The ancient walls, which made the whole of the Mount Palatinea fortress, still hold together its earth and its ruins. It is a broad tabular eminence, worn into footpaths which wind at every moment around broken shafts of marble, fragments of statuary, or broken and ivy-covered fountains. Part of it is cultivated as a vineyard, by the degenerate modern Romans, and the baths, into which the water still pours from aqueducts encrusted with aged stalactites are public washing-places for the contadini, eight or ten of whom were splashing away in their red jackets, with gold bodkins in their hair, while we were moralizing on their worthier progenitors of eighteen centuries ago. It is a beautiful spot of itself, and with the delicious soft sunshine of an Italian spring, the tall green grass beneath our feet, and an air as soft as June just stirring the myrtles and jasmines, growing wild wherever the ruins gave them place, our enjoyment of the overpowering associations of the spot was ample and untroubled. I could wish every refined spirit in the world had shared our pleasant hour upon the Palatine.
ANNUAL DOWRIES TO TWELVE GIRLS—VESPERS IN THE CONVENT OF SANTA TRINITA—RUINS OF ROMAN BATHS—A MAGNIFICENT MODERN CHURCH WITHIN TWO ANCIENT HALLS—GARDENS OF MECÆNAS—TOWER WHENCE NERO SAW ROME ON FIRE—HOUSES OF HORACE AND VIRGIL—BATHS OF TITUS AND CARACALLA.
The yearly ceremony of giving dowries to twelve girls, was performed by the Pope, this morning, in the church built over the ancient temple of Minerva. His Holiness arrived, in state, from the Vatican, at ten, followed by his red troop of cardinals, and preceded by a clerical courier, on a palfrey, and the body-guard of nobles. He blessed the crowd, right and left, with his three fingers (precisely as a Parisian dandy salutes his friend across the street), and, descending from his carriage (which is like a good-sized glass boudoir upon wheels), he was received in the papal sedan, and carried into the church by his Swiss bearers. My legation button carried me through the guard, and I found an excellent place under a cardinal's wing, in the penetralia within the railing of the altar. Mass commenced presently, with a chant from the celebrated choir of St. Peter's. Room was then made through the crowd, the cardinals put on their redcaps, and the small procession of twelve young girls entered from a side chapel, bearing each a taper in her hand, and robed to the eyes in white, with a chaplet of flowers round the forehead. I could form no judgment of anything but their eyes and feet. A Roman eye could not be otherwise than fine, and a Roman woman's foot could scarce be other than ugly, and, consequently, there was but one satin slipper in the group that a man might not have worn, and every eye I could see from my position, might have graced an improvisatrice. They stopped in front of the throne, and, giving their long tapers to the servitors, mounted in couples, hand in hand, and kissed the foot of his Holiness, who, at the same time, leaned over and blessed them, and then turning about, walked off again behind the altar in the same order in which they had entered.
The choir now struck up their half-unearthly chant (a music so strangely shrill and clear, that I scarce know whether the sensation is pleasure or pain), the Pope was led from his throne to his sedan, and his mitre changed for a richly jewelled crown, the bearers lifted their burden, the guard presented arms, the cardinals summoned their officious servants to unrobe, and the crowd poured out as it came.
This ceremony, I found upon inquiry, is performed every year,on the day of the annunciation—just nine months before Christmas, and is intended to commemorate the incarnation of our Saviour.
As I was returning from a twilight stroll upon the Pincian hill this evening, the bells of the convent of Santa Trinita rung tovespers. I had heard of the singing of the nuns in the service at the convent chapel, but the misbehavior of a party of English had excluded foreigners, of late, and it was thought impossible to get admittance. I mounted the steps, however, and rung at the door. It was opened by a pale nun, of thirty, who hesitated a moment, and let me pass. In a small, plain chapel within, the service of the altar was just commencing, and, before I reached a seat, a low plaintive chant commenced, in female voices from the choir. It went on with occasional interruptions from the prayers, for perhaps an hour. I can not describe the excessive mournfulness of the music. One or two familiar hymns occurred in the course of it, like airs in a recitative, the same sung in our churches, but the effect was totally different. The neat, white caps of the nuns were just visible over the railing before the organ, and, as I looked up at them and listened to their melancholy notes, they seemed, to me, mourning over their exclusion from the world. The small white cloud from the censer mounted to the ceiling, and creeping away through the arches, hung over the organ till it was lost to the eye in the dimness of the twilight. It was easy, under the influence of their delightful music, to imagine within it the wings of that tranquilizing resignation, one would think so necessary to keep down the heart in these lonely cloisters.
The most considerable ruins of ancient Rome are those of theBaths. The Emperors Titus, Caracalla, Nero, and Agrippa, constructed these immense places of luxury, and the remains of them are among the most interesting and beautiful relics to befound in the world. It is possible that my readers have as imperfect an idea of the extent of a Roman bath as I have had, and I may as well quote from the information given by writers on antiquities. "They were open every day, to both sexes. In each of the great baths, there were sixteen hundred seats of marble, for the convenience of the bathers, and three thousand two hundred persons could bathe at the same time. There were splendid porticoes in front for promenade, arcades with shops, in which was found every kind of luxury for the bath, and halls for corporeal exercises, and for the discussion of philosophy; and here the poets read their productions and rhetoricians harangued, and sculptors and painters exhibited their works to the public. The baths were distributed into grand halls, with ceilings enormously high and painted with admirable frescoes, supported on columns of the rarest marble, and the basins were of oriental alabaster, porphyry, and jasper. There were in the centre vast reservoirs, for the swimmers, and crowds of slaves to attend gratuitously upon all who should come."
The baths of Diocletian (which I visited to-day), covered an enormous space. They occupied seven years in building, and were the work offorty thousand Christian slaves, two thirds of whom died of fatigue and misery! Mounting one of the seven hills of Rome, we come to some half-ruined arches, of enormous size, extending a long distance, in the sides of which were built two modern churches. One was the work of Michael Angelo, and one of his happiest efforts. He has turned two of the ancient halls into a magnificent church, in the shape of a Greek cross, leaving in their places eight gigantic columns of granite. After St. Peter's it is the most imposing church in Rome.
We drove thence to the baths of Titus, passing the site of theancient gardens of Mecænas, in which still stands the tower from which Nero beheld the conflagration of Rome. The houses of Horace and Virgil communicated with this garden, but they are now undistinguishable. We turned up from the Coliseum to the left, and entered a gate leading to the baths of Titus. Five or six immense arches presented their front to us, in a state of picturesque ruin. We took a guide, and a long pole, with a lamp at the extremity, and descended to the subterranean halls, to see the still inimitable frescoes upon the ceilings. Passing through vast apartments, to the ruined walls of which still clung, here and there, pieces of the finely-colored stucco of the ancients, we entered a suite of long galleries, some forty feet high, the arched roofs of which were painted with the most exquisite art, in a kind of fanciful border-work, enclosing figures and landscapes, in as bright colors as if done yesterday. Farther on was the niche in which was found the famous group of Laocoon, in a room belonging to a subterranean palace of the emperor, communicating with the baths. The Belvedere Meleager was also found here. The imagination loses itself in attempting to conceive the splendor of these under-ground palaces, blazing with artificial light, ornamented with works of art, never equalled, and furnished with all the luxury which an emperor of Rome, in the days when the wealth of the world flowed into her treasury, could command for his pleasure. How short life must have seemed to them, and what a tenfold curse became death and the common ills of existence, interrupting or taking away pleasures so varied and inexhaustible.
These baths were built in the last great days of Rome, and one reads the last stages of national corruption and, perhaps, the secret of her fall, in the character of these ornamented walls.They breathe the very spirit of voluptuousness. Naked female figures fill every plafond, and fauns and satyrs, with the most licentious passions in their faces, support the festoons and hold together the intricate ornament of the frescoes. The statues, the pictures, the object of the place itself, inspired the wish for indulgence, and the history of the private lives of the emperors and wealthier Romans shows the effect in its deepest colors.
We went on to the baths of Caracalla, the largest ruins of Rome. They are just below the palaces of the Cesars, and ten minutes' walk from the Coliseum. It is one labyrinth of gigantic arches and ruined halls, the ivy growing and clinging wherever it can fasten its root, and the whole as fine a picture of decay as imagination could create. This was the favorite haunt of Shelley, and here he wrote his fine tragedy of Prometheus. He could not have selected a more fitting spot for solitary thought. A herd of goats were climbing over one of the walls, and the idle boy who tended them lay asleep in the sun, and every footstep echoed loud through the place. We passed two or three hours rambling about, and regained the populous streets of Rome in the last light of the sunset.
SUMMER WEATHER IN MARCH—BATHS OF CARACALLA—BEGINNING OF THE APPIAN WAY—TOMB OF THE SCIPIOS—CATACOMBS—CHURCH OF SAN SEBASTIANO—YOUNG CAPUCHIN FRIAR—TOMBS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MARTYRS—CHAMBER WHERE THE APOSTLES WORSHIPPED—TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA—THE CAMPAGNA—CIRCUS OF CARACALLA OR ROMULUS—TEMPLE DEDICATED TO RIDICULE—KEATS'S GRAVE—FOUNTAIN OF EGERIA—THE WOOD WHERE NUMA MET THE NYMPH—HOLY WEEK.
The last days of March have come, clothed in sunshine and summer. The grass is tall in the Campagna, the fruit-trees are in blossom, the roses and myrtles are in full flower, the shrubs are in full leaf, the whole country about breathes of June. We left Rome this morning on an excursion to the "Fountain of Egeria." A more heavenly day never broke. The gigantic baths of Caracalla turned us aside once more, and we stopped for an hour in the shade of their romantic arches, admiring the works, while we execrated the character of their ferocious builder.
This is the beginning of the ancient Appian Way, and, a littlefarther on, sunk in the side of a hill near the road, is the beautiful doric tomb of the Scipios. We alighted at the antique gate, a kind of portico, with seats of stone beneath, and reading the inscription, "Sepulchro degli Scipioni" mounted by ruined steps to the tomb. A boy came out from the house, in the vineyard above, with candles, to show us the interior, but, having no curiosity to see the damp cave from which the sarcophagi have been removed (to the museum), we sat down upon a bank of grass opposite the chaste façade, and recalled to memory the early-learnt history of the family once entombed within. The edifice (for it is more like a temple to a river-nymph or a dryad than a tomb) was built by an ancestor of the great Scipio Africanus, and here was deposited the noble dust of his children. One feels, in these places, as if the improvisatore's inspiration was about him—the fancy draws, in such vivid colors, the scenes that have passed where he is standing. The bringing of the dead body of the conqueror of Africa from Rome, the passing of the funeral train beneath the portico, the noble mourners, the crowd of people, the eulogy of perhaps some poet or orator, whose name has descended to us—the air seems to speak, and the gray stones of the monument against which the mourners of the Scipios have leaned, seem to have had life and thought, like the ashes they have sheltered.
We drove on to theCatacombs. Here, the legend says, St. Sebastian was martyred and the modern church of St. Sebastiano stands over the spot. We entered the church, where we found a very handsome young capuchin friar, with his brown cowl and the white cord about his waist, who offered to conduct us to the catacombs. He took three wax-lights from the sacristy, and we entered a side door, behind the tomb of the saint,and commenced a descent of a long flight of stone steps. We reached the bottom and found ourselves upon damp ground, following a narrow passage, so low that I was compelled constantly to stoop, in the sides of which were numerous small niches of the size of a human body. These were the tombs of the early Christian martyrs. We saw near a hundred of them. They were brought from Rome, the scene of their sufferings, and buried in these secret catacombs by the small church of, perhaps, the immediate converts of St. Paul and the apostles. What food for thought is here, for one who finds more interest in the humble traces of the personal followers of Christ, who knew his face and had heard his voice, to all the splendid ruins of the works of the persecuting emperors of his time! Most of the bones have been taken from their places, and are preserved at the museum, or enclosed in the rich sarcophagi raised to the memory of the martyrs in the Catholic churches. Of those that are left we saw one. The niche was closed by a thin slab of marble, through a crack of which the monk put his slender candle. We saw the skeleton as it had fallen from the flesh in decay, untouched, perhaps, since the time of Christ.
We crossed through several cross-passages, and came to a small chamber, excavated simply in the earth, with an earthern altar, and an antique marble cross above. This was the scene of the forbidden worship of the early Christians, and before this very cross, which was, perhaps, then newly selected as the emblem of their faith, met the few dismayed followers of Christ, hidden from their persecutors, while they breathed their forbidden prayers to their lately crucified Master.
We reascended to the light of day by the rough stone steps, worn deep by the feet of those who, for ages, for so many differentreasons, have passed up and down; and, taking leave of our capuchin conductor, drove on to the next object upon the road—thetomb of Cecilia Metella. It stands upon a slight elevation, in the Appian Way, a "stern round tower," with the ivy dropping over its turrets and waving from the embrasures, looking more like a castle than a tomb. Here was buried "the wealthiest Roman's wife," or, according to Corinne, his unmarried daughter. It was turned into a fortress by the marauding nobles of the thirteenth century, who sallied from this and the tomb of Adrian, plundering the ill-defended subjects of Pope Innocent IV. till they were taken and hanged from the walls by Brancaleone, the Roman senator. It is built with prodigious strength. We stooped in passing under the low archway, and emerged into the round chamber within, a lofty room, open to the sky, in the circular wall of which there is a niche for a single body. Nothing could exceed the delicacy and fancy with which Childe Harold muses on this spot.
The lofty turrets command a wide view of the Campagna, the long aqueducts stretching past at a short distance, and forming a chain of noble arches from Rome to the mountains of Albano. Cole's picture of the Roman Campagna, as seen from one of these elevations, is, I think, one of the finest landscapes ever painted.
Just below the tomb of Metella, in a flat valley, lie the extensive ruins of what is called the "circus of Caracalla" by some, and the "circus of Romulus" by others—a scarcely distinguishable heap of walls and marble, half buried in the earth and moss; and not far off stands a beautiful ruin of a small temple dedicated (as some say) toRidicule. One smiles to look at it. If the embodying of that which is powerful, however, should make a deity, the dedication of a temple toridiculeis far from amiss. Inour age particularly, one would think, the lamp should be relit, and the reviewers should repair the temple. Poor Keats sleeps in his grave scarce a mile from the spot, a human victim sacrificed, not long ago, upon its highest altar.
In the same valley almost hidden with the luxuriant ivy waving before the entrance, flows the lovelyFountain of Egeria, trickling as clear and musical into its pebbly bed as when visited by the enamored successor of Romulus twenty-five centuries ago! The hill above leans upon the single arch of the small temple which embosoms it, and the green soft meadow spreads away from the floor, with the brightest verdure conceivable. We wound around by a half-worn path in descending the hill, and, putting aside the long branches of ivy, entered an antique chamber, sprinkled with quivering spots of sunshine, at the extremity of which, upon a kind of altar, lay the broken and defaced statue of the nymph. The fountain poured from beneath in two streams as clear as crystal. In the sides of the temple were six empty niches, through one of which stole, from a cleft in the wall, a little stream, which wandered from its way. Flowers, pale with growing in the shade, sprang from the edges of the rivulet as it found its way out, the small creepers, dripping with moisture, hung out from between the diamond-shaped stones of the roof, the air was refreshingly cool, and the leafy door at the entrance, seen against the sky, looked of a transparent green, as vivid as emerald. No fancy could create a sweeter spot. The fountain and the inspiration it breathed into Childe Harold are worthy of each other.
Just above the fountain, on the crest of a hill, stands a thick grove, supposed to occupy the place of the consecrated wood, in which Numa met the nymph. It is dark with shadow, and fullof birds, and might afford a fitting retreat for meditation to another king and lawgiver. The fields about it are so thickly studded with flowers, that you cannot step without crushing them, and the whole neighborhood seems a favorite of nature. The rich banker, Torlonia, has bought this and several other classic spots about Rome—possessions for which he is more to be envied than for his purchased dukedom.
All the travelling world assembles at Rome for the ceremonies of the holy week. Naples, Florence, and Pisa, send their hundreds of annual visitors, and the hotels and palaces are crowded with strangers of every nation and rank. It would be difficult to imagine a gayer or busier place than this usually sombre city has become within a few days.
PALM SUNDAY—SISTINE CHAPEL—ENTRANCE OF THE POPE—THE CHOIR—THE POPE ON HIS THRONE—PRESENTING THE PALMS—PROCESSION—BISHOP ENGLAND'S LECTURE—HOLY TUESDAY—THE MISERERE—ACCIDENTS IN THE CROWD—TENEBRÆ—THE EMBLEMATIC CANDLES—HOLY THURSDAY—FRESCOES OF MICHAEL ANGELO—"CREATION OF EVE"—"LOT INTOXICATED"—DELPHIC SYBIL—POPE WASHING PILGRIMS' FEET—STRIKING RESEMBLANCE OF ONE TO JUDAS—POPE AND CARDINALS WAITING UPON PILGRIMS AT DINNER.
Palm Sunday opens the ceremonies. We drove to the Vatican this morning, at nine, and, after waiting a half hour in the crush, kept back, at the point of the spear, by the Pope's Swiss guard, I succeeded in getting an entrance into the Sistine chapel. Leaving the ladies of the party behind the grate, I passed two more guards, and obtained a seat among the cowled and bearded dignitaries of the church and state within, where I could observe the ceremony with ease.
The Pope entered, borne in his gilded chair by twelve men, and, at the same moment, the chanting from the Sistine choircommenced with one long, piercing note, by a single voice, producing the most impressive effect. He mounted his throne as high as the altar opposite him, and the cardinals went through their obeisances, one by one, their trains supported by their servants, who knelt on the lower steps behind them. The palms stood in a tall heap beside the altar. They were beautifully woven in wands of perhaps six feet in length, with a cross at the top. The cardinal nearest the papal chair mounted first, and a palm was handed him. He laid it across the knees of the Pope, and, as his holiness signed the cross upon it, he stooped, and kissed the embroidered cross upon his foot, then kissed the palm, and taking it in his two hands, descended with it to his seat. The other forty or fifty cardinals did the same, until each was provided with a palm. Some twenty other persons, monks of apparent clerical rank of every order, military men, and members of the Catholic embassies, followed and took palms. A procession was then formed, the cardinals going first with their palms held before them, and the Pope following, in his chair, with a small frame of palmwork in his hands, in which was woven the initial of the Virgin. They passed out of the Sistine chapel, the choir chanting most delightfully, and, having made a tour around the vestibule, returned in the same order.
The ceremony is intended to represent the entrance of the Saviour into Jerusalem. Bishop England, of Charleston, South Carolina, delivered a lecture at the house of the English cardinal Weld, a day or two ago, explanatory of the ceremonies of the Holy week. It was principally an apology for them. He confessed that, to the educated, they appeared empty, and even absurd rites, but they were intended not for the refined, but the vulgar, whom it was necessary to instruct and impress throughtheir outward senses. As nearly all these rites, however, take place in the Sistine chapel, which no person is permitted to enter who is not furnished with a ticket, and in full dress, his argument rather fell to the ground.
With all the vast crowd of strangers in Rome, I went to the Sistine chapel onHoly Tuesday, to hear the far-famedMiserere. It is sung several times during the holy week, by the Pope's choir, and has been described by travellers, of all nations, in the most rapturous terms. The vestibule was a scene of shocking confusion, for an hour, a constant struggle going on between the crowd and the Swiss guard, amounting occasionally to a fight, in which ladies fainted, children screamed, men swore, and, unless by force of contrast, the minds of the audience seemed likely to be little in tune for the music. The chamberlains at last arrived, and two thousand people attempted to get into a small chapel which scarce holds four hundred. Coat-skirts, torn cassocks, hats, gloves, and fragments of ladies' dresses, were thrown up by the suffocating throng, and, in the midst of a confusion beyond description, the mournful notes of thetenebræ(or lamentations of Jeremiah) poured in full volume from the choir. Thirteen candles burned in a small pyramid within the paling of the altar, and twelve of these, representing the apostles, were extinguished, one by one (to signify their desertion at the cross), during the singing of thetenebræ. The last, which was left burning, represented the mother of Christ. As the last before this was extinguished, the music ceased. The crowd had, by this time, become quiet. The twilight had deepened through the dimly-lit chapel, and the one solitary lamp looked lost at the distance of the altar. Suddenly themiserérecommenced with one high prolonged note, that sounded like a wail; another joined it, and another and another,and all the different parts came in, with a gradual swell of plaintive and most thrilling harmony, to the full power of the choir. It continued for perhaps half an hour. The music was simple, running upon a few notes, like a dirge, but there were voices in the choir that seemed of a really supernatural sweetness. No instrument could be so clear. The crowd, even in their uncomfortable positions, were breathless with attention, and the effect was universal. It is really extraordinary music, and if but half the rites of the Catholic church had its power over the mind, a visit to Rome would have quite another influence.
The candles were lit, and the motley troop of cardinals and red-legged servitors passed out. The harlequin-looking Swiss guard stood to their tall halberds, the chamberlains and mace-bearers, in their cassock and frills, took care that the males and females should not mix until they reached the door, the Pope disappeared in the sacristy, and the gay world, kept an hour beyond their time, went home to cold dinners.
The ceremonies ofHoly Thursdaycommenced with the mass in the Sistine chapel. Tired of seeing genuflections, and listening to a mumbling of which I could not catch a syllable, I took advantage of my privileged seat, in the Ambassador's box, to lean back and study the celebrated frescoes of Michael Angelo upon the ceiling. A little drapery would do no harm to any of them. They illustrate, mainly, passages of scripture history, but the "creation of Eve," in the centre, is an astonishingly fine representation of a naked man and woman, as large as life; and "Lot intoxicated and exposed before his two daughters," isabout as immodest a picture, from its admirable expression as well as its nudity, as could easily be drawn. In one corner there is a most beautiful draped figure of theDelphic Sybil—and I think this bit of heathenism is almost the only very decent part of the Pope's most consecrated chapel.
After the mass, the host was carried, with a showy procession, to be deposited among the thousand lamps in the Capella Paolina, and, as soon as it had passed, there was a general rush for the room in which the Pope was towash the feet of the pilgrims.
Thirteen men, dressed in white, with sandals open at the top, and caps of paper covered with white linen, sat on a high bench, just under a beautiful copy of the last supper of Da Vinci, in gobelin tapestry. It was a small chapel, communicating with the Pope's private apartments. Eleven of the pilgrims were as vulgar and brutal-looking men as could have been found in the world; but of the two in the centre, one was the personification of wild fanaticism. He was pale, emaciated, and abstracted. His hair and beard were neglected, and of a singular blackness. His lips were firmly set in an expression of severity. His brows were gathered gloomily over his eyes, and his glances, occasionally sent among the crowd, were as glaring and flashing as a tiger's. With all this, his countenance was lofty, and if I had seen the face on canvas, as a portrait of a martyr, I should have thought it finely expressive of courage and devotion. The man on his left wept, or pretended to weep, continually; but every person in the room was struck with his extraordinary resemblance toJudas, as he is drawn in the famous picture of the Last Supper. It was the same marked face, the same treacherous, ruffian look, the same style of hair and beard, to a wonder. It is possible that he might have been chosen on purpose, the twelve pilgrimsbeing intended to represent the twelve apostles of whom Judas was one—but if accidental, it was the most remarkable coincidence that ever came under my notice. He looked the hypocrite and traitor complete, and his resemblance to the Judas in the picture directly over his head, would have struck a child.
The Pope soon entered from his apartments, in a purple stole, with a cape of dark crimson satin, and the mitre of silver-cloth, and, casting the incense into the golden censer, the white smoke was flung from side to side before him, till the delightful odor filled the room. A short service was then chanted, and the choir sang a hymn. His Holiness was then unrobed, and a fine napkin, trimmed with lace, was tied about him by the servitors, and with a deacon before him, bearing a splendid pitcher and basin, and a procession behind him, with large bunches of flowers, he crossed to the pilgrims' bench. A priest, in a snow-white tunic, raised and bared the foot of the first. The Pope knelt, took water in his hand, and slightly rubbed the instep, and then drying it well with a napkin, he kissed it.
The assistant-deacon gave a large bunch of flowers and a napkin to the pilgrim, as the Pope left him, and another person in rich garments, followed, with pieces of money presented in a wrapper of white paper. The same ceremony took place with each—one foot only being honored with a lavation. When his Holiness arrived at the "Judas," there was a general stir, and every one was on tip-toe to watch his countenance. He took his handkerchief from his eyes, and looked at the Pope very earnestly, and when the ceremony was finished, he seized the sacred hand, and, imprinting a kiss upon it, flung himself back, and buried his face again in his handkerchief, quite overwhelmed with his feelings. The other pilgrims took it very coolly, comparatively, and oneof them seemed rather amused than edified. The Pope returned to his throne, and water was poured over his hands. A cardinal gave him a napkin, his splendid cape was put again over his shoulders, and, with a paternoster the ceremony was over.
Half an hour after, with much crowding and several losses of foothold and temper, I had secured a place in the hall where the apostles, as the pilgrims are called after the washing, were to dine, waited on by the Pope and cardinals. With their gloomy faces and ghastly white caps and white dresses, they looked more like criminals waiting for execution, than guests at a feast. They stood while the Pope went round with a gold pitcher and basin, to wash their hands, and then seating themselves, his Holiness, with a good-natured smile, gave each a dish of soup, and said something in his ear, which had the effect of putting him at his ease. The table was magnificently set out with the plate and provisions of a prince's table, and spite of the thousands of eyes gazing on them, the pilgrims were soon deep in the delicacies of every dish, even the lachrymose Judas himself, eating most voraciously. We left them at their dessert.
SEPULCHRE OF CAIUS CESTIUS—PROTESTANT BURYING GROUND—GRAVES OF KEATS AND SHELLEY—SHELLEY'S LAMENT OVER KEATS—GRAVES OF TWO AMERICANS—BEAUTY OF THE BURIAL PLACE—MONUMENTS OVER TWO INTERESTING YOUNG FEMALES—INSCRIPTION ON KEATS' MONUMENT—THE STYLE OF KEATS' POEMS—GRAVE OF DR. BELL—RESIDENCE AND LITERARY UNDERTAKINGS OF HIS WIDOW.
A beautiful pyramid, a hundred and thirteen feet high, built into the ancient wall of Rome, is the proudSepulchre of Caius Cestius. It is the most imperishable of the antiquities, standing as perfect after eighteen hundred years as if it were built but yesterday. Just beyond it, on the declivity of a hill, over the ridge of which the wall passes, crowning it with two mouldering towers, lies theProtestant burying-ground. It looks toward Rome, which appears in the distance, between Mount Aventine and a small hill called Mont Testaccio, and leaning to the southeast, the sun lies warm and soft upon its banks, and the grass and wild flowers are there the earliest and tallest of the Campagna. I have been here to-day, to see the graves ofKeats andShelley. With a cloudless sky and the most delicious air ever breathed, we sat down upon the marble slab laid over the ashes of poor Shelley, and read his own lament over Keats, who sleeps just below, at the foot of the hill. The cemetery is rudely formed into three terraces, with walks between, and Shelley's grave and one other, without a name, occupy a small nook above, made by the projections of a mouldering wall-tower, and crowded with ivy and shrubs, and a peculiarly fragrant yellow flower, which perfumes the air around for several feet. The avenue by which you ascend from the gate is lined with high bushes of the marsh-rose in the most luxuriant bloom, and all over the cemetery the grass is thickly mingled with flowers of every die. In his preface to his lament over Keats, Shelley says, "he was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome." It is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. "It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." If Shelley had chosen his own grave at the time, he would have selected the very spot where he has since been laid—the most sequestered and flowery nook of the place he describes so feelingly. In the last verses of the elegy, he speaks of it again with the same feeling of its beauty:—
"The spirit of the spot shall leadThy footsteps to a slope of green access,Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead,A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread."And gray walls moulder round, on which dull timeFeeds like slow fire upon a hoary brand:And one keen pyramid, with wedge sublime,Pavilioning the dust of him who plannedThis refuge for his memory, doth standLike flame transformed to marble; andbeneathA field is spread, on which a newer bandHave pitched, in heaven's smile, their camp of death,Welcoming him we lose, with scarce extinguished breath."Here pause: these graves are alltoo young as yetTo have outgrown the sorrow which consignedIts charge to each."
"The spirit of the spot shall leadThy footsteps to a slope of green access,Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead,A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.
"The spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead,
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread.
"And gray walls moulder round, on which dull timeFeeds like slow fire upon a hoary brand:And one keen pyramid, with wedge sublime,Pavilioning the dust of him who plannedThis refuge for his memory, doth standLike flame transformed to marble; andbeneathA field is spread, on which a newer bandHave pitched, in heaven's smile, their camp of death,Welcoming him we lose, with scarce extinguished breath.
"And gray walls moulder round, on which dull time
Feeds like slow fire upon a hoary brand:
And one keen pyramid, with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; andbeneath
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched, in heaven's smile, their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose, with scarce extinguished breath.
"Here pause: these graves are alltoo young as yetTo have outgrown the sorrow which consignedIts charge to each."
"Here pause: these graves are alltoo young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each."
Shelley has left no poet behind, who could write so touchingly of his burial-place in turn. He was, indeed, as they have graven on his tombstone, "cor cordium"—the heart of hearts. Dreadfully mistaken as he was in his principles, he was no less the soul of genius than the model of a true heart and of pure intentions. Let who will cast reproach upon his memory, I believe, for one, that his errors were of the kind most venial in the eye of Heaven, and I read, almost like a prophesy, the last lines of his elegy on one he believed had gone before him to a happier world:
"Burning through the inmost veil of heaven,The soul of Adonais, like a star,Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."
"Burning through the inmost veil of heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."
On the second terrace of the declivity, are ten or twelve graves, two of which bear the names of Americans who have died in Rome. A portrait carved in bas-relief, upon one of the slabs, told me, without the inscription, that one whom I had known was buried beneath.[9]The slightly rising mound was covered with small violets, half hidden by the grass. It takes away from thepain with which one stands over the grave of an acquaintance or a friend, to see the sun lying so warm upon it, and the flowers springing so profusely and cheerfully. Nature seems to have cared for those who have died so far from home, binding the earth gently over them with grass, and decking it with the most delicate flowers.
A little to the left, on the same bank, is the new-made grave of a very young man, Mr. Elliot. He came abroad for health, and died at Rome, scarce two months since. Without being disgusted with life, one feels, in a place like this, a certain reconciliation, if I may so express it, with the thought of a burial—an almost willingness, if his bed could be laid amid such loveliness, to be brought and left here to his repose. Purely imaginary as any difference in this circumstance is, it must, at least, always affect the sick powerfully; and with the common practice of sending the dying to Italy, as a last hope, I consider the exquisite beauty of this place of burial, as more than a common accident of happiness.
Farther on, upon the same terrace, are two monuments that interested me. One marks the grave of a young English girl,[10]the pride of a noble family, and, as a sculptor told me, who had often seen and admired her, a model of high-born beauty. She was riding with a party on the banks of the Tiber, when her horse became unmanageable, and backed into the river. She sank instantly, and was swept so rapidly away by the current, that her body was not found for many months. Her tombstone is adorned with a bas-relief, representing an angel receiving her from the waves.
The other is the grave of a young lady of twenty, who was at the baths of Lucca, last summer, in pursuit of health. She died at the first approach of winter. I had the melancholy pleasure of knowing her slightly, and we used to meet her in the winding path upon the bank of the romantic river Lima, at evening, borne in a sedan, with her mother and sister walking at her side, the fairest victim consumption ever seized. She had all the peculiar beauty of the disease, the transparent complexion, and the unnaturally bright eye, added to features cast in the clearest and softest mould of female loveliness. She excited general interest even among the gay and dissipated crowd of a watering place; and if her sedan was missed in the evening promenade, the inquiry for her was anxious and universal. She is buried in a place that seems made for such as herself.
We descended to the lower enclosure at the foot of the slight declivity. The first grave here is that ofKeats. The inscription on his monument runs thus: "This grave contains all that was mortal of a young English poet, who, on his death-bed, in the bitterness of his heart at the malicious power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraved on his tomb:HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRITTEN IN WATER." He died at Rome in 1821. Every reader knows his history and the cause of his death. Shelley says, in the preface to his elegy, "The savage criticism on his poems, which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in a rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments, from more candid critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted." Keats was, no doubt, a poet of very uncommon promise. Hehad all the wealth of genius within him, but he had not learned, before he was killed by criticism, the received, and, therefore, the best manner of producing it for the eye of the world. Had he lived longer, the strength and richness which break continually through the affected style of Endymion and Lamia and his other poems, must have formed themselves into some noble monuments of his powers. As it is, there is not a poet living who could surpass the material of his "Endymion"—a poem, with all its faults, far more full of beauties. But this is not the place for criticism. He is buried fitly for a poet, and sleeps beyond criticism now. Peace to his ashes!
Close to the grave of Keats is that of Dr. Bell, the author of "Observations on Italy." This estimable man, whose comments on the fine arts are, perhaps, as judicious and high-toned as any ever written, has left behind him, in Naples (where he practised his profession for some years), a host of friends, who remember and speak of him as few are remembered and spoken of in this changing and crowded portion of the world. His widow, who edited his works so ably and judiciously, lives still at Naples, and is preparing just now a new edition of his book on Italy. Having known her, and having heard from her own lips many particulars of his life, I felt an additional interest in visiting his grave. Both his monument and Keats's are almost buried in the tall flowering clover of this beautiful place.
PRESENTATION AT THE PAPAL COURT—PILGRIMS GOING TO VESPERS—PERFORMANCE OF THE MISERERE—TARPEIAN ROCK—THE FORUM—PALACE OF THE CESARS—COLISEUM.
I have been presented to the Pope this morning, in company with several Americans—Mr. and Mrs. Gray, of Boston, Mr. Atherton and daughters, and Mr. Walsh of Philadelphia, and Mr. Mayer of Baltimore. With the latter gentleman, I arrived rather late, and found that the rest of the party had been already received, and that his Holiness was giving audience, at the moment, to some Russian ladies of rank. Bishop England, of Charleston, however, was good enough to send in once more, and, in the course of a few minutes, the chamberlain in waiting announced to us thatIl Padre Santowould receive us. The ante-room was a picturesque and rather peculiar scene. Clusters of priests, of different rank, were scattered about in the corners, dressed in a variety of splendid costumes, white, crimson, and ermine, one or two monks, with their picturesque beards and flowing dresses of gray or brown, were standing near one of the doors, in their habitually humble attitudes; two gentlemen mace-bearers guarded the door of the entrance to the Pope's presence,their silver batons under their arms, and their open breasted cassocks covered with fine lace; the deep bend of the window was occupied by the American party of ladies, in the required black veils; and around the outer door stood the helmeted guard, a dozen stout men-at-arms, forming a forcible contrast to the mild faces and priestly company within.
The mace-bearers lifted the curtain, and the Pope stood before us, in a small plain room. The Irish priest who accompanied us prostrated himself on the floor, and kissed the embroidered slipper, and Bishop England hastily knelt and kissed his hand, turning to present us as he rose. His Holiness smiled, and stepped forward, with a gesture of his hand, as if to prevent our kneeling, and, as the bishop mentioned our names, he looked at us and nodded smilingly, but without speaking to us. Whether he presumed we did not speak the language, or whether he thought us too young to answer for ourselves, he confined his inquiries about us entirely to the good bishop, leaving me, as I wished, at leisure to study his features and manner. It was easy to conceive that the father of the Catholic church stood before me, but I could scarcely realize that it was a sovereign of Europe, and the temporal monarch of millions. He was dressed in a long vesture of snow-white flannel, buttoned together in front, with a large crimson velvet cape over his shoulders, and band and tassels of silver cloth hanging from beneath. A small white scull-cap covered the crown of his head, and his hair, slightly grizzled, fell straight toward a low forehead, expressive of good-nature merely. A large emerald on his finger, and slippers wrought in gold, with a cross on the instep, completed his dress. His face is heavily moulded, but unmarked, and expressive mainly of sloth and kindness; his nose is uncommonly large, rather pendant thanprominent, and an incipient double chin, slightly hanging cheeks, and eyes, over which the lids drop, as if in sleep, at the end of every sentence, confirm the general impression of his presence—that of an indolent and good old man. His inquiries were principally of the Catholic church in Baltimore (mentioned by the bishop as the city of Mr. Mayer's residence), of its processions, its degree of state, and whether it was recognised by the government. At the first pause in the conversation, his Holiness smiled and bowed, the Irish priest prostrated himself again, and kissed his foot, and, with a blessing from the father of the church, we retired.
On the evening of holy Thursday, as I was on my way to St. Peter's to hear themiserereonce more, I overtook the procession of pilgrims going up to vespers. The men went first in couples, following a cross, and escorted by gentlemen penitents covered conveniently with sackcloth, their eyes peeping through two holes, and their well-polished boots beneath, being the only indications by which their penance could be betrayed to the world. The pilgrims themselves, perhaps a hundred in all, were the dirtiest collection of beggars imaginable, distinguished from the lazars in the street, only by a long staff with a faded bunch of flowers attached to it, and an oil-cloth cape stitched over with scallop-shells. Behind came the female pilgrims, and these were led by the first ladies of rank in Rome. It was really curious to see the mixture of humility and pride. There were, perhaps, fifty ladies of all ages, from sixteen to fifty, walking each between two filthy old women who supported themselves by her arms, while near them, on either side of the procession, followed their splendid equipages, with numerous servants, in livery, on foot, as if to contradict to the world their temporary degradation. The ladypenitents, unlike the gentlemen, walked in their ordinary dress. I had several acquaintances among them; and it was inconceivable, to me, how the gay, thoughtless, fashionable creatures I had met in the most luxurious drawing-rooms of Rome, could be prevailed upon to become a part in such a ridiculous parade of humility. The chief penitent, who carried a large, heavy crucifix at the head of the procession, was the Princess ——, at whose weekly soirees and balls assemble all that is gay and pleasure-loving in Rome. Her two nieces, elegant girls of eighteen or twenty, walked at her side, carrying lighted candles, of four or five feet in length, in broad day-light, through the streets!
The procession crept slowly up to the church, and I left them kneeling at the tomb of St. Peter, and went to the side chapel, to listen to themiserere. The choir here is said to be inferior to that in the Sistine chapel, but the circumstances more than make up for the difference, which, after all, it takes a nice ear to detect. I could not but congratulate myself, as I sat down upon the base of a pillar, in the vast aisle, without the chapel where the choir were chanting, with the twilight gathering in the lofty arches, and the candles of the various processions creeping to the consecrated sepulchre from the distant parts of the church. It was so different in that crowded and suffocating chapel of the Vatican, where, fine as was the music, I vowed positively never to subject myself to such annoyance again.
It had become almost dark, when the last candle but one was extinguished in the symbolical pyramid, and the first almost painful note of themisererewailed out into the vast church of St. Peter. For the next half hour, the kneeling listeners, around the door of the chapel, seemed spell-bound in their motionless attitudes. The darkness thickened, the hundred lamps at thefar-off sepulchre of the saint, looked like a galaxy of twinkling points of fire, almost lost in the distance; and from the now perfectly obscured choir, poured, in ever-varying volume, the dirge-like music, in notes inconceivably plaintive and affecting. The power, the mingled mournfulness and sweetness, the impassioned fulness, at one moment, and the lost, shrieking wildness of one solitary voice, at another, carry away the soul like a whirlwind. I have never been so moved by anything. It is not in the scope of language to convey an idea to another of the effect of themiserere.
It was not till several minutes after the music had ceased, that the dark figures rose up from the floor about me. As we approached the door of the church, the full moon, about three hours risen, poured broadly under the arch of the portico, inundating the whole front of the lofty dome with a flood of light, such as falls only on Italy. There seemed to be no atmosphere between. Daylight is scarce more intense. The immense square, with its slender obelisk and embracing crescents of colonnade, lay spread out as definitely to the eye as at noon, and the two famous fountains shot up their clear waters to the sky, the moonlight streamed through the spray, and every drop as visible and bright as a diamond.
I got out of the press of carriages, and took a by-street along the Tiber, to the Coliseum. Passing the Jews' quarter, which shuts at dark by heavy gates, I found myself near the Tarpeian rock, and entered the Forum, behind the ruins of the temple of Fortune. I walked toward the palace of the Cesars, stopping to gaze on the columns, whose shadows have fallen on the same spot, where I now saw them, for sixteen or seventeen centuries. It checks the blood at one's heart, to stand on the spot and rememberit. There was not the sound of a footstep through the whole wilderness of the Forum. I traversed it to the arch of Titus in a silence, which, with the majestic ruins around, seemed almost supernatural—the mind was left so absolutely to the powerful associations of the place.
Ten minutes more brought me to the Coliseum. Its gigantic walls, arches on arches, almost to the very clouds, lay half in shadow, half in light, the ivy hung trembling in the night air, from between the cracks of the ruin, and it looked like some mighty wreck in a desert. I entered, and a hundred voices announced to me the presence of half the fashion of Rome. I had forgotten that it wasthe mode"to go to the Coliseum by moonlight." Here they were dancing and laughing about the arena where thousands of Christians had been torn by wild beasts, for the amusement of the emperors of Rome; where gladiators had fought and died; where the sands beneath their feet were more eloquent of blood than any other spot on the face of the earth—and one sweet voice proposed a dance, and another wished she could have music and supper, and the solemn old arches re-echoed with shouts and laughter. The travestie of the thing was amusing. I mingled in the crowd, and found acquaintances of every nation, and an hour I had devoted to romantic solitude and thought passed away, perhaps, quite as agreeably, in the nonsense of the most thoughtless triflers in society.
VIGILS OVER THE HOST—CEREMONIES OF EASTER SUNDAY—THE PROCESSION—HIGH MASS—THE POPE BLESSING THE PEOPLE—CURIOUS ILLUMINATION—RETURN TO FLORENCE—RURAL FESTA—HOSPITALITY OF THE FLORENTINES—EXPECTED MARRIAGE OF THE GRAND DUKE.
Rome, 1833.—This is Friday of the holy week. The host, which was deposited yesterday amid its thousand lamps in the Paoline chapel, was taken from its place this morning, in solemn procession, and carried back to the Sistine, after lying in the consecrated place twenty-four hours. Vigils were kept over it all night. The Paoline chapel has no windows, and the lights are so disposed as to multiply its receding arches till the eye is lost in them. The altar on which the host lay was piled up to the roof in a pyramid of light, and with the prostrate figures constantly covering the floor, and the motionless soldier in antique armor at the entrance, it was like some scene of wild romance.
The ceremonies of Easter Sunday were performed where all others should have been—in the body of St. Peter's. Two linesof soldiers, forming an aisle up the centre, stretched from the square without the portico to the sacred sepulchre. Two temporary platforms for the various diplomatic corps and other privileged persons occupied the sides, and the remainder of the church was filled by thousands of strangers, Roman peasantry, and contadini (in picturesque red boddices, and with golden bodkins through their hair), from all the neighboring towns.
A loud blast of trumpets, followed by military music, announced the coming of the procession. The two long lines of soldiers presented arms, and the esquires of the Pope entered first, in red robes, followed by the long train of proctors, chamberlains, mitre-bearers, and incense-bearers, the men-at-arms, escorting the procession on either side. Just before the cardinals, came a cross-bearer, supported on either side by men in showy surplices carrying lights, and then came the long and brilliant line of white-headed cardinals, in scarlet and ermine. The military dignitaries of the monarch preceded the Pope, a splendid mass of uniforms, and his Holiness then appeared, supported, in his great gold and velvet chair, upon the shoulders of twelve men, clothed in red damask, with a canopy over his head, sustained by eight gentlemen, in short, violet-colored silk mantles. Six of the Swiss guard (representing the six Catholic canons) walked near the Pope, with drawn swords on their shoulders, and after his chair followed a troop of civil officers, whose appointments I did not think it worth while to enquire. The procession stopped when the Pope was opposite the "chapel of the holy sacrament," and his Holiness descended. The tiara was lifted from his head by a cardinal, and he knelt upon a cushion of velvet and gold to adore the "sacred host," which was exposed upon the altar. After a few minutes he returned to his chair, his tiara was againset on his head, and the music rang out anew, while the procession swept on to the sepulchre.
The spectacle was all splendor. The clear space through the vast area of the church, lined with glittering soldiery, the dazzling gold and crimson of the coming procession, the high papal chair, with the immense fan-banners of peacock's feathers, held aloft, the almost immeasurable dome and mighty pillars, above and around, and the multitudes of silent people, produced a scene which, connected with the idea of religious worship, and added to by the swell of a hundred instruments of music, quite dazzled and overpowered me.
The high mass (performed but three times a year) proceeded. At the latter part of it, the Pope mounted to the altar, and, after various ceremonies, elevated the sacred host. At the instant that the small white wafer was seen between the golden candlesticks, the two immense lines of soldiers dropped upon their knees, and all the people prostrated themselves at the same instant.
This fine scene over, we hurried to the square in front of the church, to secure places for a still finer one—that of the Pope blessing the people. Several thousand troops, cavalry and footmen, were drawn up between the steps and the obelisk, in the centre of the piazza, and the immense area embraced by the two circling colonnades was crowded by, perhaps, a hundred thousand people, with eyes directed to one single point. The variety of bright costumes, the gay liveries of the ambassadors' and cardinals' carriages, the vast body of soldiery, and the magnificent frame of columns and fountains in which this gorgeous picture was contained, formed the grandest scene conceivable.
In a few minutes the Pope appeared in the balcony, over thegreat door of St. Peter's. Every hat in the vast multitude was lifted and every knee bowed in an instant.Half a nation prostrate together, and one gray old man lifting up his hands to heaven and blessing them!
The cannon of the castle of St. Angelo thundered, the innumerable bells of Rome pealed forth simultaneously, the troops fell into line and motion, and the children of the two hundred and fifty-seventh successor of St. Peter departedblessed.
In the evening all the world assembled to see the illumination, which it is useless to attempt to describe.
The night was cloudy and black, and every line in the architecture of the largest building in the world was defined in light, even to the cross, which, as I have said before, is at the height of a mountain from the base. For about an hour it was a delicate but vast structure of shining lines, like a drawing of a glorious temple on the clouds. At eight, as the clock struck, flakes of fire burst from every point, and the whole building seemed started into flame. It was done by a simultaneous kindling of torches in a thousand points, a man stationed at each. The glare seemed to exceed that of noonday. No description can give an idea of it.
I am not sure that I have not been a little tedious in describing the ceremonies of the holy week. Forsyth says in his bilious book, that he "never could read, and certainly never could write, a description of them." They have struck me, however, as particularly unlike anything ever seen in our own country, and I have endeavored to draw them slightly and with as little particularity as possible. I trust that some of the readers of the Mirror may find them entertaining and novel.
Florence, 1833.—I found myself at six this morning, where I had found myself at the same hour a year before—in the midst of the rural festa in the Cascine of Florence. The Duke, to-day, breakfasts at his farm. The people of Florence, high and low, come out, and spread their repasts upon the fine sward of the openings in the wood, the roads are watered, and the royal equipages dash backward and forward, while the ladies hang their shawls in the trees, and children and lovers stroll away into the shade, and all looks like a scene from Boccaccio.
I thought it a picturesque and beautiful sight last year, and so described it. But I was a stranger then, newly arrived in Florence, and felt desolate amid the happiness of so many. A few months among so frank and warm-hearted a people as the Tuscans, however, makes one at home. The tradesman and his wife, familiar with your face, and happy to be seen in their holyday dresses, give you the "buon giorno" as you pass, and a cup of red wine or a seat at the cloth on the grass is at your service in almost any group in theprato. I am sure I should not find so many acquaintances in the town in which I have passed my life.
A little beyond the crowd, lies a broad open glade of the greenest grass, in the very centre of the woods of the farm. A broad fringe of shade is flung by the trees along the eastern side, and at their roots cluster the different parties of the nobles and the ambassadors. Their gayly-dressedchasseursare in waiting, the silver plate quivers and glances, as the chance rays of the sun break through the leaves over head, and at a little distance, in the road, stand their showy equipages in a long line from the great oak to the farmhouse.
In the evening, there was an illumination of the green alleysand the little square in front of the house, and a band of music for the people. Within, the halls were thrown open for a ball. It was given by the Grand Duke to the Duchess of Litchtenberg, the widow of Eugene Beauharnois. The company assembled at eight, and the presentations (two lovely countrywomen of our own among them), were over at nine. The dancing then commenced, and we drove home, through the fading lights still burning in the trees, an hour or two past midnight.
The Grand Duke is about to be married to one of the princesses of Naples, and great preparations are making for the event. He looks little like a bridegroom, with his sad face, and unshorn beard and hair. It is, probably, not a marriage of inclination, for the fat princess expecting him, is every way inferior to the incomparable woman he has lost, and he passed half the last week in a lonely visit to the chamber in which she died, in his palace at Pisa.
BOLOGNA—MALIBRAN—PARMA—NIGHTINGALES OF LOMBARDY—PLACENZA—AUSTRIAN SOLDIERS—THE SIMPLON—MILAN—RESEMBLANCE TO PARIS—THE CATHEDRAL—GUERCINO'S HAGAR—MILANESE COFFEE.
Milan.—My fifth journey over the Apennines—dull of course. On the second evening we were at Bologna. The long colonnades pleased me less than before, with their crowds of foreign officers and ill-dressed inhabitants, and a placard for the opera, announcing Malibran's last night, relieved us of the prospect of a long evening of weariness. The divine music ofLa Normaand a crowded and brilliant audience, enthusiastic in their applause, seemed to inspire this still incomparable creature even beyond her wont. She sang with a fulness, an abandonment, a passionate energy and sweetness that seemed to come from a soul rapt and possessed beyond control, with the melody it had undertaken. They were never done calling her on the stage after the curtain had fallen. After six re-appearances, she came out once more to the footlights, and murmuring something inaudible from her lips that showed strong agitation, she pressed her hands together, bowed till her long hair, falling over her shoulders,nearly touched her feet, and retired in tears. She is the siren of Europe for me!
I was happy to have no more to do with the Duke of Modena, than to eat a dinner in his capital. We did "not forget the picture," but my inquiries for it were as fruitless as before. I wonder whether the author of the Pleasures of Memory has the pleasure of remembering having seen the picture himself! "Tassoni's bucket which is not the true one," is still shown in the tower, and the keeper will kiss the cross upon his fingers, that Samuel Rogers has written a false line.
At Parma we ate parmesan and sawtheCorreggio. The angel who holds the book up to the infant Saviour, the female laying her cheek to his feet, the countenance of the holy child himself, are creations that seem apart from all else in the schools of painting. They are like a group, not from life, but from heaven. They are superhuman, and, unlike other pictures of beauty which stir the heart as if they resembled something one had loved or might have loved, these mount into the fancy like things transcending sympathy, and only within reach of an intellectual and elevated wonder. This is the picture that Sir Thomas Lawrence returned six times in one day to see. It is the only thing I saw to admire in the Duchy of Maria Louisa. An Austrian regiment marched into the town as we left it, and an Italian at the gate told us that the Duchess had disbanded her last troops of the country, and supplied their place with these yellow and black Croats and Illyrians. Italy is Austria now to the foot of the Apennines—if not to the top of Radicofani.
Lombardy is full of nightingales. They sing by day, however (as not specified in poetry). They are up quite as early as the lark, and the green hedges are alive with their gurgling andchangeful music till twilight. Nothing can exceed the fertility of these endless plains. They are four or five hundred miles of uninterrupted garden. The same eternal level road, the same rows of elms and poplars on either side, the same long, slimy canals, the same square, vine-laced, perfectly green pastures and cornfields, the same shaped houses, the same-voiced beggars with the same sing-song whine, and the same villanous Austrians poring over your passports and asking to be paid for it, from the Alps to the Apennines. It is wearisome, spite of green leaves and nightingales. A bare rock or a good brigand-looking mountain would so refresh the eye!
At Placenza, one of those admirable German bands was playing in the public square, while a small corps of picked men were manœuvred. Even an Italian, I should think, though he knew and felt it was the music of his oppressors, might have been pleased to listen. And pleased they seemed to be—for there were hundreds of dark-haired and well-made men, with faces and forms for heroes, standing and keeping time with the well-played instruments, as peacefully as if there were no such thing as liberty, and no meaning in the foreign uniforms crowding them from their own pavement. And there were the women of Placenza, nodding from the balconies to the white mustaches and padded coats strutting below, and you would never dream Italy thought herself wronged, watching the exchange of courtesies between her dark-eyed daughters and these fair-haired coxcombs.
We crossed the Po, and entered Austria'snominaldominions. They rummaged our baggage as if they smelt republicanism somewhere, and after showing a strong disposition to retain a volume of very bad poetry as suspicious, and detaining us two long hours, they had the modesty to ask to be paid for letting usoff lightly. When we declined it, thechefthreatened us a precious searching "the next time." How willingly I would submit to the annoyance to have thatnext timeassured to me! Every step I take toward the bounds of Italy, pulls so upon my heart!
As most travellers come into Italy over the Simplon, Milan makes generally the first enthusiastic chapter in their books. I have reversed the order myself, and have a better right to praise it from comparison. For exterior, there is certainly no city in Italy comparable to it. The streets are broad and noble, the buildings magnificent, the pavement quite the best in Europe, and the Milanese (all of whom I presume I have seen, for it is Sunday, and the streets swarm with them), are better dressed, and look "better to do in the world" than the Tuscans, who are gayer and more Italian, and the Romans, who are graver and vastly handsomer. Milan is quite like Paris. The showy and mirror-linedcafés, the elegant shops, the variety of strange people and costumes, and a new gallery lately opened in imitation of the glass-roofedpassagesof the French capital, make one almost feel that the next turn will bring him upon the Boulevards.
The famous cathedral, nearly completed by Napoleon, is a sort of Aladdin creation, quite too delicate and beautiful for the open air. The filmly traceries of gothic fretwork, the needle-like minarets, the hundreds of beautiful statues with which it is studded, the intricate, graceful, and bewildering architecture of every window and turret, and the frost-like frailness and delicacy of the whole mass, make an effect altogether upon the eye that must stand high on the list of new sensations. It is a vast structure withal, but a middling easterly breeze, one would thinkin looking at it, would lift it from its base and bear it over the Atlantic like the meshes of a cobweb. Neither interior nor exterior impresses you with the feeling of awe common to other large churches. The sun struggles through the immense windows of painted glass, staining every pillar and carved cornice with the richest hues, and wherever the eye wanders it grows giddy with the wilderness of architecture. The people on their knees are like paintings in the strong artificial light, the checkered pavement seems trembling with a quivering radiance, the altar is far and indistinct, and the lamps burning over the tomb of Saint Carlo, shine out from the centre like gems glistening in the midst of some enchanted hall. This reads very like rhapsody, but it is the way the place impressed me. It is like a great dream. Its excessive beauty scarce seems constant while the eye rests upon it.
TheBrerais a noble palace, occupied by the public galleries of statuary and painting. I felt on leaving Florence that I could give pictures a very long holyday. To live on them, as one does in Italy, is like dining from morn till night. The famous Guercino, is at Milan, however, the "Hagar," which Byron talks of so enthusiastically, and I once more surrendered myself to a cicerone. The picture catches your eye on your first entrance. There is that harmony and effect in the color that mark a masterpiece, even in a passing glance. Abraham stands in the centre of the group, a fine, prophet-like, "green old man," with a mild decision in his eye, from which there is evidently no appeal. Sarah has turned her back, and you can just read in the half-profile glance of her face, that there is a little pity mingled in her hard-hearted approval of her rival's banishment. But Hagar—who can describe the world of meaning in her face?The closed lips have in them a calm incredulousness, contradicted with wonderful nature in the flushed and troubled forehead, and the eyes red with long weeping. The gourd of water is hung over her shoulder, her hand is turning her sorrowful boy from the door, and she has looked back once more, with a large tear coursing down her cheek, to read in the face of her master if she is indeed driven forth for ever. It is the instant before pride and despair close over her heart. You see in the picture that the next moment is the crisis of her life. Her gaze is straining upon the old man's lips, and you wait breathlessly to see her draw up her bending form, and depart in proud sorrow for the wilderness. It is a piece of powerful and passionate poetry. It affects you like nothing but a reality. The eyes get warm, and the heart beats quick, and as you walk away you feel as if a load of oppressive sympathy was lifting from your heart.
I have seen little else in Milan, except Austrian soldiers, of whom there are fifteen thousand in this single capital! The government has issued an order to officers not on duty, to appear in citizen's dress, it is supposed, to diminish the appearance of so much military preparation. For the rest, they make a kind of coffee here, by boiling it with cream, which is better than anything of the kind either in Paris or Constantinople; and the Milanese are, for slaves, the most civil people I have seen, after the Florentines. There is little English society here; I know not why, except that the Italians are rich enough to be exclusive and make their houses difficult of access to strangers.