See how fond science, with unwearied gaze,Eyes on the sun's bright disk each fiery vent,And from his flaming crown each ray up-sentSearches, as miners, in their furnace-blaze—Seek trace of gold. But who to thee doth raiseHis eyes the while? Who, with true heart intent,Scans thy sharp crown, thy bosom's yawning rent,And peers into its depths with love's amaze?Let me, at least, come near the abysmal side,And reach out to the heart which throbs within.I am oppressed with woe and shame and sin;Oh! suffer me within that cleft to hide!There glows the fire which purifies each stain;There burns the love which bids me live again.
See how fond science, with unwearied gaze,Eyes on the sun's bright disk each fiery vent,And from his flaming crown each ray up-sentSearches, as miners, in their furnace-blaze—Seek trace of gold. But who to thee doth raiseHis eyes the while? Who, with true heart intent,Scans thy sharp crown, thy bosom's yawning rent,And peers into its depths with love's amaze?Let me, at least, come near the abysmal side,And reach out to the heart which throbs within.I am oppressed with woe and shame and sin;Oh! suffer me within that cleft to hide!There glows the fire which purifies each stain;There burns the love which bids me live again.
See how fond science, with unwearied gaze,Eyes on the sun's bright disk each fiery vent,And from his flaming crown each ray up-sentSearches, as miners, in their furnace-blaze—
Seek trace of gold. But who to thee doth raiseHis eyes the while? Who, with true heart intent,Scans thy sharp crown, thy bosom's yawning rent,And peers into its depths with love's amaze?
Let me, at least, come near the abysmal side,And reach out to the heart which throbs within.I am oppressed with woe and shame and sin;Oh! suffer me within that cleft to hide!There glows the fire which purifies each stain;There burns the love which bids me live again.
Don Fernan.Uncle Romance, I am coming in, although it don't rain.
Uncle Romance.Welcome, Señor Don Fernan. Your worship comes to this, your house, like the sun, to illumine it. Has your worship any commands?
Don F.I am hungry for a story, Uncle Romance.
Uncle R.Story again! Señor, does your worship think that my yarns are like Don Crispin's titles, that were past counting? Your worship must excuse me; I'm in a bad way to-day; my memory is broken-winded, and my wits are heavier than bean-broth. But, not to disappoint your worship, I'll call my Chana.[79]Ch-a-a-a-na! Sebas-ti-a-a-na! What ails the woman? She is getting to be like the Marquis of Montegordo, who remained mute, blind, and deaf.[80]Ch-a-a-na!!
Aunt Sebastiana.What do you mean, man, by bawling like a cowherd? Oh! Señor Don Fernan is here. God be with you, señor! How is your worship?
Don F.Never better, Aunt Sebastiana; and you are well?
Aunt S.Ay! no, señor; I'm fallen away like a lime-kiln.
Don F.Why, what has been the matter with you?
Uncle R.The same that ailed the other one who was sunning herself:
"Una vieja estaba al solY mirando al almanaque:En cuando en cuando decia,'Ya va la luna menguante.'""An old woman was sunning herselfAnd studying the almanac:From time to time she said,'The moon is waning already.'"
"Una vieja estaba al solY mirando al almanaque:En cuando en cuando decia,'Ya va la luna menguante.'""An old woman was sunning herselfAnd studying the almanac:From time to time she said,'The moon is waning already.'"
"Una vieja estaba al solY mirando al almanaque:En cuando en cuando decia,'Ya va la luna menguante.'"
"An old woman was sunning herselfAnd studying the almanac:From time to time she said,'The moon is waning already.'"
Aunt S.No, señor, it isn't that. God and his dear mother do not take away our flesh, but the child when he is born, and the mother when she dies; and my son—my own life—
Uncle R.There, Chana, don't mention Juan, the big hulk, with more ribs than a frigate.[81]
Aunt S.Don't believe it, señor; he just talks to hear himself, and don't know what he's saying. That boy of mine is more gentle and reasonable; he wouldn't say scat to the cat. He has served in the army six years, and has got his lights snuffed.[82]
Uncle R.His lights are those of midnight. He entered the uniform, but the uniform hasn't entered him.[83]
Don F.But what is the trouble, Aunt Sebastiana?
Aunt S.Señor, he can't get work.
Don F.Oh! I'll give him work, if you'll tell me a story.
Aunt S.My man, here, would do it better. Your worship knows that he has the name of being such a goodstory-teller. He never wants for a tale.
Don F.That is true; but to-day he's not in a talking mood.
Aunt S.If I hadn't—
Uncle R.Come, come, woman, don't keep his worship in expectation, like a watch-dog. A story, and a good one; for you could talk if you were under water.
Aunt S.Would your worship like to hear about theanimas?
Don F.Without delay. Let us hear about theanimas.
Aunt S.There was once a poor woman who had a niece that she brought up as straight as a bolt. The girl was a good girl, but very timid and bashful. The dread of what might become of this child, if she should be taken away, was the poor old woman's greatest anxiety. Therefore, she prayed to God, night and day, to send her niece a kind husband.
The aunt did errands for the house of a gossip of hers that kept boarders. Among the guests of this house was a great nabob, who condescended to say that he would marry if he could find a girl modest, industrious, and clever. You may be sure that the old woman's ear was wide open. A few days afterwards, she told the nabob that he would find what he was looking for in her niece, who was a treasure, a grain of gold, and so clever that she painted even the birds of the air. The gentleman said that he would like to know her, and would go to see her the next day. The old woman ran home so fast that she never saw the path, and told her niece to tidy up the house, and to comb her hair, and dress herself, the next morning, with great care, for they were going to have company.
When the gentleman came, the next day, he asked the girl if she knew how to spin.
"Spin, is it?" answered the aunt.
"She takes the hanks down like glasses of water."
"What have you done, madam?" cried the niece when the gentleman had gone, after giving her three hanks of flax to spin for him. "Whathaveyou done? And I don't know how to spin!"
"Go along," said the aunt, "go along, for a poor article that will sell well,and don't set your foot down,[84]but let it be as God will."
"Into what a thorn-brake you have put me, madam!" said the niece, crying.
"Well, see that you get out of it," answered the aunt; "but these three hanks must be spun, for your fortune depends upon them."
The poor girl went to her room in sore distress, and betook herself to imploring the blessed souls, for which she had great devotion.
While she prayed, three beautiful souls, clothed in white, appeared to her, and told her not to be troubled, for they would help her in return for the good she had done them by her prayers; and, taking each one a hank, they changed the flax into thread as fine as your hair in less time than would be worth one's while to name.
When the nabob came, the next day, he was astonished to see the result of so much diligence united with so much skill.
"Did I not tell your worship so!" exclaimed the old woman, beside herself with delight.
The gentleman asked the girl if she knew how to sew.
"And why shouldn't she?" answered the aunt with spirit. "Pieces of sewing are no more in her handsthan cherries would be in the big snake's mouth."[85]
The gentleman then left her linen to make him three shirts, and, not to tire your worship, it happened just as it had the day before; and the same took place on the day after, when the nabob brought a satin waistcoat to be embroidered; except that, when, in answer to her many tears and great fervor, the souls appeared and said to the girl, "Don't be troubled, we are going to embroider this waistcoat for you," they added, "but it must be upon a condition."
"What condition?" inquired the girl anxiously.
"That you ask us to your wedding."
"Am I going to be married?" said the girl.
"Yes," answered the souls, "to that rich man."
And so it turned out, for, when the gentleman came, the next day, and saw his waistcoat so exquisitely wrought that it seemed as though hands of flesh could not have touched it, and so beautiful that to look at it fairly took away his eyesight, he told the aunt that he wanted to marry her niece.
The aunt was ready to dance for joy. Not so the niece, who said to her: "But, madam, what will become of me when my husband finds out that I don't know how to do anything?"
"Go along!and don't make up your mind," answered the aunt. "The blessed souls that have helped you in other straits are not going to desert you in this."
On the wedding-day, when the feasting was at its height, three old women entered the parlor. They were so beyond anything ugly that the nabob was struck dumb with horror.
The first had one arm very short, and the other so long that it dragged on the ground; the second was humped and crooked; and the eyes of the third stuck out like a crab's, and were redder than a tomato.
"Jesus, Maria!" said the astonished gentleman to his bride, "who are those three scarecrows?"
"They are three aunts of my father," she replied, "that I invited to my wedding."
The nabob, who was mannerly, went to speak to the aunts and find them seats.
"Tell me," he said to the first, "what makes one of your arms so short and the other so long?"
"My son," answered the old woman, "it was spinning so much that made them grow that way."
The nabob hurried to his wife and told her to burn her distaff and spindle, and to take care that she never let him see her spin.
He immediately asked the second old woman what made her so humpbacked and crooked.
"My son," she answered, "I grew so by working all the while at my broidery-frame."
With three strides the gentleman put himself beside his wife, and said to her: "Go this minute, and burn your broidery-frame, and take care that in the lifetime of God I do not catch you with another."
Then he went to the third old woman, and asked her what made her eyes look so red and as if they were going to burst?
"My son," she answered, giving them a frightful roll, "this comes of continual sewing, and of keeping my head bent over the work."
Before the words were out of her mouth, the nabob was at his wife'sside: "Go," said he, "gather all your needles and thread, and throw them into the well, and bear in mind that the day I find you sewing, I will sue for a divorce. The sight of the halter on another's neck is warning enough for me."
Aunt S.And now, Señor Don Fernan, my story is ended; I hope that it has pleased you?
Don F.Ever so much, Aunt Sebastiana; but what I learn from it is, that the souls, notwithstanding that they are blessed, are very tricky.
Aunt S.Now, señor, and is your worship going to insist upon doctrine in a romance, as if it were an example? Why, stories are only to make us laugh, and grow better without precept or name of lesson. God will have a little of all.
Don F.True, Aunt Sebastiana; and what you express with your simple good sense is more wholesome than the critical reverence of the overstrict. But, uncle, I am not going without another to correspond with this, and it is your turn now. If, as I think you have told me that you were on other occasions, you are a devotee of San Tomas,[86]here are some Havanas as an offering to his saintship.
Uncle R.Not to disoblige your worship.
Don F.But I must have the story; I want it for a purpose.
Uncle R.By which your worship means to say that, without anochavo, you can't make up thereal.[87]Well, let me think. Since the talk is aboutanimas, animasit is. Their sodality in a certain place had for mayordomo a poorbread-lost[88]of a member, one of those who are always like the sheep that misses the mouthful.[89]He was without a cloak, and went with teeth chattering and limbs benumbed with cold. What does he do but go and order himself a cloak made, and, without so much as sayingchuzormuz,[90]or by your leave, sirs, take money from the funds of theanimasto pay for it. When it came home, he put it on, and went into the street as consequential andhigh-stomachedas those rich folks recently raised from the dust. But at every step he took, some one gave the cloak a jerk, and though he kept a sharp lookout he could not see who. The instant he drew it up on the left shoulder, down it slid from the right, causing him to keep a continual hitch, hitch. You would have thought he had a thorn in his foot.
As he went along, pestered and chap-fallen, trying to make out what it could mean, he met a gossip of his, who was mayordomo to theHermandad del Santísimo.[91]This fellow was stalking loftily, filling the street with his air that said,Get out of the way, I am coming. After "How d'ye do?" this one asked the other, "What is the matter, comrade, that you seem so down at the mouth lately?"
"Matter enough!" answered he of the souls, pulling his cloak up on the right shoulder while it slipped off from the left. "Know that in the beginning of the winter I found myself in difficulties. I had sown apegujar[92]without seeing the color of wheat. My wife brought me two boys, when, with the nine I had already, one would have been too many; the delivery cost her a longsickness, and me the eyes of my face. In few, I was just stuck to the wall like a star-lizard, and hungrier than an ex-minister. I had to borrow money of the souls to get this cloak; but what the seven ails it I don't know, for, whenever I put it on, it seems as though somebody was giving it a pull here and a jerk there. Two rudder-pins couldn't hold it fast to my shoulders."
"You did wrong, my friend," responded the steward of El Santísimo. "If, like me, you had taken a loan of a great powerful andgivingpersonage, you wouldn't have to go about as you do, chased and persecuted for the debt. If you borrow of miserable destitute wretches, what can you expect but that the poor things will try to get back their own when they need it so much?"
One day a hermit father in God,Planting in earth a pilgrim's rod,For holy obedience did prayDwarf John to water it every day.From the far river daily broughtSilent John his water-pot;As 'twere a soul's task done for God,For three long years he watered the rod.When lo! the dry wood forth did shoot,And bear of obedience flower and fruit!Water thy barren heart with tears,And the same shall happen in good three years.
One day a hermit father in God,Planting in earth a pilgrim's rod,For holy obedience did prayDwarf John to water it every day.From the far river daily broughtSilent John his water-pot;As 'twere a soul's task done for God,For three long years he watered the rod.When lo! the dry wood forth did shoot,And bear of obedience flower and fruit!Water thy barren heart with tears,And the same shall happen in good three years.
One day a hermit father in God,Planting in earth a pilgrim's rod,For holy obedience did prayDwarf John to water it every day.
From the far river daily broughtSilent John his water-pot;As 'twere a soul's task done for God,For three long years he watered the rod.
When lo! the dry wood forth did shoot,And bear of obedience flower and fruit!Water thy barren heart with tears,And the same shall happen in good three years.
Let us suppose a company of travellers through Italy—strangers from foreign climes, England, Germany, and France—reaching Rome at the period of the accession of Sixtus V. to the throne of St. Peter. Approaching the Eternal City by the road from the north, they find themselves before the Porta del Popolo.
Let us go in with them, and through their eyes see the Rome of that day.
On entering the gates, they pass into an open place of irregular shape. A large convent occupies nearly the entire eastern side, which, with the gracefulcampanile, or bell-tower, of Santa Maria del Popolo, and the high houses with wide portals between the Corso, the Ripetta, and the Babuino, are the only edifices visible. The obelisk is not yet placed there by Sixtus V., and the two little churches with their heavy cupolas, so well known to the modern tourist, and the other buildings now seen there—the work of Pius VII. and the architect Valadier—did not then exist. The Piazza del Popolo was then less symmetrical, but more picturesque. Wayfarers on horseback and on foot pass to and fro; muleteers arrive and depart, driving before them lines of mules and beasts of burden. In the centre of the place women are washing at a circular basin. Idlers follow and gaze at the strangers while they make their declaration to thebargel, or public authority, and submit their effects to the examination of the custom officials. These preliminaries through, our travellers may pass into the city by a street leading around the base of the Pincian Hill, by another going toward the Tiber, both of which have long ceased to exist, or by the well-known Corso. Some find their way to the then celebrated and already venerable hostelry,
widely known and greatly in vogue ever since the reign of Sixtus IV. Its peculiar octagon pillars fix the period of its construction. Strange to relate, this patriarch of hotels, which has seen four centuries and twenty generations of travellers pass over its head and through its halls, has continued in existence, and is still open as a tavern in Rome to this day. True, its guests are now no longer, as they were in the sixteenth century, such personages of distinction as foreign prelates, noted scholars, philosophers like Montaigne, and, soon afterward, the earliest known tourists. Its inmates and frequenters of the nineteenth century are now country traders, cattle dealers, and wagoners.
Others of our travellers who intend to make a longer stay in Rome seek out the houses in the neighborhood of the Pantheon or the Minerva, nearly all of which are let out to strangers in rooms or suites. These apartments are luxuriously fitted up and ornamented with the then famous Cordova leather hangings, and richly sculpturedand gilded furniture. Everything is brilliant to the eye, but the nineteenth century tourist would have found fault with the lack of cleanliness and the stinted supply of fresh linen.
With yet others of these travellers, let us enter
the Via Lata of the ancient Romans. There is no sign of business on it at this early day. But few of the aristocracy have as yet transferred their residences here, but it already wears an air of life and animation, and is well filled at the hours of the promenade.
We pass along between vineyards and vegetable gardens. A single large edifice just completed strikes the stranger's attention. It is the magnificent Ruspoli palace, built by Rucellai, the Florentine banker, upon the designs of his countryman Ammanati.
Now we reach the Via Condotti, to-day well-known to every American who ever saw Rome. Let us turn into it to the left, and traverse it to the Piazza della Trinita (now Piazza di Spagna), whence we may scale the hill above and obtain a commanding view of the entire city.
In doing this, we pass through the then worst quarter of Rome, physically and morally, for the triangle formed by the Corso, the Via Condotti, and the Babuino was at once of the most evil repute and the most unhealthy in all Rome. In this quarter were sure to break out all the epidemics which at that period occasionally decimated the population of Rome. Seeking to mount
the traveller of that day might have looked in vain for the broad flight of easy marble steps we now see there, and he ascended by a steep and narrow staircase. On reaching the summit, he found himself on thecollis hortulorumof the Romans, and saw it still covered with vineyards and tilled fields, and the comparatively modern innovation of the garden of the Villa Medici. The elegant world of Rome in 1585 had to content themselves with taking their promenade and their enjoyment of the evening air about the Porta del Popolo, and knew naught of the charming promenade, the delightful walks, the purer breeze, and the beautiful view which later generations enjoy on the hill above it.
The great painters of the succeeding age who came to Rome, the Carracci, the Domenichinos, the Guidos, and the Salvator Rosas, were the first to discover the attractions of the Pincian Hill, and, braving custom, lack of accommodation, the bad neighborhood, and the unhealthy contiguity of the quarter below, were the first to establish themselves upon it. This was the foundation of the modern Pincian settlement.
Some years ago, the writer of this article occupied apartments in the first house to the right on reaching the summit of the Pincian steps. The tradition of the house ran to the effect that these rooms had been occupied by Salvator Rosa; and if, as they say, he selected them for the sake of their view of the setting sun, he chose well, for all the sunsets of Rome may there be seen to the best advantage. As an American, however, views of the setting sun in Italy were not specially attractive to us, and we always regretted for Salvator Rosa's sake that he had never seen a transatlantic sunset, compared with which those at Naples and Rome are tame spectacles. The traditional "beauty of an Italian sunset" is oneof the many English provincialisms we have adopted and believed in along with numerous other errors embalmed in the literature of England. But we forget that we are standing on the Pincian in 1585. All is silent and deserted around us, and Rome is spread out at our feet.
To the left are the salient points, the seven hills—for the Pincian was not one of them—the towers of the Capitol, the ruins of the palace of the Cæsars in the Farnese gardens on the Palatine, the belfry of Santa Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline, the Quirinal, as yet without the imposing mass of the pontifical palace. The Rospigliosi palace was not yet built, but the villa of Cardinal Sforza is seen, the same afterward known as the Barberini palace. We turn our eyes upon the lower city—inhabited Rome—and with difficulty make out but three or four cupolas. On the other hand, we see a perfect forest of towers on every side, some of them of prodigious size. On the left bank of the Tiber, many of these towers have of late years disappeared, but the Trastevere, as might be expected, is still full of them—so full, indeed, that a distant view of that quarter presents the appearance of a comb turned teeth upward. At that period, these towers were the universal appendage of an aristocratic dwelling. San Gemiguiano near Sienna is the only city in all Italy which has preserved them to this day.
As our stranger of three hundred years ago looks over Rome and listens to the confused noises which meet his ear, he is struck with the rarity of the sound of bells and with the small number of churches discernible. The great Catholic reaction consequent on the Reformation had for fifty years moved souls, but had not yet begun to move the stones. It is the following era which is to imprint upon Rome the architectural marks of the church triumphant. Later in the day, when our strangers shall have descended into the city and entered the churches, they will be struck with the barrenness of their interiors, and with the absence of paintings. They are probably ignorant of the fact that in Italy, during the middle ages, there was but one altar in a church, that there alone Mass was celebrated, that the mosaics and frescoes came in with architectural innovation, and that only toward the end of the sixteenth century were altars and oil-paintings multiplied with the side chapels.
And yet this comparative quiet of the city was animation itself, compared with the sights and sounds discernible from the same point at the period when the popes returned to Rome from Avignon.
The residence of the Cæsars was covered with fields, vineyard, and pasture. The Pantheon, the Coliseum, some ruins, and detached columns alone arose over the surrounding waste as witnesses of former grandeur.
It was at this period that the Forum received the name of "The Cow Pasture" (Campo Vaccino). A remnant of life yet remained in the plain extending between the Tiber, the Pincian Hill, and the Capitoline, but the total population of Rome was reduced to 17,000 souls, the great majority of them huddled together and crowded in hovels clustered under the shadow of the baronial and aristocratic strongholds. High battlemented towers filled the city. Of the scores in the Trastevere, that of the Auguilara family exists to this day. On the Tiberine island arose the Frangipanitowers, on the left bank those of the Orsini, from the Porta del Popolo to the Quirinal those of the Colonna, while the towers of the Mellini and the Sanguigni may still be seen on the site of the stadium of Domitian.
Of all the seven hills of Rome, one only had not fallen into the hands of the barons. The Capitoline was still held by the people. But commerce, industry, and the arts had all disappeared. Rome had long been cut off from connection with the active world, and when the work of material revival and rebuilding began, not only architects and sculptors, but stone masons and carpenters had to be brought in from Tuscany and Umbria.
Under the pontificates of Sixtus IV. and his two successors, Pintelli, a pupil of Brunellesco, ornamented Rome with such monuments as San Pietroin Montorio, the façade of St. Peter, and the Sistine Chapel. He brought to his work the boldness and taste of his master, who had made profound study of the monuments of ancient Rome.
This was the period of the firstrenaissance, with its charms and imperfections, at once timid and capricious, imitating the models of antiquity in their details, but utterly mistaking the proportions which are the essential, while succeeding brilliantly in the accessories and ornaments borrowed from the ancients and used in profusion with some endeavor to adapt them to the ideas and needs of the period. The fundamental principle of architecture, which requires that the exterior should express or respond to the use for which the interior is destined, was unknown to Pintelli.
To break the monotony of the lines, the façade of any given building was, as it were, framed, decoration was freely used, and the object was to please the eye, no matter by what means. At that day, the architect was also the painter, and the majority of artists were both. The firstrenaissanceobtained its apogee toward the year 1500. In the nature of things it had then outlived its day, and a change became indispensable at the risk of degradation.
Fortunately Bramante was ready to answer the call. He was from Umbria, and Raphael was his nephew. He had studied in the north of Italy, where, amid plains devoid of stone, the architect was forced to use brick. Hence the novelty of combination introduced by him in Rome, whose inexhaustible stone quarries were such ancient monuments as the Coliseum. It is from the absence of heavy building-stone and the contrast of the German taste of the Longobards with the Byzantine style of Ravenna that the Lombard style is begotten. It brought with it precisely what therenaissancemost needed, namely, its exquisite sentiment of proportions, and it forms the transition between the two schools of therenaissance, the latter of which formed the golden era of architecture in Italy.
Its reign in Rome has left indelible traces. Its productions—and among them are the court of St. Damas, the Belvedere, the galleries of the Vatican, the Giraud palace—were the pride of the age. They taught the comprehension of proportions, the calculation of perspective, the culture of harmony of detail andensemble, reformed false taste, and created an epoch in profane architecture. With increase of public security, even the Roman barons began to understand that the greatest beautyof the architectural art might be found elsewhere than in a high tower or a battlemented block-house. Even themezzo-ceto, or middle class, began to contract a taste for something beyond the absolutely necessary, and sought to adorn even their modest habitations. A private dwelling-house built at this period and exclusivelybramantesquemay still be seen in Rome on thestrada papale, opposite theGoverno Vecchio. It yet bears the date of its construction (1500) and the name of its builder.
After the death of Bramante appeared Raphael, Michael Angelo, Giulio Romano, and Balthasar Peruzzi, who, prodigal of their treasures of genius, created a golden age.
Romano's Villa Madama became the type of the country-seat; Peruzzi's Farnesina, that of the modern palace. Raphael, more as painter than as architect, composed the designs of the palace Vidoni. It was the great epoch of the culture of simplicity in grandeur, of disdain for the small and the superfluous, of faithful and noble expression of the idea conceived.
The models of antiquity were still followed, but they were transformed. The architect translated modern conceptions into the sonorous but dead and strange language of the old Romans. In interior ornamentation, however, the artist could give free rein to his inspirations, and throw off the trammels of the severe rules scrupulously followed as to the façade and the general composition of the design. Alas! it was here they planted the germs of degeneration and decay. Public taste—never a safe guide—seized upon and clung to these prodigalities of an exuberant and fantastic imagination supposed to be inexhaustible. At Florence, in his work on the chapel of the Medicis, Michael Angelo was the first to enter this flowery but treacherous path.
We see and admire these niches, windows, and ornaments, charming indeed to the eye, but which have noraison d'être. It was at a later period, under the pontificate of Paul III., that the painter of the "Last Judgment" and the sculptor of "Moses" revealed himself at Rome, as an architect stamped his work on the Farnese palace, and astonished the world by reconstructing St. Peter's. Soon this style gained the upper hand. Simplicity yielded to riches; logic to caprice; unrestricted liberty succeeded the voluntary curb which the great masters of the epoch had imposed upon themselves. Presently came pauses. Halts were made. As in all human affairs, action and reaction succeeded. Not so much in details as inensemble, Vignoli in Rome, Palladio at Vicenza, and to a certain degree Scamazzi in Venice, brought back architecture to the sobriety of the commencement of the century.
But the death of Michael Angelo appeared to have completely demoralized the architects who survived. For thirty years he had reigned supreme. In him alone had the popes confidence; and upon architects employed by them, they imposed the obligation of following him. Piero Ligorio, architect of St. Peter, was dismissed because he manifested an intention to put aside Michael Angelo's plans. In thus officially guarding the manes of the dead master, they apparently hoped to transfer his genius to those who succeeded him. But it was a sad and fatal mistake.
The amount of building effected in Rome during the last third of the sixteenth century has never, probably, been exceeded. In examining the productions of that epoch, the struggle between the servile imitators of Buonarotti and the men of progress,desirous, but through lack of originality incapable, of emancipating themselves, is readily discerned. But let us leave this retrospect, descend the steps of the Pincian Hill, and, traversing the Piazza di Spagna and the Via Condotti, enter
at the points where to-day's tourist sees the Via della Fontanella, by which he goes toward the bridge of St. Angelo, on his way to St. Peter's. Here our travellers of 1585, passing under the arch of Marcus Aurelius, which separated the Corso into two distinct parts, and was afterwards swept away by Alexander VII. to straighten and widen the thoroughfare, find themselves really in Rome. On either side are solidly built houses without windows or balconies, covered with frescoes, and so high that the sun reaches the pavement only at mid-day. Looking down the Corso, the traveller perceives at its extremity, above thepalazettoof St. Mark, the battlemented convent ofAra Cœli, and the tower of the Capitol. Leaving the Colonna place and the Antonine column to the right, our travellers soon reach the place and palace of St. Mark, with its immense battlemented façades, surmounted by a colossal tower built of stone almost entirely taken from the Coliseum. With the exception of some few modifications in the windows of the façade fronting on the Via del Gesú, and in the roof of the tower which formerly projected, this palace—now known as the Austrian—to-day appears to us as the traveller saw it three hundred years ago. Near by is the Church and Convent of the Apostles, where in after-years were shown the cells occupied by the two friars who became respectively Sixtus V. and Clement XIV. (Ganzanelli). When the monks of this convent called in a body upon Sixtus V. to felicitate him on his accession, the cook of the community went up alone to the pope at the close of the audience. "Holy Father," said he, "you doubtless remember the wretched repasts of which you partook when with us?" Sixtus replied that the expression "wretched repasts" perfectly described the meals in question. "Well," continued the cook, "the cause was the want of good water—give us water."
Sixtus declared that this was the only reasonable demand yet made of him, and immediately ordered the construction in the ancient court of a beautiful fountain, which, although much injured by time, yet exists.
Still progressing towards the Capitol, our travellers pass theGesú. In the small house adjoining it Ignatius Loyola died, and St. Francis Borgia has but lately expired there. And now they ascend to the Capitol by thecordonataof Michael Angelo. Looking still onward, they catch a glimpse of the Forum (Campo Vaccino), enlivened only by droves of browsing cattle and here and there a searcher of buried antique statues. Beyond the Arch of Titus all is silent solitude.
The modern, active, living
was within the triangle bounded by the Corso, the Tiber, and the Capitol. Our travellers turn their faces towards the St. Angelo Bridge, and approach it by long, narrow, and crooked streets, nearly corresponding with the Via Giulia and the Monserrato which we to-day traverse. This was the Faubourg St. Germain of the period, full of palaces, but stately and silent. The strangersfind the activity, movement, display, and exuberant activity of Rome in the street now known as theBanchi, then lined with the residences of wealthy bankers, in the rich Spanish quarter beyond the Piazza Navona, in theTordinoneandCoronari.
From the rising to the setting of the sun, throngs of people fill these badly paved thoroughfares, which are more thickly lined with palaces as they approach the bridge. Our strangers are impressed with the great crowd of people, and are of the opinion that it exceeds that of the Marais in Paris, and is second only to the throngs they saw in Venice. About the Pantheon and the Minerva are the houses already mentioned where travellers and visitors to Rome find furnished suites of apartments—the Fifth Avenue and St. Nicholas Hotels of the period. A few years later (1595), on beholding this, the Venetian ambassador writes that "Rome has reached the apogee of its grandeur and prosperity."
With difficulty a passage through the crowd is effected, and the task is rendered even dangerous by the large number of carriages in circulation.
In 1594, there were eight hundred and eighty-three private carriages in the city. They were almost an essential. The great St. Charles Borromeo said, "There are two things necessary in Rome—save your soul and keep a carriage." And a singular-looking carriage it was to our eyes. In shape resembling a cylinder open at both ends, with doors at either side, knocked and tossed about in a sort of basket on four clumsy wheels. The elegants and beaux of the day usually had an opening in the top of the vehicle through which, as they progressed, they admired fair ladies at their windows. "They make an astrolabe of their carriage," thundered a preacher in denunciation of the practice. The crowd increases as the St. Angelo Bridge is approached, and it equals the human pressure of the period of the jubilee as described by Dante:[94]
Come i Roman, per l'esercito molto,L'anno del giubbileo, su per lo ponteHanno a passar la gente modo tolto;Che dall' un late tutti hanno la fronteVerso 'l castello, e vanno a Santo Pietro;Dall' altra sponda vanno verso 'l monte (Giordano).Dante,Inferno, ch. xviii.
Come i Roman, per l'esercito molto,L'anno del giubbileo, su per lo ponteHanno a passar la gente modo tolto;Che dall' un late tutti hanno la fronteVerso 'l castello, e vanno a Santo Pietro;Dall' altra sponda vanno verso 'l monte (Giordano).Dante,Inferno, ch. xviii.
Come i Roman, per l'esercito molto,L'anno del giubbileo, su per lo ponteHanno a passar la gente modo tolto;
Che dall' un late tutti hanno la fronteVerso 'l castello, e vanno a Santo Pietro;Dall' altra sponda vanno verso 'l monte (Giordano).
Dante,Inferno, ch. xviii.
No ladies are seen. They seldom go out, and then only in carriages. We find the modern Italians highly demonstrative. Their ancestors were more so, as our travellers noticed at every step. Men meeting acquaintances in the street exchanged profound bows. Friends embraced "with effusion." People threw themselves on their knees before those of whom they had favors to ask.
for invited guests were sumptuous and of long duration. The culinary art of that epoch—as we learn from a work of Bartholomew Scarpi, theGrand Vatelof the sixteenth century and head cook of the saintly Paul V., whose personal meals cost sixty cents a day, but who, in state receptions, entertained magnificently—was something wonderful, according to our modern ideas. For grand dinners, there were four courses. The first consisted of preserved fruits and ornamented pastry, from which, on being opened, little birds flew out, making it literally avol au vent. Then came the other courses composed of a multitude of the most diversedishes, poultry with all the feathers on, capons cooked in bottles, meat, game, and fish, alternating with sweet dishes in confused pell-mell, utterly subversive of all our modern gastronomic ideas. Some dishes were prepared with rose-water, and substances the most heterogeneous and contradictory were mingled in the same preparations. The sublimity of the style was to effect the sharpest possible contrast of materials and odors.
The wines most in favor were the heady wines of Greece, the Malvoisy, and the great Neapolitan brands, the Lachrima and theMangiaguerra, described as black in color, powerful, spirituous, and so thick that it could almost be cut. So, at least, reports the Venetian Bernardo Navagero, writing from Rome in 1558: "E possente e gagliardo, nero e tantospesso che si potria quasi tagliare."
Before the dessert, the cloth was removed, the guests washed their hands, and the table was covered with sweet dishes, highly perfumed, preserved eggs, and syrups.
Both before and after the repast, distinguished guests used what we would now call finger-bowls and mouth-glasses, demonstratively and even noisily. On arising from table, bouquets of flowers were distributed among the guests. From contemporaneous statements as to the cost of various entertainments of that period, we should judge that the Roman provision supply was much cheaper than we to-day find it in those marvels of modern architecture, the Washington and Fulton Markets. Thus, for instance, a wedding-supper, given by a Roman nobleman (Gottofredi), and which was at the time (1588) noted for its beauty as well as its extravagance, cost five hundred crowns, equivalent, allowing for the difference in specie values, to about nine hundred dollars of our money.
during the carnival, are, of course, witnessed by our travellers. These races were formerly one of the traditional holiday amusements of the Piazza Navona, which is on the site of a Roman amphitheatre, and they were transferred to the Corso by Paul II. (1468). Seated in the small room of the corner of the Palazetto of St. Mark, whose windows command a view of the entire length of the Corso, this good-natured pontiff, who was fond of promoting the innocent amusement of his subjects, witnessed the running, and had thebarberi(little horses) stopped at that point. The poor governors of Rome have ever since borne and still bear the servitude of this tradition. Four hundred years have gone by since Paul II. sat at the window on the Corso, but to this day the Governor of Rome, clothed in the official robes, whose cut and fashion have not varied a line in all that time, must, in the very same room and at the very same window, witness the running and have the horses stopped at the same points. Under Gregory XIII. these races had somewhat degenerated. Buffaloes of the Campagna, as well as horses, were run, and races were even made for children and for Jews. Sixtus V. reformed all this and made new regulations, which, with slight modifications, are to this day in force.
At the period of which we treat, there existed a decided taste for the drama—such as it then was—but itwas a taste exercised under difficulties. During the carnival of 1588, permission was obtained, as a great favor, from Sixtus V. to allow representations by the Desiosi troupe, at that time the most celebrated in Italy. But the license was hampered with the following conditions:
First.The representations should take place in the daytime.
Second.No woman should appear on the stage.
Third.No spectator should be admitted with arms about his person.
Such a public edifice as a theatre was at that time unknown in Italy. True, many princes had halls constructed in their palaces for dramatic representations, and the Olympic Academy of Vicenza erected a building for the purpose, which was completed on the designs of Palladio.
As for the dramas represented, it is easy to understand their inferiority when we know that Guarini'sPastor Fidogained a reputation not yet entirely lost, by reason not of its merit, but because of the inferiority of every dramatic production of the time.
The costumes, decorations, andmise en scèneformed the main attractions, but the plays themselves loudly proclaimed the decay of literature. They possessed neither originality, invention, nor poetry. When we contemplate our own elevated and purified stage of the present period, with its bouffe, Black Crook, blondes, and brigands, how profoundly should we not pity the benighted Italians of 1585!
About this time, the first edition of Tasso'sJerusalem Deliveredmade its appearance. Issued without the author's consent, it was both defective and incorrect. In spite of the enmity of the Grand Duke Francis and, what was more to be feared, of the opposition of the Della Cruscan Academy, theJerusalemat once achieved an immense success—a success purely due to its beauty of diction. Contemporary criticisms of Italian poets whose names have since become immortal read strangely now. Tasso was sneered at, Ariosto's merit seriously contested, and Dante absolutely condemned.
"This poet," says Giuseppe Malatesta, a distinguished writer of that day, "has borrowed the wings of Icarus to remove himself as far as possible from the vulgar, and, by dint of searching for the sublime, he has fallen into an obscure sea of obscurities. He is both philosopher and theologian. Of the poet he has only the rhyme. To measure his hell, his purgatory, his paradise, one needs astrolabes. To understand them, one should constantly have at hand some theologian capable of commenting upon his text. He is crude and barbarous; he strives to be disgusting and obscure when it would really cost him less effort to be clear and elegant, resembling in this certain great personages who, possessed of an admirable calligraphy, nevertheless, through pure affectation, write as illegibly as possible."
In presenting our American Catholic readers with a notice of theLife of the Princess Amelia Galitzin, it would be sufficient apology to mention that this illustrious lady was the mother of the great religious pioneer of Pennsylvania—that worthy priest whose services in the cause of Catholicity in our country have endeared his name to the American church and have kept his memory still alive in the filial love born of a new generation whose fathers he evangelized.
But even if this apostle-prince had never landed on American shores; never sacrificed an opulent position and a brilliant career, to labor as a humble missionary in the wild western forests of Pennsylvania; never indelibly engraved his name, as he has done, on that soil, now teeming with industrial and religious life, there is that in the life of the princess, his mother, which would amply recommend it to our interested attention.
Her career was beyond the common run of lives. It was wonderful in its blending of the ordinary with the extraordinary. It is the story of a great, strong mind—a high-principled soul, entrammelled in circumstances commonplace, disadvantageous, and entirely beneath it, struggling for ascendency to its own level above them. A notice, then, of her life possesses a double interest for our readers—its own intrinsic interest, and that which it borrows from the foreshadowing of the great and useful life spent in our country, with which we have already been made acquainted, and of which, we are glad to learn, we are soon to have a more extended account.
The Princess Amelia Galitzin was born at Berlin, in August, 1748. Her father, the Count de Schmettau, a field-marshal of Prussia, was a Protestant. Her mother, the Baroness de Ruffert, was a Catholic. This difference in the religion of the parents led to the understanding that the children of the marriage should receive, according to their sex, a different religious education. Amelia, the only daughter, was destined, then, to be educated in the Catholic faith. For this purpose she was sent, at the early age of four years, to a Catholic boarding-school at Breslau.
It seems that at this establishment the religious as well as the secular training was sadly defective; for, at the end of nine years, the young countess left thepensionnatwith no instruction, little piety—even that little of a false kind—and with but one accomplishment, a proficiency in music, the result of the cultivation of a great natural talent. As for literary acquirements, she scarce could read or write. Another school was now selected for her, and this selection reveals the negligent character of her mother, who, from failing to use a wise discretion, or to exert that softening and moulding influence that mothers hold as a gift from nature, may be held accountable for the troubled darkness and painful wanderings of mind thatafflicted her daughter in her curious after-career. At thirteen she was placed at a kind of day-college, in Berlin, directed by an atheist. Such a step would have been a dangerous experiment, even with a child of the most ordinary mind, whose impressions are easily effaceable, but with the self-reliant spirit and keen intellect that were destined to be developed in Amelia, it was more than dangerous, it was a ruinous trial. The results of her eighteen months' attendance at this school were not immediately apparent, at least they were but negatively so. At scarcely fifteen years of age, she left this atheist school to become a woman of the world, by making what is technically called her entrance into society. What that entailed on a member of a noble house, and in a gay capital like Berlin, especially the Berlin of the eighteenth century, we may well surmise. There was another feature in its society worth attention, beyond the stereotyped round oflévées,soirées, and midnight revels of high life. The great dark cloud of incredulity had just settled on sunny France. France then stood at the head of the western nations. A reflection of her brilliancy was found in surrounding societies. Imitation of her tastes, literary and material, was deemed no disgrace. Even her quick, dancing, musical language was ludicrously set, by fashion, to the rough, guttural tones of the Teutonic tongue—so great was her fascinating influence. No wonder, then, that the thick shadows of that dark cloud in which she had shrouded her faith should have fallen heavily around her. They fell on Prussia, and fell heaviest when Voltaire became the guest of Frederick. The fœtid, contagious atmosphere floated in on the society of her capital. To be rational was the rage, when rational meant incredulous. Statesmen became skilled in the new philosophy. Since the king had turned philosopher, grand ladies suddenly found themselves profoundly intellectual and controversial, and their drawing-rooms became like thesalons de Paris—no longer the frivolous halls of pleasure, the depots for the lively gossip of theniaiseriesof life, but private school-rooms, inner circles in aid of the grand revolt of reason against God which had already begun throughout Europe.
In such society, then, did this young girl, fresh from an atheist school, find herself at the age of fifteen, with no arm of a Christian to do battle for her soul; neither the "shield of faith" nor "the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." But, happily, that society was not immediately to possess her young heart. Anennui—a nameless weariness—intensified by a morbid self-love, now settled on her mind. And it was in this trial that her defective instruction first began to tell against her. The only relic of its early impressions left her was a confused notion of the horrors of hell and the power of the devil, which now rose before her but to increase her misery. Beyond that, she believed in nothing, hoped for little in this life, and saw not the next. True, she accompanied her mother to Mass on Sunday, but to her it was as an idle show. She understood as little about the ceremonies as about the text of the delicately-bound French prayer-book she was obliged to hold in her hand. She could find nothing in what she knew or saw of religion to fill the void that caused the weariness of her heart. She determined to seek relief in reading. Her father's library was scant. So she sent rather a confiding request to the proprietor of a neighboring reading-roomto supply a young lady who was anxious to improve herself with useful books. This gentleman's ideas of improvement and utility were somewhat singular, for he forthwith dispatched a large packet of sensational romances. With the same confiding spirit she accepted the selection, and novel after novel she fairly devoured, devoting night and day to her new occupation. That the frivolities of a gay society had no attractions for her as a resource in her extremity, that they could not "minister to her mind diseased," shows a soul of no ordinary mould, and shows, too, that it was not through the senses, but through the intellect, that its cravings were to be allayed. Comparative peace of mind returned, for she made her reading a very preoccupying labor by keeping a diary of its results and impressions. Music, always her favorite pastime, she now made her recreation.
She was just beginning to taste the sweets of living in a little peaceful, busy world within herself, when a young lady, who had been an intimate friend of hers, was admitted to a share in her occupations. This resulted in not only breaking her utter isolation from society, but in leading her to mingle in it once more. The calm of the previous months was not entirely undisturbed. At intervals the thoughts of her utter irreligiousness would conjure up again those appalling images of Satan and hell, and their recurrence became more frequent as she relented in her labors. But now in the gay drawing-room assemblies she met many ladies of her own rank who, professing to be Catholics, did not hesitate to express freely, in their brilliant conversations, the sentiments of incredulity which filled her own mind. In their example she found her self-justification. She believed it fashionable to think and act as other ladies, and so, dismissing what she now deemed her idle fancies, she permitted herself undisturbed to glide into the easy way of unbelief.
But an unseen mercy followed on her path, and soon again cast before her warning signs of her danger. Her fears of the supernatural grew again; and this time, in spite of every example, in spite of every effort to treat them as fancies that could be laughed away, they increased to such an extent that her health became endangered. Once more she formed a plan of escape from her terrors of mind and the weariness they entailed—this time an unaccountable and for her an unexpected one. She resolved to devote herself to meditation, that, as she said in her journal, "by force of thought she might raise herself to union with the Supreme Being," and thus neutralize the effects of the frightful pictures of eternal punishments which wearied her imagination. We cannot help seeing in this effort a noble struggle of a great mind, untutored in childhood, and left in early youth without guidance or encouraging support.
She immediately entered on her new project, and made great and persevering efforts; but she groped in the dark and made little progress in meditating. Yet these efforts were not wholly unavailing. She succeeded by her bare strength of thought in impressing deeply and thoroughly on her mind the dignity of a highly moral life, which led her to the conviction that everything gross or vile was utterly unworthy of the noble soul that dwelt within us.
What child of sixteen have we ever known or heard of whose young life presents a history of mind so curious and so wonderful? Few even of riper years have ever displayeda mere, bare natural power of soul at once so strong and so refined as that which led Amelia to so beautiful a conclusion.
Be that as it may, it was for her a saving result in the change that was now about to come over her position in life. It was arranged at this time, by her parents, that the young countess should join the court, in the capacity of lady robe-keeper to the wife of Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia, brother to Frederick II.
If we called the court society of that epoch gilded corruption, we believe we would be epitomizing the detailed chronicle of its character. Yet, armed with her high-souled conviction, Amelia glided untainted through its seductions and scandals, though her youth and beauty and the affectionate simplicity of her manners made her the object of much attention.
From the character of her mind we may well imagine that she had little relish for her new duties. To any one of a high order of intellect, and consequent intellectual aspirations, the mean, material duties of arranging a wardrobe, sorting dresses, seeing them set out in their respective turns, and changed with every changing fashion—in a word, being a mere waiting-maid to any one, no matter of what rank, must necessarily be irksome and distasteful. And though we will not draw the exaggerated sarcastic picture that Lord Macaulay gives of Frances Burney's life at the court of England, yet the fact that the young countess stole many an hour from her irksome post and still more wearying ceremonious court-pleasures to enjoy the instructive conversation of elderly men of known literary tastes and acquirements, gives us full ground for at least compassionating her in a position so evidently unbefitting her gifted and aspiring mind.
In her twentieth year she accompanied the princess on a summer trip to the waters at Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa. It was during their residence at the former place she first met and received the addresses of the Prince Dmitri Galitzin. The story of their love does not seem to possess anything above the ordinary interest, and even extended over a much shorter period than is usual before marriage. All we learn about it is, that the match seemed very advantageous in the eyes of her protectress the princess and her brother, General Count de Schmettau (her mother, long extremely delicate, having died during her residence at the court), and that the marriage ceremony was performed with greatéclatin August of the same year in which the proposal had been made and accepted.
Almost immediately after her marriage she had to set out with her husband for the court of St. Petersburg, of which he was an attaché. Her sojourn, however, in the Russian capital was very brief, for soon after his arrival the prince was sent as ambassador to the Hague, in Holland. Five years previously he had filled the same post at Paris, where he became the intimate friend of Voltaire and Helvetius. For the latter he paid the expenses of the publication of his famously infamous work,De l'Esprit. He himself seems to have been quite alittérateur. He contributed, while in Paris, to theJournal des Savants, and published two or three works of a scientific and political character. But to return.
A new life now opened for Amelia at the Hague. She became the star of the brilliant society that daily filled the halls of the palace of the Prince Ambassador of Russia; she lived incourtly splendor, and received the flattery of homage that queens might have coveted.
She had now resided two years in Holland, and had given birth to two children, a daughter and a son. It may be naturally expected that now the duties of a mother would bring her life and her mind to the level of ordinary interest. Not so. The routine duties of her station had all along been tasteless to her. The constant round of pleasures which engaged her, the flatteries she received, in which meaner minds would have loved to live and revel, had for her no soothing or beguiling influence; not even the total change of existence and occupation which married life induces wrought any change upon her spirit. An aching void was still within her heart, and, seeing nothing around her with which to fill it, she began to pine away. At length a strong inclination seized her, one of those yearnings for some one project which swallows all our thoughts and to which all else must yield; we may call it a humor precisely in Ben Jonson's sense: