and, if we were late in starting in the morning, it was as much the fault of our coachman as of ourselves. However, though not so early as we intended, we left soon after six, and in a few minutes were again in the Via Mala. And now by daylight I doubt whether we were not all disappointed; there is so much in a name that one expects somethingveryterrific from such a name, and this it scarcely is. It is seldom fair to compare one piece of scenery with another, but still I feel that this was certainly not the most savage I had ever seen, and therefore not justlymyVia Mala. But beautiful in the extreme it was, and I believe we all regretted that we so soon found ourselves again in the more open valley on the road to Zillis. Here we found a church with a lofty tower, in the same position, and with a spire of the same design, as that at Ragatz; the nave low and ugly, the chancel lofty, with a steep pitched roof and apse; the windows pointed but modernized; the belfry windows of the steeple of three lights, with circular arches, and divided by shafts, which were continued on in blank panels on each side of the windows, so as to form an arcade of five arches on each side. And this I believe was the last noticeable church we saw before we reached Chiavenna, and in its arcaded belfry I fancied that I saw something of an Italian influence at work, which might well have been the fact.

We soon reached Andeer, where we waited but a short time, and then commenced a steep ascent. The lovely scenery, the mountains closing in round us, and the roar of the falls of the Rofla making music in our ears, made our way very enjoyable. There was but little chance, however, of rapid progress, as from Andeer to Splügen the road is almost always on the ascent, sometimes gradually, at others in steep zigzags up the shoulder of some obstructive hill, and constantly overhanging or crossing the rapid, white, foaming mountain-stream, sole representative here of the noble river whose broad waters have been admired at Basel. The air of desolation becomes more decided as one reaches Splügen. Trees and shrubs more scarce, and often blasted by the fierce rush of the wintry wind, or the keen sharp blow of the fallen rock, or the swift sweep of the avalanche, aid in making up the desolate picture. Vegetation has well-nigh ceased, and the eye, though deceived at first by the intensely red colour perceived every here and there on the hill-sides and on the rocks, discovers presently that not to flowers or plants, but to lichen or other such desolate vegetation, is it owing.

By the time we caught the first sight of Splügen the sky was overclouded, the wind rose, and a sudden heavy storm of rain gave us a lesson in the customs of the weather in these regions, to which our driver’s quiet assurance that we should probably have a snowstorm on the pass added the few remaining drops required to make up the draught which we saw ourselves doomed to swallow.

Splügen, however, was reputed to have an inn which would give us enviable shelter for a couple of hours, and we entered at once, hoping, if we waited, again to see the blue sky before we crossed the boundary between the North and the South—between Switzerland and Italy.

The table-d’hôte was just about to commence, and incame a diligence from Milan, and out came the passengers: another carriage, which had pursued us relentlessly all the way from Andeer, came in at the same moment, and down we sat, about fifteen English people, not one of whom had been in the house ten minutes before, not one of them stopping for more than their own and their horses’ dinners, and all proceeding in different directions, either on their way home satiated with travel, or just about to dive like ourselves in full quest of pleasure and excitement, into a new country. These meetings are always curious, generally amusing, and to the quiet and attentive observer of character not a little edifying. On this occasion there was subject-matter enough, and we found an old gentleman, travelling sorely against his will, under the care of an active and thoroughly vulgar wife, some literary old maids of another party, and the enthusiastic damsel of a third, each in their way amusing, and not the less so in that it was necessary to inspect them and part with them so rapidly.

Splügen, in a soaking rain, is not a pleasant place; and as I employed myself in sketching from the inn window the very picturesque old bridge, which gives[3]all its architectural character to the village, I conceive that I accomplished all that was necessary; and when we got into our carriage again, and, crossing by the bridge, left the Bernardin road to the right, and finally plunged really into the Splügen route, it seemed like a reward for my industry to find the rain cease and the sun again occasionally shine out.

The ascent begins with a series of zigzags, which rapidly carry the road high above the valley of the Rhine, and then, passing through one of the long covered galleries for which this route is famous, it emerges in an uplandvalley or dip between two mountains, up which it takes a steady course along a road macadamized, by-the-by, mainly with the white marble which abounds here, until, just below the summit, it comes again upon a steep mountain-side, to be surmounted only by a patient unravelling as it were of the intricacies of an endless zigzaging, which at last brings us to the Swiss guard-house and the entrance to the great gallery. The clouds are low and gathering; but still as we see below us white patches of snow every here and there, and above us the blue edge of a great glacier marked with lines of crevasses and fringed with a white edge of snow, we feel that we have really at last achieved the summit. Noisily we trot through the arched gallery, and then, after another slight ascent for a few minutes, we stop and put on the drag, and then down we go rapidly and cheerily, backwards and forwards, occasionally giving a merry tap to some corner post at the turns of the road, in order to let it be known that we, our driver, and our horses, are all of us heartily glad that we are at last on the south side of the pass—no longer the German Splügen, but, as we learn from divers notices along the road, the Italian Spluga. A short drive takes us to the custom-house—not looked forward to cheerfully by those who have met, as we had at Splügen, a man turned back by mistake, and after two days’ delay again retracing his steps—but happily, in our case, passed easily enough, and with an exhibition of the greatest courtesy and civility from the Austrian officer, the mention of whom reminds me of the great change which has taken place in the political status of this country since first I made acquaintance with it. It is a change of no little importance to the traveller, who now goes without let or hindrance almost everywhere, instead of being worried out of his life by troubles about passports which even Austrian courtesy could not make tolerable.

We are soon off again across a drear and peaty-looking plain, with no view of the neighbouring mountains, and accompanied along the road by a troop of wild smuggler-like fellows, in broad-brimmed steeple-crowned hats, loose jackets, knee breeches, and coarse stockings, riding wildly along on rough horses, without saddles or bridles, but every one of them handsome grand-looking fellows, showing, as they smiled, teeth of the purest white, and more nearly coming up to one’s idea of real Italians than any with whom, later in our journey and more in Italy, we happened to meet. Before long, however, we again commenced the descent, and then, after passing through two or three galleries of prodigious length, at last came out upon one of those spots, the view from which, as much perhaps by reason of its associations as for its intrinsic beauty, rests on the mind for ever after, as one of the most lovely ever seen. On our right a steep mountain track slopes rapidly and almost perpendicularly down to a narrow valley, whose opposite and no less precipitous side we are about to descend; below us, far down, we see the village roofs of Isola, with its church and Italian campanile; beyond—and this is indeed the great charm of the prospect—down the valley, where the atmosphere seems redolent of the South, we see a grandly formed mountain, and again to its right another but more distant; between these two dim and distant shades lies the lake of Como—beyond them the broad rich plain of Lombardy; the sun shines forth, and we dream henceforward of that valley, looked down upon from the gallery on the Splügen, as one of the brightest prospects of our lives!

We had not gone far beyond the last gallery before our voiturier made good a boast which he had often repeated, of showing us a real waterfall on a grand scale before we parted company, and, pulling up his horses, madeus—not unwilling—dismount to lookdownthe cascade of the Medessimo. A passage has been formed from the road to a point which just overhangs the fall, and here, securely parapeted round, you look down over a grand sheer fall of some eight hundred feet, in the course of which the torrent which goes to feed the threadlike Lira down below us in the valley, and just now roaring in bold volume underneath our road, loses itself in soft, delicate, and fairy-like spray, and ere it reaches the rock below, seems like some delicate mist falling from the sky for ever in endless and exquisite change of form. Just beyond the cascade the most wonderful part of the descent in an engineering point of view commences, and the road seems really to descend the perpendicular face of the rock, surpassing in boldness most other roads that I know, and affording very fine and varied views of the cascade on the descent. We soon reached Campo Dolcino, a miserable and most dirty-looking village; and were, sorely against our will, obliged to wait for our horses to bait; and then on we went, the sun some time set, and the night dark and cloudy. Presently a storm arose; and without lights, and travelling along a road turning sharp angles every minute, and never losing the music in our ears of the roaring Lira, our lot seemed more wild than enviable; at last we came to a house and tried unsuccessfully to borrow a light, but presently at another house we succeeded, and then guided by a lantern we pursued our way safely enough. I have seldom been out in so grand a storm; the lightning was vivid beyond all that I could conceive; and as at one minute it played about on the foaming water beneath us, and at another lighted up the whole mountain-side beyond with pale and intensely lovely light, flickering, playing, and dancing about in the wildest fashion, I believe we felt half sad when house after house appeared, and at last weentered the long, narrow, and thoroughly Italian streets of Chiavenna.

Another journey took me to Chiavenna at the same time in the evening, on my way north from Como. It was the night of the 8th September, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, and every peasant in his solitary châlet on the mountain-side was burning a bonfire in her honour. There seemed to me to be something very touching in this flaming burst of distant greeting from mountain to mountain, and few circumstances have ever brought home more vividly to me the isolation of these mountaineers, than the compensating power of a sympathetic faith which made them thus bid each other welcome by their flaring fires.

“But now ‘tis pass’d,That turbulent chaos; and the promised landLies at my feet in all its loveliness!To him who starts up from a terrible dream,And lo, the sun is shining and the larkSinging aloud for joy, to him is notSuch sudden ravishment as now I feel,At the first glimpses of fair Italy.”Rogers.

Chiavenna—Lake of Riva—Colico—Gravidona—Lake of Como—Varenna—Stelvio Pass—Lecco—Bergamo: Broletto—Churches—Castle of Malpaga.

THEsituation of Chiavenna is eminently beautiful: in a deep valley surrounded on all sides by mountains whose slopes are covered with soft and luxuriant foliage of oak and chestnut, and where every available open space is devoted to trellised vineyards, it contrasts strongly with the pine-covered hills so lately passed on the northern slopes of the Alps; placed, too, at the confluence of two streams—the Meira and the Lira—it rejoices in the constant rushing sound of many waters.

It was only necessary to move out of the shade of our hotel into the melancholy piazza in which it stands, to discover that an Italian sun lighted up the deep blue sky; and a walk to the principal church, dedicated in honour of S. Lawrence, a stroll through the narrow streets, and a rather toilsome ascent through a vineyard formedupon a rock which towers up behind a kind of ruined castle, and from which a capital view is obtained of the singular and beautiful cul-de-sac in which the town is planted, sufficiently convinced us of its power.

The church of S. Lawrence is entered from a large oblong cloister, in one angle of the space enclosed by which rises a tall campanile, its simple form, and its arcaded belfry full of musical bells, contrasting well with the outline of the hills which overhang and hem it in. On the east side of the cloister are the church, an octagonal baptistery, and a bone-house, all ranged side by side and opening into it, and the latter curious as an example of the extent to which the people of Chiavenna amuse themselves by arranging sculls and arm-bones into all kinds of religious and heraldic devices, and with labels to mark the names of their former owners. Thetout ensembleis picturesque in its effect, and the cool pleasant shade of the cloister, with the view of the church and its tall campanile, and irregularly grouped buildings looking brilliantly white in the clear sunshine, was very pleasing.[4]

Italian beggars, persevering, and, at any rate in appearance, very devout, did their best to annoy us here and everywhere when we ventured to stop to examine or admire anything; and Italian beggars are certainly both in pertinacity and in filth about the most unpleasant of their class.

My voiturier gave me a lesson worth learning, and not perhaps unworthy of note for other unsuspicious travellers.We had a written contract to Chiavenna, and thence to Colico he had agreed verbally to take us for a certain sum; before we started I found, however, that he intended to charge us three times as much as we had agreed upon, and, as very luckily we found a diligence on the point of starting, we secured places in the cabriolet at its back, from which we had the best possible position for seeing the views, and so left him in the lurch, with divers admonitions to behave himself more honestly for the future.

At ten we left, and had a very enjoyable ride to Colico. The valley, however, bore sad traces of the havoc made by the inundations of the Meira, and of the storm of the previous night. We soon reached the shores of the little Lake of Riva, along whose banks our road took us sometimes in tunnels, sometimes on causeways built out into the water, until at last we reached the valley up which runs the Stelvio road, and then, after passing along the whole length of a straight road lined on each side with a wearisome and endless row of poplars, we were at Colico. Here we prudently availed ourselves of the opportunity of an hour’s delay in the departure of the boat for an early dinner, and, then embarking, waited patiently the pleasure of our captain.

The scenery of Lake Como has been so often extravagantly praised that I was quite prepared to be disappointed; but for the whole distance from Colico to Lecco it is certainly on the whole more striking than any lake scenery I have seen. The mountains at its head are extremely irregular and picturesque, and throughout its whole length there is great change and variety. In this respect it contrasts favourably with most other lakes, and I certainly think that not even in the Lake of Lucerne is there any one view so grand as that which one has looking up from within a short distance of the head of Como over the Lake of Riva to the mountainsclosing in the Stelvio, and rising nobly above the sources of the Meira and the Lira.

Somewhat, too, may be said of the innumerable villages and white villas with which the banks of the lake are studded; they give a sunny, inhabited, and cheerful feeling to the whole scene; and, reflected in the deep blue lake in those long-drawn lines of flakey white which are seen in no other water to such perfection, add certainly some beauty to the general view.

One of these villages—Gravidona—within half an hour’s sail of Colico, ought not to be left unvisited by any one who cares about architecture.

Close to its little harbour stand two churches side by side, one an oblong basilica, the other a baptistery of, as it seems to me, such great interest that I give illustrations both of its plan and of its exterior. It will be seen that the dimensions are small, the total internal width being less than forty feet, whilst the design of the east end is most ingeniously contrived so as to give no less than five eastern apsidal recesses. There are two stair-turrets in the wall on each side of the western tower which lead up to a sort of triforium-passage which is formed behind an arcade in the side wall of the church, and one of them leads also to the first floor of the tower. The triforium consists of an arcade of seven arches in each side wall. The three small apses at the east have each their own semi-dome, and the chancel as well as all the other apsidal recesses are similarly roofed. All the walls retain more or less traces of old paintings, the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin occupying the principal apse, and the Last Judgment the west wall. The whole church is built in white marble and black lime-stone used in courses, or stripes, with extremely good effect.

The roof of this Baptistery is of wood. The exterior is best explained by reference to my drawing of the westfront. It stands on a charming site with a background of lake and mountain, such as one seldom enjoys. There is a contrast here, which strikes one very much, between the ingenious skill of the planning of such a building as this and the rudeness of the execution of the details. I know nothing as to the history of Gravidona; but it looks as though the plan came from the hands of men who knew something of the Church of San Vitale at Ravenna, whilst its execution was left to the rustic skill of the masons of the country.

PLAN—BAPTISTERY, GRAVIDONA.PLAN—BAPTISTERY, GRAVIDONA.

4. BAPTISTERY. GRAVIDONA. p. 48.4. BAPTISTERY. GRAVIDONA.p. 48.

The Baptistery is dedicated to S. John the Baptist. Close to it, as I have said, stands the Church of San Vincenzo, which though Romanesque in its foundation has been much modernized, and is now mainly interesting on account of the exquisite examples of late fifteenth century silversmiths’ work which still enrich its sacristy. Conspicuous among these is a silver processional cross. This cross is nearly two feet across the arms by three feet in height from the top of the staff. There is a crucifix on one side and a sitting figure of Our Lord on the other; figures of SS. George, Vincent, Sebastian, Christopher, and Victor, and Our Lord on the base or knop; and half-figures of the Evangelists on the arms of the cross. The ornaments consist of crockets bent and twisted, of blue enamels, filigree-work, nielli, and turquoises set in the centre of dark-blue enamels. It is, in short, a piece of metal work which might well make a modern silversmith run down swiftly into the lake and drown himself in despair at the apparent impossibility in these days of rivalling such a piece of artistic and cunning workmanship, in spite of all our boasted progress!

Not much less splendid is a chalice of about the same age. It is ten and three-quarter inches high, has a plain bowl, but knop, stem, and foot all most richly wrought with figures, niches and canopies, and the flat surfaces filled in with fine blue and white Limoges enamels. The paten belonging to this chalice is very large—nearly ten inches across, and quite plain.

Half the passengers on the steamboat were, of course, Austrian soldiers and officers, the other half English or Americans, either resident at or going to Como. We, however, stopped on the way, and, leaving the steamboat in the middle of the lake, after a row of about twenty minutes found ourselves at Varenna, a village exquisitely placed justwhere the three arms of the lake—the Como, the Lecco, and the Colico branches—separate, affording, whether seen from here, from Bellagio, or from Cadenabbia, the most lovely lake views it has ever been my good fortune to see.

Here we had what seemed likely to be an endless discussion upon the relative merits of a four-oared boat and a carriage as a means of conveyance to Lecco. We inclined to the latter; but, leaving the matter in the hands of an active waiter, we busied ourselves with eating delicious fruit, admiring the tall cypresses growing everywhere about the shores of the lake, and watching the exquisite beauty of the reflections of Bellagio and the opposite mountains on the smooth bosom of the water.

We were soon off again, and well satisfied to find ourselves trotting rapidly along the well kept Stelvio Road, instead of dragging heavily and slowly along as one always does with a Swiss voiturier; soon, however, we were to find that our driver was an exception to the Italian rule, and that he who wishes to travel fast must not expect to do so with vetturini.

The churches which we passed were in no way remarkable; they all had campanili, with the bells hung in the Italian fashion in the belfry windows, with their wheels projecting far beyond the line of the wall; but they all seemed alike uninteresting in their architecture, so that we were in no way sorry to pass them rapidly on our way to Lecco. This eastern arm of the lake, though of course much less travelled than the rest of its course, is very beautiful, and its uninhabited and less cultivated looking shores, with bold cliffs here and there rising precipitously from the water, were seen to great advantage, with the calm unrippled surface of the lake below, and the sky just tinged with the bright light of the sun before it set above.

Lecco contains nothing to interest a traveller; we hadan hour to spend there before we could get fresh horses to take us on to Bergamo, and wandered about the quaint-looking streets, which were full of people—some idly enjoying themselves, others selling luscious-looking fruit. We went into a large church not yet quite completed; it was Renaissance in style, almost of course, and on the old plan, with aisles, but very ugly notwithstanding. In the nave was a coffin covered with a pall of black and gold; six large candles stood by it, three on either side, and two larger than the others on each side of a crucifix at the west end. The whole church revelled in compo inside and out and there was external access to a wretched bone-house in a crypt.

Leaving Lecco, we had a long drive in the dark to Bergamo; the night was very dark, but the air was absolutely teeming with life and sounds of life; myriads ofcicaleseemed to surround us, each giving vent to its pleasure in its own particular note and voice with the greatest possible determination; and had I not heard them, I could scarcely have believed it possible that such sounds could be made by insects, however numerous they might be. We changed horses at a village on the road, and went on rapidly. The old town of Ponte San Pietro was passed, having been taken at first to be Bergamo, and remembered by the sound of a troop of men singing well together as they passed us in the dark in one of its narrow streets, awakening with their voices all the echoes of the place, which till then had seemed to us to be supernaturally silent. It was eleven o’clock before we reached Bergamo, and tired with our long day’s work, we were soon in bed.

A prodigious noise in the streets before five o’clock the next morning gave us the first warning that the great fair of Bergamo was in full swing; sleep was impossible, and so we were soon out, enjoying the busy throng which crowdedthe streets of the Borgo, in a before-breakfast walk; the crowd of women selling fruit, the bright colours of their dresses, the rich tints of stuff hung out for sale, the display of hair-pins and other ornaments in the innumerable silversmiths’ shops, and the noisy, laughing, talking people who animated the whole scene, made the narrow arcaded streets of the busy place most amusing.

After breakfast we started at once for the Città, as the old city of Bergamo is called. It stands on a lofty hill overlooking the Borgo San Leonardo, within whose precincts we had slept, quite distinct from it and enclosed within its own walls. The ascent was both steep and hot, but the view at the entrance gateway of the Città over the flat Lombard country was very striking, and well repaid the labour of the ascent. This vast plain of bluish-green colour, intersected in all directions by rows of mulberry-trees and poplars, diversified only by the tall white lines of the campanili which mark every village in this part of Lombardy, and stretching away in the same endless level as far as the eye could reach, was grand if only on account of its simplicity, and had for us all the charm of novelty.

Through narrow and rather dirty streets, which do little credit to the cleanly habits of the Bergamask nobility, to whom it seems that the Città is sacred, and whose palaces are, many of them, large and important buildings, we reached at last the Piazza Vecchia, around which is gathered almost all that in my eyes gives interest to Bergamo.

Across the upper end of the Piazza stretches the Broletto, or town-hall, supported on open arches, through which pleasant glimpses are obtained of the cathedral and church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, which last is the great architectural feature of the city.

But we must examine the Broletto before we go farther. And first of all, its very position teaches a lesson. Formingon one side the boundary of a spacious Piazza, on the other it faces, within a few feet only, the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, and abuts at one end upon the west front of the Duomo. It is to this singularly close—even huddled—grouping that much of the exquisite beauty of the whole is owing. No doubt Sta. Maria and the original cathedral were built first, and then the architect of the Broletto, not fearing—as one would fear now—to damage what has been done before, boldly throws his work across in front of them, but upon lofty open arches, through which glimpses just obtained of the beauties in store beyond make the gazer even more delighted with the churches when he reaches them, than he would have been had they been all seen from the first. It is, in fact, a notable example of the difference between ancient grouping and modern, and one instance only out of hundreds that might be adduced from our own country and from the Continent of the principle upon which old architects worked; and yet people, ignorant of real principles in art, talk as though somewhat would be gained if we could pull down S. Margaret’s in order to let Westminster Abbey be seen; whereas, in truth, the certain result would be, in the first place, a great loss of scale in the Abbey seen without another building to compare it with and measure it by; and in the next, the loss of that kind of intricacy and mystery which is one of the chief evidences of the Gothic spirit. Let us learn from such examples as this at Bergamo that buildings do not always require a large open space in front of them, so that they may be all seen and taken in at one view, in order to give them real dignity.

The whole design of the Broletto is so very simple as to be almost chargeable with rudeness of character. The ground on which it stands is divided by columns and piers, the spaces between them being all arched and groined.Towards the Piazza three of these arches, springing from rather wide piers, support the main building, and another supports an additional building to the west of it. Above the three main arches are three windows, of which that in the centre, though very much altered, still retains a partially old balcony in front, and was evidently the Ringhiera, from which the people standing in the Piazza were wont to be addressed by their magistrates. The windows on either side are very similar in their design and detail; their tracery is of fair middle-pointed character; and the main points in which they strike one as being different from English work are the marble shafts with square capitals in place of monials, a certain degree of squareness and flatness in the mouldings, and the very pronounced effect of the sills, which have a course of foliage and moulding, and below this of trefoiled arcaded ornament, which in one shape or another is to meet the traveller everywhere in Northern Italy; either, as here, hanging on under the sills of windows, or else running up the sides of gables, forming string-courses and cornices, but always unsatisfactory, because unmeaning and unconstructional. The origin of this sort of detail is to be found in the numerous brick buildings not far distant, where the facility of repeating the patterns of moulded bricks led (as it did in other countries also) to this rather unsatisfactory kind of enrichment. The detail of the arcades supporting the upper part of the building is throughout bold and simple, and I should say of the thirteenth century; the bases are quite northern in their section, the caps rather less deep in their cutting, but still in their general design, and in the grouping of tufts of drooping foliage regularly one above the other, reminding one much of Early French work, though they are certainly not nearly so good as that generally is. There is a flatness about the carving, too, which gives the impression of a

5.—BROLETTO, BERGAMO. Page 54.5.—BROLETTO, BERGAMO.Page 54.

struggle, in the hand of the carver, between the Classic and Gothic principles, in which the latter never quite asserted the mastery. The lesson to be learnt from such a building as this Broletto appears to me to be the excessive value of simplicity and regularity of parts carefully and constructionally treated; for there are no breaks or buttresses in the design, and all its elements are most simple, yet nevertheless the result is beautiful.

To the west of the Broletto is a good open staircase (much like that in the Piazza dei Signori at Verona),[5]forming a portion of one side of the Piazza, and leading to the upper part of the buildings, and, I think, to the great clock-tower, which, gaunt and severe in its outline, undecorated and apparently uncared for, rears its great height of rough stone wall boldly against the sky, and groups picturesquely with the irregular buildings around it. I have omitted to notice that the whole of the Broletto, with the exception of the window-shafts, is executed in stone, and without any introduction of coloured material, so that it in no way competes with the exquisite piece of coloured construction which we have next to examine, immediately behind it.

A few steps will take us under the open-arched and cool space beneath the Broletto, to the face of the north porch and baptistery of Sta. Maria Maggiore. This is a very fine early Romanesque[6]church, but with many additions and alterations on the outside, and so much modernized inside as to be quite uninteresting to any one who thinks good forms and good details necessary to good effect. The plan is cruciform, with apses to the choir, on the east and west sides of the south transept, on the east of the north transept, and at the west end of an additionalnorth aisle; in all no less than five apsidal ends. The nave is of three bays with aisles, and to each transept have been added, in the fourteenth century, porches, thoroughly Italian in their whole idea, and novel to a degree in their effect upon an English eye.

A domed chapel, erected as a sepulchral chapel by Bartolomeo Colleoni in the Renaissance style, on the north side of the nave, is most elaborately constructed of coloured marbles. The effect is too bizarre to be good; there is an entire absence of any true style in its design, and there is nothing which makes it necessary to criticize it with much minuteness.

The best and most striking feature in the whole church is the north porch,[7]a most elaborate structure of red, grey, and white marble, to which a drawing without colour can hardly do justice. It is supported upon detached marble shafts, whose bases rest upon the backs of rather grand-looking lions, curiously grouped with children and cubs. Above the arches which rest upon these shafts, and which, though circular, are elaborately cusped, is another stage divided by columns and trefoiled arches into three spaces, the centre of which is occupied by a noble figure of a certain Duke Lupus on horseback, with a saint on either side in the other divisions. All the shafts except those in the upper division are of red marble; the highest stage of all is entirely of grey marble; in the middle stage all the moulded parts are of red, and the trefoiled arches and their spandrels of grey marble; the space at the back of the open divisions and the wall over the main arches of the porch are built in courses of red and white marble. All the groining is divided into diamond-shaped panels, composed alternately of black, red, and white marble, all carved in the same kind of pattern. In the great arch of the porch the outermoulding is of red marble, and all the cusping of grey. The construction of the whole is obviously very weak, and depends altogether for its stability upon iron ties in every direction.

The approach to the porch, by seven steps formed alternately of black and white marble, increases the impressiveness of the grand doorway, in front of which it is built, the whole of which is of white marble, whose carved surfaces and richly moulded and traceried work have obtained a soft yellow colour by their exposure to the changing atmosphere, and are relieved by one—the central—shaft being executed in the purest red marble. There are three shafts in each jamb, carved, twisted, or moulded very beautifully. These shafts are set in square recesses, ornamented, not with mouldings, but with elaborate flat carvings, in one place of saints, in another of animals, and with foliage very flat in its character, and mainly founded on the acanthus.

To an English eye these columns in the doorways are some of the most charming features of Italian architecture; but they must be always looked at as simply ornamental, and not as constructional features; and perhaps in all doorways the shafts, being really incapable of supporting any considerable weight, would be better if, by their twisting and moulding, it were clearly shown that their architect meant them to be simply ornamental. In the Bergamo doorway the spaces between the shafts are so strong in their effect, though carved all over their surface, that any lightness in the columns themselves is amply atoned for. Such a work as this northern porch at Bergamo is indeed a great treat to an English architect, teeming as it does with fresh and new ideas, and in a small compass showing so many of the radical points of difference between northern and southern Gothic, and at the same time offering so beautiful a study ofconstructional colouring, that it is impossible to tire of gazing at it.

The porch to the south transept is of a simpler but somewhat similar design. Both are placed against the western half of the gable against which they are built, with a pleasant ignorance of those new-fangled views of regularity of plan which are the curse of modern architects. This southern porch is round-arched, and fitted exactly to the doorway which it shields. Its outer arch is carried on detached shafts resting on the backs of monsters, and it is mainly constructed of black and white marble. It is of only one stage in height, and has a deep cornice enriched with a series of niches with figures. An inscription below the cornice gives the date as 1360.[8]Above the porch, but independent of it, is a lofty monumental pinnacle corbelled out from the wall, and richly sculptured with crocketed pinnacles and gablets. When the church is entered, the reason for the apparently eccentric position of the porches is seen. They were so placed to give more space for the altars to the east of the transepts, and their successful effect is good evidence that no artist need ever distress himself about a want of regularity, if it is the result of a little common sense attention to convenience in the arrangement of his plan.

The southern side of the church gives a very fair idea of what the general character of the original building of 1134 was. The windows were very plain, the walls lofty, the roof flat, and ornamented with corbel-tables up the gables and under the eaves, and pilasters were used at intervals instead of buttresses. There is a central octagonal lanternwhich may be old, but which is entirely modernized. The most interesting remains are the various apses already mentioned. They are of two divisions in height, the lower adorned with very lofty, boldly-moulded arcades, above which is an elaborate cornice, and above this again a low arcade on detached shafts, behind which the walls are considerably recessed to form galleries which produce a very deep shadow. The capitals are elaborately carved, and the upper cornice is again very rich. Altogether, little as remains unaltered of the old fabric, it is enough to give an idea of a very noble and interesting phase of art. Near a doorway into the north chancel-aisle the external walls have traces, faint and rapidly decaying, of some very exquisite frescoes or, more probably, tempera paintings.

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