LETTER XIV.

Vienna—The Palace of Liechtenstein.

The red-nosed German led on through the crowded Graben, jostling aside the Parisian-looking lady and her handsome Hungarian cavalier, the phlegmatic smoker and the bearded Turk, alike. We passed the imperial guard, the city gate, the lofty bridge over the trench (casting a look below at the flower-garden laid out in “the ditch” which encircles the wall), and entered upon the lovely Glacis—one step from the crowded street to the fresh greenness of a park.

Would you believe, as you walk up this shaded alley, that you are in the heart of the city still?

The Glacis is crossed, with its groups of fair children and shy maids, its creeping invalids, its solitude-seeking lovers, and its idling soldiers, and we again enter the crowded street. A half hour more, and the throng thins again, the country opens, and here you are, in front of the palace of Liechstenstein, the first noble of Austria. A modern building, of beautiful and light architecture, rises from its clustering trees: servants in handsome livery hang about the gates and lean against the pillars of the portico, and with an explanation from my lying valet, who evidently makes me out an ambassador at least, by the ceremony with which I am received, a grey servitor makes his appearance and opens the immense glass door leading from the side of the court.

One should step gingerly on the polished marble of this superb staircase! It opens at once into a lofty hall, the ceiling of which is painted in fresco by an Italian master. It is a room of noble proportions. Few churches in America are larger, and yet it seems in keeping with the style of the palace, the staircase—everything but the creature meant to inhabit it.

How different are the moods in which one sees pictures! To-day I am in the humour to give it to the painter’s delusion. The scene is real. Asmodeus is at my elbow, and I am witched from spot to spot, invisible myself, gazing on the varied scenes revealed only to the inspired vision of genius.

A landscape opens.[2]It is one of the woody recesses of Lake Nervi, at the very edge of “Dian’s Mirror.” The huntress queen is bathing with her nymphs. The sandal is half laced over an ankle that seems fit for nothing else than to sustain a goddess, when casting her eye on the lovely troop emerging from the water, she sees the unfortunate Calista surrounded by her astonished sisters, and fainting with shame. Poor Calista! one’s heart pleads for her. But how expressive is the cold condemning look in the beautiful face of her mistress queen! Even the dogs have started from their reclining position on the grass, and stand gazing at the unfortunate, wondering at the silent astonishment of the virgin troop. Pardon her, imperial Dian!

Come to the baptism of a child! It is a vision of Guido Reni’s.[3]A young mother, apparently scarce sixteen, has brought her first child to the altar. She kneels with it in her arms, looking earnestly into the face of the priest while he sprinkles the water on its pure forehead, and pronounces the words of consecration. It is a most lovely countenance, made lovelier by the holy feeling in her heart. Her eyes are moist, her throat swells with emotion—my own sight dims while I gaze upon her. We have intruded upon one of the most holy moments of nature. A band of girls, sisters by the resemblance, have accompanied the young mother, and stand, with love and wonder in their eyes, gazing on the face of the child. How strangely the mingled thoughts, crowding through their minds, are expressed in their excited features. It is a scene worthy of an audience of angels.

We have surprised Giorgione’s wife (the “Flora” of Titian, the “love in life” of Byron) looking at a sketch by her husband. It stands on his easel, outlined in crayons, and represents Lucretia the moment before she plunges the dagger into her bosom. She was passing through his studio, and you see by the half suspended foot, that she stopped but for a momentary glance, and has forgotten herself in thoughts that have risen unaware. The head of Lucretia resembles her own, and she is wondering what Giorgione thought while he drew it. Did he resemble her to the Roman’s wife in virtue as well as in feature? There is an embarrassment in the expression of her face, as if she doubted he had drawn it half in mischief. We will leave the lovely Venetian to her thoughts. When she sits again to Titian, it will be with a colder modesty.

Hoogstraeten, a Dutch painter, conjures up a scene for you. It is an old man, who has thrust his head through a prison gate, and is looking into the street with the listless patience and curiosity of one whom habit has reconciled to his situation. His beard is neglected, his hair is slightly grizzled, and on his head sits a shabby fur cap, that has evidently shared all his imprisonment, and is quite past any pride of appearance. What a vacant face! How perfectly he seems to look upon the street below, as upon something with which he has nothing more to do. There is no anxiety to get out, in its expression. He is past that. He looks at the playing children, and watches the zigzag trot of an idle dog with the quiet apathy of one who can find nothing better to help off the hour. It is a picture of stolid, contented, unthinking misery.

Look at this boy, standing impatiently on one foot at his mother’s knee, while she pares an apple for him! With what an amused and playful love she listens to his hurrying entreaties, stealing a glance at him as he pleads, with a deeper feeling than he will be able to comprehend for years? It is one of the commonest scenes in life, yet how pregnant with speculation!

On—on—what an endless gallery! I have seen twelve rooms, with forty or fifty pictures in each, and there are thirteen halls more! The delusion begins to fade. These arepicturesmerely. Beautiful ones, however! If language could convey to your eye the impressions that this waste and wealth of beauty have conveyed to mine, I would write of every picture. There is not an indifferent one here. All Italy together has not so many works by the Flemish masters as are contained in this single gallery—certainly none so fine. A most princely fortune for many generations must have been devoted to its purchase.

I have seen seven or eight things in all Italy, by Corregio. They were the gems of the galleries in which they exist, but always small, and seemed to me to want a certain finish. Here is a Corregio, a large picture, and no miniature ever had so elaborate a beauty. It melts into the eye. It is a conception of female beauty so very extraordinary, that it seems to me it must become, in the mind of every one who sees it, the model and the standard of all loveliness. It is a nude Venus, sitting lost in thought, with Cupid asleep in her lap. She is in the sacred retirement of solitude, and the painter has thrown into her attitude and expression so speaking an unconsciousness of all presence, that you feel like a daring intruder while you gaze upon the picture. Surely such softness of colouring, such faultless proportions, such subdued and yet eloquent richness of teint in the skin, was never before attained by mortal pencil. I am here, some five thousand miles from America, yet would I have made the voyage but to raise my standard of beauty by this ravishing image of woman.

In the circle of Italian galleries, one finds less of female beauty, both in degree and in variety, than his anticipations had promised. Three or four heads at the most, of the many hundreds that he sees, are imprinted in his memory, and serve as standards in his future observations. Even when standing before the most celebrated pictures, one often returns to recollections of living beauty in his own country, by which the most glowing head of Titian or the Veronese suffer in comparison. In my own experience this has been often true, and it is perhaps the only thing in which my imagination of foreign wonders was too fervent. To this Venus of Corregio’s, however, I unhesitatingly submit all knowledge, all conception even, of female loveliness. I have seen nothing in life, imagined nothing from the description of poets, that is any way comparable to it. It is matchless.

In one of the last rooms the servitor unlocked two handsome cases, and showed me, with a great deal of circumstance, two heads by Denner. They were an old man and his wife—two hale, temperate, good old country gossips—but so curiously finished! Every pore was painted. You counted the stiff stumps of the good man’s beard as you might those of a living person, till you were tired. Every wrinkle looked as if a month had been spent in elaborating it. The man said they were extremely valuable, and I certainly never saw anything more curiously and perhaps uselessly wrought.

Near them was a capital picture of a drunken fellow, sitting by himself, and laughing heartily at his own performance on the pipe. It was irresistible, and I joined in the laugh till the long suite of halls rung again.

Landscapes by Van Delen—such as I have seen engravings of in America, and sighed over as unreal—the skies, the temples, the water, the soft mountains, the distant ruins, seemed so like the beauty of a dream. Here, they recall to me even lovelier scenes in Italy—atmospheres richer than the painter’s pallet can imitate, and ruins and temples whose ivy-grown and melancholy grandeur are but feebly copied at the best.

Come Karl! I am bewildered with these pictures. You have twenty such galleries in Vienna, you say! I have seen enough for to-day, however, and we will save the Belvidere till to-morrow. Here! pay the servitor, and the footman, and the porter, and let us get into the open air. How common look your Viennese after the celestial images we have left behind! And, truly, this is the curse of refinement. The faces we should have loved else, look dull! The forms that were graceful before, move somehow heavily. I have entered a gallery ere now, thinking well of a face that accompanied me, and I have learned indifference to it, by sheer comparison, before coming away.

We return through the Kohlmarket, one of the most fashionable streets of Vienna. It is like a fancy ball. Hungarians, Poles, Croats, Wallachians, Jews, Moldavians, Greeks, Turks, all dressed in their national and striking costumes, promenade up and down, smoking all, and none exciting the slightest observation. Every third window is a pipe shop, and they show, by their splendour and variety, the expensiveness of the passion. Some of them are marked “two hundred dollars.” The streets reek with tobacco smoke. You never catch a breath of untainted air within the Glacis. Your hotel, your café, your coach, your friend, are all redolent of the same disgusting odour.

[2]

By Franceschini. He passed his life with the Prince Liechstenstein, and his pictures are found only in this collection. He is a delicious painter, full of poetry, with the one fault of too voluptuous a style.

[3]

One of the loveliest pictures that divine painter ever drew.

LETTER XV.

The Palace of Schoenbrunn—Hietzing, the Summer Retreat of the Wealthy Viennese—Country-House of the American Consul—Specimen of Pure Domestic Happiness in a German Family—Splendid Village Ball—Substantial Fare for the Ladies—Curious Fashion of Cushioning the Windows—German Grief—The Upper Belvidere Palace—Endless Quantity of Pictures.

Drove to Schoenbrunn. It is a princely palace, some three miles from the city, occupied at present by the emperor and his court. Napoleon resided here during his visit to Vienna, and here his son died—the two circumstances which alone make it worth much trouble to see. The afternoon was too cold to hope to meet the emperor in the grounds, and being quite satisfied with drapery and modern paintings, I contented myself with having driven through the court, and kept on to Hietzing.

This is a small village of country-seats within an hour’s drive of the city—another Jamaica-Plains, or Dorchester in the neighbourhood of Boston. It is the summer retreat of most of the rank and fashion of Vienna. The American consul has here a charming country-house, buried in trees, where the few of our countrymen who travel to Austria find the most hospitable of welcomes. A bachelor friend of mine from New York is domesticated in the village with a German family. I was struck with the Americanism of their manners. The husband and wife, a female relative and an intimate friend of the family, were sitting in the garden, engaged in grave, quiet, sensible conversation. They had passed the afternoon together. Their manners were affectionate to each other, but serious and respectful. When I entered, they received me with kindness, and the conversation was politely changed to French, which they all spoke fluently. Topics were started, in which it was supposed I would be interested, and altogether the scene was one of the simplest and purest domestic happiness. This seems to you, I daresay, like the description of a very common thing, but I have not seen such a one before since I left my country. It is the first family I have found in two years’ travel who lived in, and seemed sufficient for, themselves. It came over me with a kind of feeling of refreshment.

In the evening there was a ball at a public room in the village. It was built in the rear of a café, to which we paid about thirty cents for entrance. I was not prepared for the splendour with which it was got up. The hall was very large and of beautiful proportions, built like the interior of a temple, with columns on the four sides. A partition of glass divided it from a supper room equally large, in which were set out perhaps fifty tables, furnished with acarte, from which each person ordered his supper when he wished it, after the fashion of a restaurant. The best band in Vienna filled the orchestra, led by the celebrated Strauss, who has been honoured for his skill with presents from half the monarchs of Europe.

The ladies entered, dressed in perfect taste,à la Parisienne, but the gentlemen (hear it, Basil Hall and Mrs. Trollope!) came in frock coats and boots, and danced with their hats on! It was a public ball, and there was, of course, a great mixture of society; but I was assured that it was attended constantly by the most respectable people of the village, and was as respectable as anything of the kind in the middle classes. There were, certainly, many ladies in the company, of elegant manners and appearance, and among the gentlemen I recognised twoattachésto the French embassy, whom I had known in Paris, and several Austrian gentlemen of rank were pointed out to me among the dancers. The galopade and the waltz were the only dances, and dirty boots and hats to the contrary notwithstanding, it was the best waltzing I ever saw. They danced with asoul.

The best part of it was thesupper. They danced and eat—danced and eat, the evening through. It was quite the more important entertainment of the two. The most delicate ladies present returned three and four times to the supper, ordering fried chicken, salads, cold meats, andbeer, again and again, as if every waltz created a fresh appetite. The bill was called for, the ladies assisted in making the change, the tankard was drained, and off they strolled to the ball-room to engage with renewed spirit in the dance. And these, positively, were ladies who, in dress, manners, and modest demeanour, might pass uncriticised in any society in the world! Their husbands and brothers attended them, and no freedom was attempted, and I am sure it would not have been permitted even to speak to a lady without a formal introduction.

We left most of the company supping at a late hour, and I drove into the city, amused with the ball, and reconciled to any or all of the manners which travellers in America find so peculiarly entertaining.

These cold winds from the Danube have given me a rheumatism. I was almost reconciled to it this morning however, by a curtain-scene which I should have missed but for its annoyance. I had been driven out of my bed at daylight, and was walking my room between the door and the window, when a violent knocking in the street below arrested my attention. A respectable family occupies the house opposite, consisting of a father and mother and three daughters, the least attractive of whom has a lover. I cannot well avoid observing them whenever I am in my room, for every house in Vienna has a leaning cushion on the window for the elbows, and the ladies of all classes are upon them the greater part of the day. A handsome carriage, servants in livery, and other circumstances, leave no doubt in my mind that my neighbours are rather of the better class.

The lover stood at the street door with a cloak on his arm, and a man at his side with his portmanteau. He was going on a journey, and had come to take leave of his mistress. He was let in by a gaping servant, who looked rather astonished at the hour he had chosen for his visit, but the drawing-room windows were soon thrown open, and the lady made her appearance with her hair in papers, and other marks of a hasty toilet. My room is upon the same floor, and as I paced to and fro, the narrowness of the street in a manner forced them upon my observation. The scene was a very violent one, and the lady’s tears flowed without restraint. After twenty partings at least, the lover scarce getting to the door before he returned to take another embrace, he finally made his exit, and the lady threw herself on a sofa and hid her face—for five minutes! I had begun to feel for her, although her swollen eyes added very unnecessarily to her usual plainness, when she rose and rang the bell. The servant appeared and disappeared, and in a few minutes returned with aham, a loaf of bread, and a mug of beer?and down sets my sentimental miss and consoles the agony of parting with a meal that I would venture to substitute in quantity for any working man’s lunch.

I went to bed and rose at nine, and she was sitting at breakfast with the rest of the family, playing as good a knife and fork as her sisters, though, I must admit, with an expression of sincere melancholy in her countenance.

The scene, I am told by my friend the consul, was perfectly German. They eat a great deal, he says, in affliction. The poet writes:—

“They are thesilentgriefs which cut the heart-strings.”

Forsilentreadhungry.

The Upper Belvidere, a palace containing eighteen large rooms, filled with pictures. This is the imperial gallery and the first in Austria. How can I give you an idea of perhaps five hundred masterpieces you see here now, and by whom Italy has been stripped. They have bought up all Flanders, one would think, too. In one room here are twenty-eight superb Vandykes. Austria, in fact, has been growing rich while every other nation on the continent has been growing poor, and she has purchased the treasures of half the world at a discount.[4]

It is wearisome writing of pictures, one’s language is so limited. I must mention one or two in this collection, however, and I will let you off entirely on the Esterhazy, which is nearly as fine.

“Cleopatra dying.” She is represented younger than usual, and with a more fragile and less queenly style of beauty than is common. It is a fair slight creature of seventeen, who looks made to depend for her very breath upon affection, and is dying of a broken heart. It is painted with great feeling, and with a soft and delightful tone of colour which is peculiar to the artist. It is the third of Guido Cagnacci’s pictures that I have seen. One was the gem of a gallery at Bologna, and was bought last summer by Mr. Cabot of Boston.

“The wife of Potiphar” is usually represented as a woman of middle age, with a full, voluptuous person. She is so drawn, I remember, in the famous picture in the Barberini Palace at Rome, said to be the most expressive thing of its kind in the world. Here is a painting less dangerously expressive of passion but full of beauty. She is eighteen at the most, fair, delicate, and struggles with the slender boy, who seems scarce older than herself, more like a sister from whom a mischievous brother has stolen something in sport. Her partly disclosed figure has all the incomplete slightness of a girl. The handsome features of Joseph express more embarrassment than anger. The habitual courtesy to his lovely mistress is still there, his glance is just averted from the snowy bosom toward which he is drawn, but in the firmly curved lip the sense of duty sits clearly defined, and evidently will triumph. I have forgotten the painter’s name. His model must have been some innocent girl whose modest beauty led him away from his subject. Called by another name the picture were perfect.

A portrait of Count Wallenstein, by Vandyke. It looks aman, in the fullest sense of the word. The pendant to it is the Countess Turentaxis, and she is a woman he might well have loved—calm, lofty, and pure. They are pictures, I should think, would have an influence on the character of those who saw them habitually.

Here is a curious picture by Schnoer—“Mephistopheles tempting Faust.” The scholar sits at his table, with a black letter volume open before him, and apparatus of all descriptions around. The devil has entered in the midst of his speculations, dressed in black like a professor, and stands waiting the decision of Faust, who gazes intently on the manuscript held in his hand. His fingers are clenched, his eyes start from his head, his feet are braced, and the devil eyes him with a side glance, in which malignity and satisfaction are admirably mingled. The features of Faust are emaciated, and show the agitation of his soul very powerfully. The points of his compasses, globes, and instruments emit electric sparks toward the infernal visitor; his lamp burns blue, and the picture altogether has the most diabolical effect. It is quite a large painting, and just below, by the same artist, hangs a small, simple, sweet Madonna. It is a singular contrast in subjects by the same hand.

A portrait of the Princess Esterhazy, by Angelica Kauffman—a beautiful woman, painted in the pure, touching style of that interesting artist.

Then comes a “Cleopatra dropping the pearl into the cup.” How often, and how variously, and how admirably always, the Egyptian queen is painted! I never have seen an indifferent one. In this picture the painter seems to have lavished all he could conceive of female beauty upon his subject. She is a glorious creature. It reminds me of her own proud description of herself, when she is reproaching Antony to one of her maids, in “The False One” of Beaumont and Fletcher:—

“To preferThe lustre of a little trash, Arsinoe,Before thelife of love and soul of beauty!”

“To prefer

The lustre of a little trash, Arsinoe,

Before thelife of love and soul of beauty!”

I have marked a great many pictures in this collection I cannot describe without wearying you, yet I feel unwilling to let them go by. A female, representing Religion, feeding a dove from a cup, a most lovely thing by Guido; portraits of Gerard Douw and Rembrandt, by themselves; Rubens’ children, a boy and girl ten or twelve years of age, one of the most finished paintings I ever saw, and entirely free from the common dropsical style of colouring of this artist; another portrait of Giorgione’s wife, the fiftieth that I have seen, at least, yet a face of which one would never become weary; a glowing landscape by Fischer, the first by this celebrated artist I have met; and last (for this is mere catalogue-making), a large picture representing the “Sitting of the English Parliament” in the time of Pitt. It contains about a hundred portraits, among which those of Pitt and Fox are admirable. The great Prime-Minister stands speaking in the foreground, and Fox sits on the opposite side of the House listening attentively with half a smile on his features. It is a curious picture to find in Vienna.

One thing more, however—a Venus, by Lampi. It kept me a great while before it. She lies asleep on a rich couch, and, apparently in her dream, is pressing a rose to her bosom, while one delicate foot, carelessly thrown back, is half imbedded in a superb cushion supporting a crown and sceptre. It is a lie, by all experience. The moral is false, but the picture is delicious.

[4]

Besides the three galleries of the Belvidere, Leichstenstein, and Esterhazy, which contain as many choice masters as Rome and Florence together, the guide-book refers the traveller tosixty-fourprivate galleries of oil paintings, well worth his attention, and totwenty-fiveprivate collections of engravings and antiquities. We shall soon be obliged to go to Vienna, to study the arts, at this rate. They have only no sculpture.

LETTER XVI.

Departure from Vienna—The Eil-Wagon—Motley quality of the passengers—Thunderstorm in the Mountains of Styria—Trieste—Short beds of the Germans—Grotto of Adelsburgh—Curious Ball-Room in the Cavern—Nautical preparations for a Dance on board the “United States” swept away by the Bora—Its successful termination.

I left Vienna at daylight in a diligence nearly as capacious as a steamboat—inaptly called theeil-wagon. A Friuli count, with a pair of cavalry moustaches, his wife, a pretty Viennese of eighteen, scarce married a year, two fashionable-looking young Russians, an Austrian midshipman, a fat Gratz lawyer, a trader from the Danube, and a young Bavarian student, going to seek his fortune in Egypt, were my companions. The social habits of continental travellers had given me thus much information by the end of the first post.

We drove on with German regularity, three days and three nights, eating four meals a-day (and very good ones), and improving hourly in our acquaintance. The Russians spoke all our languages. The Friulese and the Bavarian spoke everything but English, and the lady, the trader, and the Gratz avocat, were confined to their vernacular. It was a pretty idea of Babel when the conversation became general.

We were coursing the bank of a river, in one of the romantic passes of the mountains of Styria, with a dark thunder-storm gathering on the summit of a crag overhanging us. I was pointing out to one of my companions a noble ruin of a castle seated very loftily on the edge of one of the precipices, when a streak of the most vivid lightning shot straight upon the northern-most turret, and the moment after several large masses rolled slowly down the mountain-side. It was so like the scenery in a play, that I looked at my companion with half a doubt that it was some optical delusion. It reminded me of some of Martin’s engravings. The sublime is so well imitated in our day that one is less surprised than he would suppose when nature produces the reality.

The night was very beautiful when we reached the summit of the mountain above Trieste. The new moon silvered the little curved bay below like a polished shield, and right in the path of its beams lay the two frigates like a painting. I must confess that the comfortable cot swinging in the ward-room of the “United States” was the prominent thought in my mind as I gazed upon the scene. The fatigue of three days and nights’ hard driving had dimmed my eye for the picturesque. Leaving my companions to the short beds[5]and narrow coverlets of a German hotel, I jumped into the first boat at the pier, and in a few minutes was alongside the ship. How musical is the hail of a sentry in one’s native tongue, after a short habitation to the jargon of foreign languages! “Boat ahoy!” It made my heart leap. The officers had just returned from Venice, some over land by the Friuli, and some by the steamer through the gulf, and were sitting round the table laughing with professional merriment over their various adventures. It was getting back to country and friends and home.

I accompanied the commodore’s family yesterday in a visit to the Grotto of Adelsburgh. It is about thirty miles back into the Friuli mountains, near the province of Cariola. We arrived at the nearest tavern at three in the afternoon, and subscribing our names upon the magistrate’s books, took four guides and the requisite number of torches, and started on foot. A half hour’s walk brought us to a large rushing stream, which, after turning a mill, disappeared with violence into the mouth of a broad cavern, sunk in the base of a mountain. An iron gate opened on the nearest side, and lighting our torches, we received an addition of half a dozen men to our party of guides, and entered. We descended for ten or fifteen minutes, through a capacious gallery of rock, up to the ankles in mud, and feeling continually the drippings exuding from the roof, till by the echoing murmurs of dashing water we found ourselves approaching the bed of a subterraneous river. We soon emerged in a vast cavern, whose height, though we had twenty torches, was lost in the darkness. The river rushed dimly below us, at the depth of perhaps fifty feet, partially illuminated by a row of lamps, hung on a slight wooden bridge by which we were to cross to the opposite side.

We descended by a long flight of artificial stairs, and stood upon the bridge. The wildness of the scene is indescribable. A lamp or two glimmered faintly from the lofty parapet from which we had descended; the depth and breadth of the surrounding cave could only be measured by the distance of the echoes of the waters, and beneath us leaped and foamed a dark river, which sprang from its invisible channel, danced a moment in the faint light of our lamps, and was lost again instantly in darkness. It brought with it, from the green fields through which it had come, a current of soft warm air, peculiarly delightful after the chilliness of the other parts of the cavern; there was a smell of new-mown hay in it which seemed lost in the tartarean blackness around.

Our guides led on, and we mounted a long staircase on the opposite side of the bridge. At the head of it stood a kind of monument, engraved with the name of the emperor of Austria, by whose munificence the staircase had been cut and the conveniences for strangers provided. We turned hence to the right, and entered a long succession of natural corridors, roofed with stalactites, with a floor of rock and mud, and so even and wide that the lady under my protection had seldom occasion to leave my arm. In the narrowest part of it, the stalactites formed a sort of reversed grove, with the roots in the roof. They were of a snowy white, and sparkled brilliantly in the light of the torches. One or two had reached the floor, and formed slender and beautiful sparry columns, upon which the names of hundreds of visitors were written in pencil.

The spars grew white as we proceeded, and we were constantly emerging into large halls of the size of handsome drawing-rooms, whose glittering roofs, and sides lined with fantastic columns, seemed like the brilliant frost-work of a crystallised cavern of ice. Some of the accidental formations of the stalagmites were very curious. One large area was filled with them, of the height of small plants. It was called by the guides the “English Garden.” At the head of another saloon, stood a throne, with a stalactite canopy above it, so like the work of art, that it seemed as if the sculptor had but left the finishing undone.

We returned part of the way we had come, and took another branch of the grotto, a little more on the descent. A sign above informed us that it was the “road to the infernal regions.” We walked on an hour at a quick pace, stopping here and there to observe the oddity of the formations. In one place, the stalactites had enclosed a room, leaving only small openings between the columns, precisely like the grating of a prison. In another, the ceiling lifted out of the reach of torch-light, and far above us we heard the deep-toned beat as upon a muffled bell. It was a thin circular sheet of spar, called “the bell,” to which one of the guides had mounted, striking upon it with a billet of wood.

We came after a while to a deeper descent, which opened into a magnificent and spacious hall. It is called “the ball-room,” and used as such once a year, on the occasion of a certain Illyrian festa. The floor has been cleared of stalagmites, the roof and sides are ornamented beyond all art with glittering spars, a natural gallery with a balustrade of stalactites contains the orchestra, and side-rooms are all around where supper might be laid, and dressing-rooms offered in the style of a palace. I can imagine nothing more magnificent than such a scene. A literal description of it even would read like a fairy tale.

A little farther on, we came to a perfect representation of a waterfall. The impregnated water had fallen on a declivity, and with a slightly ferruginous tinge of yellow, poured over in the most natural resemblance to a cascade after a rain. We proceeded for ten or fifteen minutes, and found a small room like a chapel, with a pulpit, in which stood one of the guides, who gave us, as we stood beneath, an Illyrian exhortation. There was a sounding-board above, and I have seen pulpits in old gothic churches that seemed at a first glance to have less method in their architecture. The last thing we reached was the most beautiful. From the cornice of a long gallery, hung a thin, translucent sheet of spar, in the graceful and waving folds of a curtain; with a lamp behind, the hand could be seen through any part of it. It was perhaps twenty feet in length, and hung five or six feet down from the roof of the cavern. The most singular part of it was the fringe. A ferruginous stain ran through it from one end to the other, with the exactness of a drawn line, and thence to the curving edge a most delicate rose-tint faded gradually down like the last flush of sunset through a silken curtain. Had it been a work of art, done in alabaster, and stained with the pencil, it would have been thought admirable.

The guide wished us to proceed, but our feet were wet, and the air of the cavern was too chill. We were at least four miles, they told us, from the entrance, having walked briskly for upward of two hours. The grotto is said to extend ten miles under the mountains, and has never been thoroughly explored. Parties have started with provisions, and passed forty-eight hours in it without finding the extremity. It seems to me that any city I ever saw might be concealed in its caverns. I have often tried to conceive of the grottos of Antiparos, and the celebrated caverns of our own country, but I received here an entirely new idea of the possibility of space under ground. There is no conceiving it unseen. The river emerges on the other side of the mountain, seven or eight miles from its first entrance.

We supped and slept at the little albergo of the village, and returned the next day to an early dinner.

Trieste.—A ball on board the “United States.” The guns were run out of the ports; the main and mizen-masts were wound with red and white bunting; the capstan was railed with arms and wreathed with flowers; the wheel was tied with nosegays; the American eagle stood against the mainmast, with a star of midshipmen’s swords glittering above it; festoons of evergreens were laced through the rigging; the companion-way was arched with hoops of green leaves and roses; the decks were tastefully chalked: the commodore’s skylight was piled with cushions and covered with red damask for an ottoman; seats were laid along from one carronade to the other; and the whole was enclosed with a temporary tent lined throughout with showy flags, and studded all over with bouquets of all the flowers of Illyria. Chandeliers made of bayonets, battle-lanterns, and candles in any quantity, were disposed all over the hall. A splendid supper was set out on the gun-deck below, draped in with flags. Our own and the “Constellation’s” boats were to be at the pier at nine o’clock to bring off the ladies, and at noon everything promised of the brightest.

First, about four in the afternoon, came up a saucy-looking cloud from the westernmost peak of the Friuli. Then followed from every point towards the north, an extending edge of a broad solid black sheet which rose with the regularity of a curtain, and began to send down a wind upon us which made us look anxiously to our ball-room bowlines. The midshipmen were all forward, watching it from the forecastle. The lieutenants were in the gangway, watching it from the ladder. The commodore looked seriously out of the larboard cabin port. It was as grave a ship’s company as ever looked out for a shipwreck.

The country about Trieste is shaped like a bellows, and the city and harbour lie in the nose. They have a wind that comes down through the valley, called the “bora,” which several times in the year is strong enough to lift people from their feet. We could see, by the clouds of dust on the mountain roads, that it was coming. At six o’clock the shrouds began to creak; the white tops flew from the waves in showers of spray, and the roof of our sea-palace began to shiver in the wind. There was no more hope. We had waited even too long. All hands were called to take down the chandeliers, sword-stars, and ottomans, and before it was half done, the storm was upon us; the bunting was flying and flapping, the nicely-chalked decks were swashed with rain, and strewn with leaves of flowers, and the whole structure, the taste and labour of the ship’s company for two days, was a watery wreck.

Lieutenant C——, who had the direction of the whole, was the officer of the deck. He sent for his pea-jacket, and leaving him to pace out his watch among the ruins of his imagination, we went below to get early to bed, and forgot our disappointment in sleep.

The next morning the sun rose without a veil. The “blue Friuli” looked clear and fresh; the south-west wind came over softly from the shore of Italy, and we commenced retrieving our disaster with elastic spirit. Nothing had suffered seriously except the flowers, and boats were despatched ashore for fresh supplies, while the awnings were lifted higher and wider than before, the bright-coloured flags replaced, the arms polished and arranged in improved order, and the decks re-chalked with new devices. At six in the evening everything was swept up, and the ball-room astonished even ourselves. It was the prettiest place for a dance in the world.

The ship has an admirable band of twenty Italians, collected from Naples and other ports, and a fanciful orchestra was raised for them on the larboard side of the mainmast. They struck up a march as the first boatful of ladies stepped upon the deck, and in the course of half an hour the waltzing commenced with at least two hundred couples, while the ottoman and seats under the hammock-cloths were filled with spectators. The frigate has a lofty poop, and there was room enough upon it for two quadrilles after it had served as a reception-room. It was edged with a temporary balustrade, wreathed with flowers, and studded with lights, and the cabin beneath (on a level with the main ball-room), was set out with card-tables. From the gangway entrance, the scene was like a brilliant theatrical ballet.

An amusing part of it was the sailors’ imitation on the forward decks. They had taken the waste shrubbery and evergreens, of which there was a great quantity, and had formed a sort of grove, extending all round. It was arched with festoons of leaves, with quantities of fruit tied among them; and over the entrance was suspended a rough picture of a frigate with the inscription, “Free trade and sailors’ rights.” The forecastle was ornamented with cutlasses, and one or two nautical transparencies, with pistols and miniature ships interspersed, and the whole lit up handsomely. The men were dressed in their white duck trowsers and blue jackets, and sat round on the guns playing at draughts, or listening to the music, or gazing at the ladies constantly promenading fore and aft, and to me this was one of the most interesting parts of the spectacle. Five hundred weather-beaten and manly faces are a fine sight anywhere.

The dance went gaily on. The reigning belle was an American, but we had lovely women of all nations among our guests. There are several wealthy Jewish families in Trieste, and their dark-eyed daughters, we may say at this distance, are full of the thoughtful loveliness peculiar to the race. Then we had Illyrians and Germans, and—Terpsichore be our witness—how they danced! My travelling companion, the count of Friuli, was there; and his little Viennese wife, though she spoke no Christian language, danced as featly as a fairy. Of strangers passing through the Trieste, we had several of distinction. Among them was a fascinating Milanese marchioness, a relative of Manzoni’s, the novelist (and as enthusiastic and eloquent a lover of her country as I ever listened to on the subject of oppressed Italy), and two handsome young men, the counts Neipperg, sons-in-law to Maria Louisa, who amused themselves as if they had seen nothing better in the little duchy of Parma.

We went below at midnight, to supper, and the ladies came up with renewed spirit to the dance. It was a brilliant scene indeed. The officers of both ships in full uniform, the gentlemen from shore, mostly military, in full dress, the gaiety of the bright red bunting, laced with white and blue, and studded, wherever they would stand, with flowers, and the really uncommon number of beautiful women, with the foreign features and complexions so rich and captivating to our eyes, produced altogether an effect unsurpassed by anything I have ever seen even at the courtfêtesof Europe. The daylight gun fired at the close of a galopade, and the crowded boats pulled ashore with their lovely freight by the broad light of morning.

[5]

A German bed is never over five feet in length, and proportionably narrow. The sheets, blankets, and coverlets, are cut exactly to the size of the bed’ssurface, so that there is notucking up. The bed-clothes seem made for cradles. It is easy to imagine how a tall person sleeps in them.

LETTER XVII.

Trieste, its Extensive Commerce—Hospitality of Mr. Moore—Ruins of Pola—Immense amphitheatre—Village of Pola—Coast of Dalmatia, of Apulia and Calabria—Otranto—Sails for the Isles of Greece.

Trieste is certainly a most agreeable place. Its streets are beautifully paved and clean, its houses new and well built, and its shops as handsome and as well stocked with every variety of things as those of Paris. Its immense commerce brings all nations to its port, and it is quite the commercial centre of the continent. The Turk smokes cross-legged in the café, the English merchant has his box in the country and his snug establishment in town, the Italian has his opera, and his wife her cavalier, the Yankee captain his respectable boarding-house, and the German his four meals a day at a hotel dyed brown with tobacco. Every nation is at home in Trieste.

The society is beyond what is common in a European mercantile city. The English are numerous enough to support a church, and the circle of which our hospitable consul is the centre, is one of the most refined and agreeable it has been my happiness to meet. The friends of Mr. Moore have pressed every possible civility and kindness upon the commodore and his officers, and his own house has been literally our home on shore. It is the curse of thisvolantlife, otherwise so attractive, that its frequent partings are bitter in proportion to its good fortune. We make friends but to lose them.

We got under way with a light breeze this morning, and stole gently out of the bay. The remembrance of a thousand kindnesses made our anchors lift heavily. We waved our handkerchiefs to the consul, whose balconies were filled with his charming family watching our departure, and with a freshening wind, disappeared around the point, and put up our helm for Pola.

The ruins of Pola, though among the first in the world, are seldom visited. They lie on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, at the head of a superb natural bay, far from any populous town, and are seen only by the chance trader who hugs the shore for the land-breeze, or the Albanian robber who looks down upon them with wonder from the mountains. What their age is I cannot say nearly. The country was conquered by the Romans about one hundred years before the time of our Saviour, and the amphitheatre and temples were probably erected soon after.

We ran into the bay, with the other frigate close astern, and anchored off a small green island which shuts in the inner harbour. There is deep water up to the ancient town on either side, and it seems as if nature had amused herself with constructing a harbour incapable of improvement. Pola lay about two miles from the sea.

It was just evening, and we deferred our visit to the ruins till morning. The majestic amphitheatre stood on a gentle ascent, a mile from the ship, goldenly bright in the flush of sunset; the pleasant smell of the shore stole over the decks, and the bands of the two frigates played alternately the evening through. The receding mountains of Istria changed their light blue veils gradually to grey and sable, and with the pure stars of these enchanted seas, and the shell of a new moon bending over Italy in the west, it was such a night as one remembrances like a friend. The “Constellation” was to part from us here, leaving us to pursue our voyage to Greece. There were those on board who had brightened many of our “hours ashore,” in these pleasant wanderings. We pulled back to our own ship, after a farewell visit, with regrets deepened by crowds of pleasant remembrances.

The next morning we pulled ashore to the ruins. The amphitheatre was close upon the sea, and to my surprise and pleasure, there was nocicerone. A contemplative donkey was grazing under the walls, but there was no other living creature near. We looked at its vast circular wall with astonishment. The Coliseum at Rome, a larger building of the same description, is, from the outside, much less imposing. The whole exterior wall, a circular pile one hundred feet high in front, and of immense blocks of marble and granite, is as perfect as when the Roman workman hewed the last stone. The interior has been nearly all removed. The well-hewn blocks of the many rows of seats were too tempting, like those of Rome, to the barbarians who were building near. The circle of the arena, in which the gladiators and wild beasts of these then new-conquered provinces fought, is still marked by the foundation of its barrier. It measures two hundred and twenty-three feet. Beneath it is a broad and deep canal, running toward the sea, filled with marble columns, still erect upon their pedestals, used probably for the introduction of water for thenaumachia. The whole circumference of the amphitheatre is twelve hundred and fifty-six feet, and the thickness of the exterior wall seven feet six inches. Its shape is oblong, the length being four hundred and thirty-six feet, and the breadth three hundred and fifty. The measurements were taken by the captain’s orders, and are doubtless critically correct.

We loitered about the ruins several hours, finding in every direction the remains of the dilapidated interior. The sculpture upon the fallen capitals and fragments of frieze was in the highest style of ornament. The arena is overgrown with rank grass, and the crevices in the walls are filled with flowers. A vineyard, with its large blue grape just within a week of ripeness, encircles the rear of the amphitheatre. The boat’s crew were soon among them, much better amused than they could have been by all the antiquities in Istria.

We walked from the amphitheatre to the town; a miserable village built around two antique temples, one of which still stands alone, with its fine Corinthian columns, looking just ready to crumble. The other is incorporated barbarously with the guard-house of the place, and is a curious mixture of beautiful sculpture and dirty walls. The pediment, which is still perfect, in the rear of the building, is a piece of carving, worthy of the choicest cabinet of Europe. The thieveries from the amphitheatre are easily detected. There is scarcely a beggar’s house in the village, that does not show a bit or two of sculptural marble upon its front.

At the end of the village stands a triumphal arch, recording the conquests of a Roman consul. Its front, toward the town, is of Parian marble, beautifully chiselled. One recognises the solid magnificence of that glorious nation, when he looks on these relics of their distant conquests, almost perfect after eighteen hundred years. It seems as if the foot-print of a Roman were eternal.

We stood out of the little bay, and with a fresh wind, ran down the coast of Dalmatia, and then crossing to the Italian side, kept down the ancient shore of Apulia and Calabria to the mouth of the Adriatic. I have been looking at the land with the glass, as we ran smoothly along, counting castle after castle built boldly on the sea, and behind them, on the green hills, the thickly built villages with their smoking chimneys and tall spires, pictures of fertility and peace. It was upon these shores that the Barbary corsairs descended so often during the last century, carrying off for eastern harems, the lovely women of Italy. We are just off Otranto, and a noble old castle stands frowning from the extremity of the Cape. We could throw a shot into its embrasures as we pass. It might be the “Castle of Otranto,” for the romantic looks it has from the sea.

We have out-sailed the “Constellation,” or we should part from her here. Her destination is France: and we should be to-morrow amid the[6]Isles of Greece. The pleasure of realising the classic dreams of one’s boyhood, is not to be expressed in a line. I look forward to the succeeding month or two as to the “red-letter” chapter of my life. Whatever I may find the reality, my heart has glowed warmly and delightfully with the anticipation. Commodore Patterson is, fortunately for me, a scholar, and a judicious lover of the arts, and loses no opportunity, consistently with his duty, to give his officers the means of examining the curious and the beautiful in these interesting seas. The cruise, thus far, has been one of continually mingled pleasure and instruction, and the best of it, by every association of our early days, is to come.

[6]

It was to this point (the ancient Hydrantum) that Pyrrhus proposed to build a bridge from Greece—onlysixty miles! He deserved to ride on an elephant.

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