‘Where all is strength below, and all above is grace,’—
‘Where all is strength below, and all above is grace,’—
‘Where all is strength below, and all above is grace,’—
‘Where all is strength below, and all above is grace,’—
glittering like a sun-beam on the Sybil’s Temple at top, or darting on a rapid antithesis to the dark grotto of the God beneath, loading the prismatic spray with epithets, linking the meeting beauties on eachside the abrupt, yawning chasm by an alliteration, painting the flowers, pointing the rocks, passing the narrow bridge on a dubious metaphor, and blending the natural and artificial, the modern and the antique, the simple and the quaint, the glimmer and the gloom in an exquisite profusion of fluttering conceits. He would be able to describe it much better, with its tiny cascades and jagged precipices, than his friend Lord Byron has described the Fall of Terni, who makes it, without any reason that I can find, tortuous, dark, and boiling like a witch’s cauldron. On the contrary, it is simple and majestic in its character, a clear mountain-stream that pours an uninterrupted, lengthened sheet of water over a precipice of eight hundred feet, in perpendicular descent, and gracefully winding its way to the channel beyond, while on one side the stained rock rises bare and stately the whole height, and on the other, the gradual green woods ascend, moistened by the ceaseless spray, and lulled by the roar of the waterfall, as the ear enjoys the sound of famous poet’s verse. If this noble and interesting object have a fault, it is that it is too slender, straight, and accompanied with too few wild or grotesque ornaments. It is the Doric, or at any rate the Ionic, among water-falls. It has nothing of the texture of Lord Byron’s terzains, twisted, zigzag, pent up and struggling for a vent, broken off at the end of a line, or point of a rock, diving under ground, or out of the reader’s comprehension, and pieced on to another stanza or shelving rock.—Nature has
‘Poured it out as plainAs downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne.’
‘Poured it out as plainAs downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne.’
‘Poured it out as plainAs downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne.’
‘Poured it out as plain
As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne.’
To say the truth, if Lord Byron had put it intoDon Juaninstead ofChilde Harold, he might have compared the part which her ladyship has chosen to perform on this occasion to an experienced waiter pouring a bottle of ale into a tumbler at a tavern. It has somewhat of the same continued, plump, right-lined descent. It is not frittered into little parts, nor contrasted into quaintness, nor tortured into fury. All the intricacy and contradiction that the noble Poet ascribes to it belong to Tivoli; but then Tivoli has none of the grandeur or violence of the description inChilde Harold. The poetry is fine, but not like.
As I have got so far on my way, I may as well jump the intermediate space, and proceed with my statistics here, as there was nothing on the road between this and Rome worth mentioning, except Narni (ten miles from Terni), the approach to which overlooks a fine, bold, woody, precipitous valley. We stopped at Terni for theexpress purpose of visiting the Fall, which is four or five miles from it. The road is excellent, and commands a succession of charming points of view. You must pass the little village of Papinio, perched like a set of pigeon-houses on the point of a rock about half-way up, which has been battered almost in pieces by French, Austrians, and others at different times, from a fort several hundred feet above it, and that looks directly down upon the road. When you get to the top of the winding ascent, and immediately before you turn off by a romantic little path to the waterfall, you see the ranges of the Abruzzi and the frozen top of the Pie de Lupo. Along this road the Austrian troops marched three years ago to the support of good government and social order at Naples. The prospect of the cold blue mountain-tops, and other prospects which the sight of this road recalled, chilled me, and I hastened down the side-path to lose, in the roar of the Velino tumbling from its rocky height, and the wild freedom of nature, my recollection of tyranny and tyrants. On a green bank far below, so as to be just discernible, a shepherd-boy was sleeping under the shadow of a tree, surrounded by his flock, enjoying peace and freedom, scarce knowing their names. That’s something—we must wait for the rest!
We returned to the inn at Terni too late to proceed on our journey, and were thrust, as a special favour, into a disagreeable apartment. We had the satisfaction, however, to hear the united voices of the passengers by two vetturinos, French and Italian men and women, lifted up against the supper and wine as intolerably bad. The general complaint was, that having paid so much for our fare, we were treated like beggars—comme des gueux. This was true enough, and not altogether unreasonable. Let no one who can help it, and who travels for pleasure, travel by a vetturino. You are treated much in the same manner as if in England you went by the caravan or the waggon. In fact, this mode of conveyance is an imposition on innkeepers and the public. It is the result of a combination among the vetturino owners, who bargain to provide you for a certain sum, and then billet you upon the innkeepers for as little as they can, who when thus obtruded upon them, under the guarantee of a grasping stage-coach driver, consider you as common property or prey, receive you with incivility, keep out of the way, will not deign you an answer, stint you in the quantity of your provisions, poison you by the quality, order you into their worst apartments, force other people into the same room or even bed with you, keep you in a state of continual irritation and annoyance all the time you are in the house, and send you away jaded and dissatisfied with your reception, and terrified at the idea of arriving at the nextplace of refreshment, for fear of meeting with a renewal of the same contemptible mortifications and petty insults. You have no remedy: if you complain to the Vetturino, he says it is the fault of the innkeeper; if you remonstrate with the innkeeper, he says he has orders from the Vetturino only to provide certain things. It is of little use to try to bribe the waiters; they doubt your word, and besides, do not like to forego the privilege of treating a vetturino passenger as one. It is best, if you travel in this manner, to pay for yourself; and then you may stand some chance of decent accommodation. I was foolish enough to travel twice in this manner, and pay three Napoleons a day, for which I might have gone post, and fared in the most sumptuous manner. I ought to add, in justice, that when I have escaped from the guardianship of Monsieur le Vetturino and have stopped at inns on my own account, as was the case at Venice, Milan, and at Florence twice, I have no reason to complain either of the treatment or the expence. As to economy, it is in vain to look for it in travelling in Italy or at an hotel; and if you succeed in procuring a private lodging for a time, besides the everlasting trickery and cabal, you are likely to come off with very meagre fare, unless you can eat Italian dishes. I ought, however, to repeat what I believe I have said before, that the bread, butter, milk, wine and poultry that you get here (even ordinarily) are excellent, and that you may also obtain excellent tea and coffee.
We proceeded next morning (in no very good humour) on our way to Spoleto. The day was brilliant, and our road lay through steep and narrow defiles for several hours. The sides of the hills on each side were wild and woody; indeed, the whole ride was interesting, and the last hill before we came to Spoleto, with a fine monastery embosomed in its thick tufted trees, crowned our satisfaction with the journey. Spoleto is a handsome town, delightfully situated, and has an appearance (somewhat startling in Italy) as if life were not quite extinct in it. It stands on the slope of a range of the Apennines, extending as far as Foligno and Perugia, and ‘sees and is seen’ to a great distance. From Perugia in particular (an interval of forty miles) you seem as if you could put your hand upon it, so plain does it appear, owing to the contrast between the white stone-houses, and the dark pine-groves by which it is surrounded. The effect of this contrast is not always pleasant. The single cottages or villas scattered in the neighbourhood of towns in Italy, often look like dominos or dice spread on a dark green cloth. We arrived at Foligno early in the evening, and as a memorable exception to the rest of our route, found there an inn equally clean and hospitable. From the windows of our room we could see the young people of the town walking outin a fine open country, to breathe the clear fresh air, and the priests sauntering in groups and enjoying theotium cum dignitate. It was for some monks of Foligno that Raphael painted his inimitable Madonna.
We turned off at Assizi to view the triple Franciscan church and monastery. We saw the picture of Christ (shewn by some nuns), that used to smile upon St. Francis at his devotions; and the little chapel in the plain below, where he preached to his followers six hundred years ago, over which a large church is at present built, like Popery surmounting Christianity. The church on the top of the hill, built soon after his death in honour of the saint, and where his heart reposes, is a curiosity in its kind. First, two churches were raised, one on the top of the other, and then a third was added below with some difficulty, by means of excavations in the rock. The last boasts a modern and somewhat finical mausoleum or shrine, and the two first are ornamented with fresco paintings by Giotto and Ghirlandaio, which are most interesting and valuable specimens of the early history of the art. I see nothing to contemn in them—much to admire—fine heads, simple grouping, a knowledge of drawing and foreshortening, and dignified attitudes and expressions, some of which Raphael has not disdained to copy, though he has improved upon them. St. Francis died about 1220, and this church was finished and ornamented with these designs of the chief actions of his life, within forty months afterwards; so that the pictures in question must be about six hundred years old. We are not, however, to wonder at the maturity of these productions of the pencil; the art did not arise out of barbarism or nothing, but from a lofty preconception in the minds of those who first practised it, and applied it to purposes of devotion. Even the grace and majesty of Raphael were, I apprehend, but emanations of the spirit of the Roman Catholic religion, and existed virtually in the minds of his countrymen long before and after he transferred them, with consummate skill, to the canvass. Not a Madonna scrawled on the walls near Rome, not a baby-house figure of the Virgin, that is out of character and costume, or that is not imbued with an expression of resignation, benignity, and purity. We were shewn these different objects by a young priest, who explained them to us with a gracefulness of manner, and a mild eloquence, characteristic of his order. I forgot to mention, in the proper place, that I was quite delighted with the external deportment of the ecclesiastics in Rome. It was marked by a perfect propriety, decorum, and humanity, from the highest to the lowest. Not the slightest look or gesture to remind you that you were foreigners or heretics—an example of civility that is far from being superfluous, even in the capital of the Christian world. It may be said that this is art, and a desire to gain upon the good opinion ofstrangers. Be it so, but it must be allowed that it is calculated to this end. Good manners have this advantage over good morals, that they lie more upon the surface; and there is nothing, I own, that inclines me to think so well of the understandings or dispositions of others, as a thorough absence of all impertinence. I do not thinktheycan be the worst people in the world who habitually pay most attention to the feelings of others; nor those the best who are endeavouring every moment to hurt them. At Perugia, while looking at some panels in a church painted by Pietro Perugino, we met with a young Irish priest, who claimed acquaintance with us as country-folks, and recommended our staying six days, to see the ceremonies and finery attending the translation of the deceased head of his order from the church where he lay to his final resting-place. We were obliged by this proposal, but declined it. It was curious to hear English spoken by the inmate of a Benedictine Monastery,—to see the manners of an Italian priest engrafted on the Irish accent—to think that distant countries are brought together by agreement in religion—that the same country is rent asunder by differences in it. Man is certainly an ideal being, whom the breath of an opinion wafts from Indus to the Pole, and who is ready to sacrifice the present world and every object in it for a reversion in the skies! Perugia is situated on a lofty hill, and is in appearance the most solid mass of building I ever beheld. It commands a most extensive view in all directions, and the ascent to it is precipitous on every side. Travelling this road from Rome to Florence is like an eagle’s flight—from hill-top to hill-top, from towered city to city, and your eye devours your way before you over hill or plain. We saw Cortona on our right, looking over its wall of ancient renown, conscious of its worth, not obtruding itself on superficial notice; and passed through Arezzo, the reputed birth-place of Petrarch. All the way we were followed (hard upon) by another Vetturino, with an English family, and we had a scramble whenever we stopped for supper, beds, or milk. At Incisa, the last stage before we arrived at Florence, an intimation was conveyed that we should give up our apartments in the inn, and seek for lodgings elsewhere. This modest proposition could come only from English people, who have such an opinion of their dormant stock of pretended good-nature, that they think all the world must in return be ready to give up their own comforts to oblige them. We had two French gentlemen in the coach with us, equally well-behaved and well-informed, and two Italians in the cabriolet, as good-natured and ‘honest as the skin between their brows.’ Near Perugia we passed the celebrated lake of Thrasymene, near which Hannibal defeated the Roman consul Flaminius. It struck me as not unlike Windermere in character andscenery, but I have seen other lakes since, which have driven it out of my head. Florence (the city of flowers) seemed to deserve its name as we entered it for the second time more than it did the first. The weather had been cold during part of our journey, but now it had changed to sultry heat. The people looked exceedingly plain and hard-featured, after having passed through the Roman States. They have the look of the Scotch people, only fiercer and more ill-tempered.
I have already described the road between Florence and Bologna. I found it much the same on returning; for barren rocks and mountains undergo little alteration either in summer or winter. Indeed, of the two, I prefer the effect in the most dreary season, for it is then most complete and consistent with itself: on some kinds of scenery, as on some characters, any attempt at the gay and pleasing sits ill, and is a mere piece of affectation. There is so far a distinction between the Apennines and Alps, that the latter are often covered with woods, and with patches of the richest verdure, and are capable of all the gloom of winter or the bloom of spring. The soil of the Apennines, on the contrary, is as dry andgrittyas the rocks themselves, being nothing but a collection of sand-heaps and ashes, and mocks at every idea that is not of a repulsive and disagreeable kind. We stopped the first night at Traversa, a miserable inn or almost hovel on the road side, in the most desolate part of this track; and found amidst scenes, which the imagination and the pen of travellers have peopled with ghastly phantoms and the assassin’s midnight revelry, a kind but simple reception, and the greatest sweetness of manners, prompted by the wish, but conscious of being perhaps without the means to please. Courtesy in cities or palaces goes for little, means little, for it may and must be put on; in the cottage or on the mountain-side it is welcome to the heart, for it comes from it. It then has its root in unsophisticated nature, without the gloss of art, and shews us the original goodness of the soil or germ, from which human affections and social intercourse in all their ramifications spring. A little boy clung about its mother, wondering at the strangers; but from the very thoughts of novelty and distance, nestling more fondly in the bosom of home. What is the map of Europe, what all the glories of it, what the possession of them, to that poor little fellow’s dream, to his sidelong glance at that wide world of fancy that circles his native rocks!
The second morning, we reached the last of the Apennines that overlook Bologna, and saw stretched out beneath our feet a different scene, the vast plain of Lombardy, and almost the whole of the North of Italy, like a rich sea of boundless verdure, with towns and villas spotting it like the sails of ships. A hazy inlet of the Adriatic appeared to the right (probably the Gulph of Comachio). We strained our eyes in vain to catch a doubtful view of the Alps, but they were still sunk below the horizon. We presently descended into this plain (which formed a perfect contrast to the country we had lately passed), and it answered fully to the promise it had given us. We travelled for days, for weeks through it, and found nothing but ripeness, plenty, and beauty. It may well be called the Garden of Italy or of the World. The whole way from Bologna to Venice, from Venice to Milan, it is literally so. But I anticipate.—We went to our old inn at Bologna, which we liked better the second time than the first; and had just time to snatch a glimpse of the Guidos and Domenichinos at the Academy, which gleamed dark and beautiful through the twilight. We set out early the next morning on our way to Venice, turning off to Ferrara. It was a fine spring morning. The dew was on the grass, and shone like diamonds in the sun. A refreshing breeze fanned the light-green odorous branches of the trees, which spread their shady screen on each side of the road, which lay before us as straight as an arrow for miles. Venice was at the end of it; Padua, Ferrara, midway. The prospect (both to the sense and to the imagination) was exhilarating; and we enjoyed it for some hours, till we stopped to breakfast at a smart-looking detached inn at a turning of the road, called, I think, theAlbergo di Venezia. This was one of the pleasantest places we came to during the whole of our route. We were shewn into a long saloon, into which the sun shone at one extremity, and we looked out upon the green fields and trees at the other. There were flowers in the room. An excellent breakfast of coffee, bread, butter, eggs, and slices of Bologna sausages was served up with neatness and attention. An elderly female, thin, without a cap, and with white thread-stockings, watched at the door of a chamber not far from us, with the patience of an eastern slave. The door opened, and a white robe was handed out, which she aired carefully over a chaffing-dish with mechanical indifference, and an infinite reduplication of the same folds. It was our young landlady who was dressing for church within, and who at length issued out, more remarkable for the correctness of her costume than the beauty of her person. Some rustics below were playing at a game, that from the incessant loud jarring noises of counting that accompanied it, implied equally good lungs and nerves in theperformers and by-standers. At the tinkling of a village bell, all was in a moment silent, and the entrance of a little chapel was crowded with old and young, kneeling in postures of more or less earnest devotion. We walked forward, delighted with the appearance of the country, and with the simple manners of the inhabitants; nor could we have proceeded less than four or five miles along an excellent footpath, but under a broiling sun, before we saw any signs of our Vetturino, who was willing to take this opportunity of easing his horses—a practice common with those sort of gentry. Instead of a fellow-feeling with you, you find an instinctive inclination in persons of this class all through Italy to cheat and deceive you: the more easy or cordial you are with them, the greater is their opinion of your folly and their own cunning, and the more are they determined to repel or evade any advances to a fair understanding: threaten, or treat them with indignity, and you have some check over them; relax the reins a moment, and they are sure to play you some scurvy trick.
At Ferrara we were put on short allowance, and as we found remonstrance vain, we submitted in silence. We were the more mortified at this treatment, as we had begun to hope for better things; but Mr. Henry Waister, our Commissary on the occasion, was determined to make a good thing of his three Napoleons a-day; he had strained a point in procuring us a tolerable supper and breakfast at the two last stages, which must serve for some time to come; and as he would not pay for our dinner, the landlord would not let us have one, and there the matter rested. We walked out in the evening, and found Ferrara enchanting. Of all the places I have seen in Italy, it is the one by far I should most covet to live in. It is theidealof an Italian city, once great, now a shadow of itself. Whichever way you turn, you are struck with picturesque beauty and faded splendours, but with nothing squalid, mean, or vulgar. The grass grows in the well-paved streets. You look down long avenues of buildings, or of garden walls, with summer-houses or fruit-trees projecting over them, and airy palaces with dark portraits gleaming through the grated windows—you turn, and a chapel bounds your view one way, a broken arch another, at the end of the vacant, glimmering, fairy perspective. You are in a dream, in the heart of a romance; you enjoy the most perfect solitude, that of a city which was once filled with ‘the busy hum of men,’ and of which the tremulous fragments at every step strike the sense, and call up reflection. In short, nothing is to be seen of Ferrara, but the remains, graceful and romantic, of what it was—no sordid object intercepts or sullies the retrospect of the past—it is not degraded and patched up like Rome, with upstart improvements, with earthenware and oil-shops;it is a classic vestige of antiquity, drooping into peaceful decay, a sylvan suburb—
‘Where buttress, wall and towerSeem fading fast awayFrom human thoughts and purposes,To yield to some transforming power,And blend with the surrounding trees.’
‘Where buttress, wall and towerSeem fading fast awayFrom human thoughts and purposes,To yield to some transforming power,And blend with the surrounding trees.’
‘Where buttress, wall and towerSeem fading fast awayFrom human thoughts and purposes,To yield to some transforming power,And blend with the surrounding trees.’
‘Where buttress, wall and tower
Seem fading fast away
From human thoughts and purposes,
To yield to some transforming power,
And blend with the surrounding trees.’
Here Ariosto lived—here Tasso occupied first a palace, and then a dungeon. Verona has even a more sounding name; boasts a finer situation, and contains the tomb of Juliet. But the same tender melancholy grace does not hang upon its walls, nor hover round its precincts as round those of Ferrara, inviting to endless leisure and pensive musing. Ferrara, while it was an independent state, was a flourishing and wealthy city, and contained 70,000 inhabitants; but from the time it fell into the hands of the Popes, in 1597, it declined, and it has now little more than an historical and poetical being.
From Ferrara we proceeded through Rovigo to Paduathe Learned, where we were more fortunate in our inn, and where, in the fine open square at the entrance, I first perceived the rage for vulgar and flaunting statuary, which distinguishes the Lombardo-Venetian States. The traveller to Venice (who goes there to see the masterpieces of Titian or Palladio’s admired designs), runs the gauntlet all the way along at every town or villa he passes, of the most clumsy, affected, paltry, sprawling figures, cut in stone, that ever disgraced the chisel. Even their crucifixes and common Madonnas are in bad taste and proportion. This inaptitude for the representation of forms in a people, whose eye for colours transcended that of all the world besides, is striking as it is curious: and it would be worth the study of a man’s whole life to give a true and satisfactory solution of the mystery. Padua, though one of the oldest towns in Italy, is still a place of some resort and bustle; among other causes, from the number of Venetian families who are in the habit of spending the summer months there. Soon after leaving it, you begin to cross the canals and rivers which intersect this part of the country bordering upon the sea, and for some miles you follow the course of the Brenta along a flat, dusty, and unprofitable road. This is a period of considerable and painful suspense, till you arrive at Fusina, where you are put into a boat and rowed down one of theLagunes, where over banks of high rank grass and reeds, and between solitary sentry-boxes at different intervals, you see Venice rising from the sea. For an hour and a half, that it takes you to cross from the last point of land to this Spouse of the Adriatic, its long line of spires, towers, churches, wharfs is stretched along thewater’s edge, and you view it with a mixture of awe and incredulity. A city built in the air would be something still more wonderful; but any other must yield the palm to this for singularity and imposing effect. If it were on the firm land, it would rank as one of the first cities in Europe for magnificence, size, and beauty; as it is, it is without a rival. I do not know what Lord Byron and Lady Morgan could mean by quarrelling about the question who first called Venice ‘the Rome of the sea’—since it is perfectly unique in its kind. If a parallel must be found for it, it is more like Genoa shoved into the sea. Genoa standsonthe sea, thisinit. The effect is certainly magical, dazzling, perplexing. You feel at first a little giddy: you are not quite sure of your footing as on the deck of a vessel. You enter its narrow, cheerful canals, and find that instead of their being scooped out of the earth, you are gliding amidst rows of palaces and under broad-arched bridges, piled on the sea-green wave. You begin to think that you must cut your liquid way in this manner through the whole city, and use oars instead of feet. You land, and visit quays, squares, market-places, theatres, churches, halls, palaces; ascend tall towers, and stroll through shady gardens, without being once reminded that you are not onterra firma. The early inhabitants of this side of Italy, driven by Attila and his hordes of Huns from the land, sought shelter in the sea, built there for safety and liberty, laid the first foundations of Venice in the rippling wave, and commerce, wealth, luxury, arts, and crimson conquest crowned the growing Republic;—
‘And Ocean smil’d,Well pleased to see his wondrous child.’
‘And Ocean smil’d,Well pleased to see his wondrous child.’
‘And Ocean smil’d,Well pleased to see his wondrous child.’
‘And Ocean smil’d,
Well pleased to see his wondrous child.’
Man, proud of his amphibious creation, spared no pains to aggrandize and embellish it, even to extravagance and excess. The piles and blocks of wood on which it stands are brought from the huge forests at Treviso and Cadore: the stones that girt its circumference, and prop its walls, are dug from the mountains of Istria and Dalmatia: the marbles that inlay its palace-floors are hewn from the quarries near Verona. Venice is loaded with ornament, like a rich city-heiress with jewels. It seems the natural order of things. Her origin was a wonder: her end is to surprise. The strong, implanted tendency of her genius must be to the showy, the singular, the fantastic. Herself an anomaly, she reconciles contradictions, liberty with aristocracy, commerce with nobility, the want of titles with the pride of birth and heraldry. A violent birth in nature, she lays greedy, perhaps ill-advised, hands on all the artificial advantages that can supply her original defects. Use turns to gaudy beauty; extremehardship to intemperance in pleasure. From the level uniform expanse that forever encircles her, she would obviously affect the aspiring in forms, the quaint, the complicated, relief and projection. The richness and foppery of her architecture arise from this: its stability and excellence probably from another circumstance counteracting this tendency to the buoyant and fluttering,viz., the necessity of raising solid edifices on such slippery foundations, and of not playing tricks with stone-walls upon the water. Her eye for colours and costume she would bring with conquest from the East. The spirit, intelligence, and activity of her men, she would derive from their ancestors: the grace, the glowing animation and bounding step of her women, from the sun and mountain-breeze! The want of simplicity and severity in Venetian taste seems owing to this, that all here is factitious and the work of art: redundancy again is an attribute of commerce, whose eye is gross and large, and does not admit of thetoo much; and as to irregularity and want of fixed principles, we may account by analogy at least for these, from that element of which Venice is the nominal bride, to which she owes her all, and the very essence of which is caprice, uncertainty, and vicissitude!
‘And now from out the watery floorA city rose, and well she woreHer beauty, and stupendous walls,And towers that touched the stars, and hallsPillar’d with whitest marble, whencePalace on lofty palace sprung:And over all rich gardens hung,Where, amongst silver water-falls,Cedars and spice-trees, and green bowers,And sweet winds playing with all the flowersOf Persia and of Araby,Walked princely shapes; some with an airLike warriors; some like ladies fairListening ...In supreme magnificence.’
‘And now from out the watery floorA city rose, and well she woreHer beauty, and stupendous walls,And towers that touched the stars, and hallsPillar’d with whitest marble, whencePalace on lofty palace sprung:And over all rich gardens hung,Where, amongst silver water-falls,Cedars and spice-trees, and green bowers,And sweet winds playing with all the flowersOf Persia and of Araby,Walked princely shapes; some with an airLike warriors; some like ladies fairListening ...In supreme magnificence.’
‘And now from out the watery floorA city rose, and well she woreHer beauty, and stupendous walls,And towers that touched the stars, and hallsPillar’d with whitest marble, whencePalace on lofty palace sprung:And over all rich gardens hung,Where, amongst silver water-falls,Cedars and spice-trees, and green bowers,And sweet winds playing with all the flowersOf Persia and of Araby,Walked princely shapes; some with an airLike warriors; some like ladies fairListening ...In supreme magnificence.’
‘And now from out the watery floor
A city rose, and well she wore
Her beauty, and stupendous walls,
And towers that touched the stars, and halls
Pillar’d with whitest marble, whence
Palace on lofty palace sprung:
And over all rich gardens hung,
Where, amongst silver water-falls,
Cedars and spice-trees, and green bowers,
And sweet winds playing with all the flowers
Of Persia and of Araby,
Walked princely shapes; some with an air
Like warriors; some like ladies fair
Listening ...
In supreme magnificence.’
This, which is a description of a dream of Babylon of old, by a living poet, is realized almost literally in modern Venice.
I never saw palaces anywhere but at Venice. Those at Rome are dungeons compared to them. They generally come down to the water’s edge, and as there are canals on each side of them, you seethemfour-square. The views by Canaletti are very like, both for the effect of the buildings and the hue of the water. The principal are by Palladio, Longhena, and Sansovino. They are massy, elegant, well-proportioned, costly in materials, profuse of ornament. Perhaps if they were raised above the water’s edge on low terraces (as some of them are), the appearance of comfort and security would be greater, though the architectural daring, the poetical miracle would appear less. As it is, they seem literally to be suspended in the water.—The richest in interior decoration that I saw, was the Grimani Palace, which answered to all the imaginary conditions of this sort of thing. Aladdin might have exchanged his for it, and given his lamp into the bargain. The floors are of marble, the tables of precious stones, the chairs and curtains of rich silk, the walls covered with looking-glasses, and it contains a cabinet of invaluable antique sculpture, and some of Titian’s finest portraits. I never knew the practical amount to the poetical, or furniture seem to grow eloquent but in this instance. The rooms were not too large for comfort neither; for space is a consideration at Venice. All that it wanted of an Eastern Palace was light and air, with distant vistas of hill and grove. A genealogical tree of the family was hung up in one of the rooms, beginning with the founder in the ninth century, and ending with the present representative of it; and one of the portraits, by Titian, was of a Doge of the family, looking just like an ugly, spiteful old woman; but with a truth of nature, and a force of character that no one ever gave but he. I saw no other mansion equal to this. The Pisani is the next to it for elegance and splendour; and from its situation on the Grand Canal, it admits a flood of bright day through glittering curtains of pea-green silk, into a noble saloon, enriched with an admirable family-picture by Paul Veronese, with heads equal to Titian for all but the character of thought.
Close to this is the Barberigo Palace, in which Titian lived, and in which he died, with his painting-room just in the state in which he left it. It is hung round with pictures, some of his latest works, such as the Magdalen and the Salvator Mundi (which are common in prints), and with an unfinished sketch of St. Sebastian, on which he was employed at the time of his death. Titian was ninety-nine when he died, and was at last carried off by the plague. My guide who was enthusiastic on the subject of Venetian art, would not allow any falling-off in these latest efforts of his mighty pencil, but represented him as prematurely cut off in the height of his career. He knew, he said, an old man, who had died a year ago, at one hundred and twenty. The Venetians may still live to be old, but they do notpaint like Titian! The Magdalen is imposing and expressive, but the colouring is tinted (quite different from Titian’s usual simplicity) and it has a flaccid, meretricious, affectedly lachrymose appearance, which I by no means like. There is a slabbery freedom or a stiff grandeur about most of these productions, which, I think, savoured of an infirm hand and eye, accompanied with a sense of it. Titian, it is said, thought he improved to the last, and wished to get possession of his former pictures, to paint them over again, upon broader and more scientific principles, as some authors have wished to re-write their works: there was a small model of him in wax, done by a contemporary artist in his extreme old age, shewn in London a year or two ago, with the black velvet cap, the green gown, and a white sleeve appearing from under it, against a pale, shrivelled hand. The arrangement of colouring was so truly characteristic, that it was probably dictated by himself. It may be interesting to artists to be told, that the room in the Barberigo Palace (said to be his painting-room) has nearly a southern aspect. There are some other indifferent pictures hanging in the room, by painters before his time, probably some that he had early in his possession, and kept longest for that reason. It is an event in one’s life to find one’s-self in Titian’s painting-room. Yet it did not quite answer to my expectations—a hot sun shone into the room, and the gondola in which we came was unusually close—neither did I stoop and kiss the stone which covers his dust, though I have worshipped him on this side of idolatry!
‘Ci giace il gran Titiano di Vecelli,Emulator di Zeusi e di gl’Apelli.’
‘Ci giace il gran Titiano di Vecelli,Emulator di Zeusi e di gl’Apelli.’
‘Ci giace il gran Titiano di Vecelli,Emulator di Zeusi e di gl’Apelli.’
‘Ci giace il gran Titiano di Vecelli,
Emulator di Zeusi e di gl’Apelli.’
This is the inscription on his tomb in the church of the Frati. I read it twice over, but it would not do. Why grieve for the immortals? One is not exactly one’s-self on such occasions, and enthusiasm has its intermittent and stubborn fits; besides, mine is, at present, I suspect, a kind of July shoot, that must take its rise from the stock of former impressions. It spread aloft on the withered branches of the St. Peter Martyr, and shot out more kindly still from seeing three pictures of his, close together, at the house of Signor Manfrini (a Venetian tobacconist), an elaborate Portrait of his friend Ariosto—sharp-featured and tawny-coloured, with a light Morisco look—a bronzed duplicate of the Four Ages at the Marquess of Stafford’s—and his Mistress (which is in the Louvre) introduced into a composition with a gay cavalier and a page. I was glad to see her in company so much fitter for her than her old lover; and besides, the varied grouping gave new life and reality to this charmingvision. The two last pictures are doubtfully ascribed to Giorgioni, and this critical equivoque was a source of curiosity and wonder. Giorgioni is the only painter with respect to whom this could be made a question (the distinction between Titian and the other painters of the Venetian school, Tintoret and Paul Veronese, is broad and palpable enough)—and for myself, I incline to attribute the last of the threechef d’œuvresabove enumerated to Giorgioni. The difference, it appears to me, may be thus stated. There is more glow and animation in Giorgioni than in Titian. He is of a franker and more genial spirit. Titian has more subtilty and meaning, Giorgioni more life and youthful blood. The feeling in the one is suppressed; in the other, it is overt and transparent. Titian’s are set portraits, with the smallest possible deviation from the straight line: they look as if they were going to be shot, or to shoot somebody. Giorgioni, in what I have seen of his pictures, as the Gaston de Foix, the Music-piece at Florence, &c. is full of inflection and contrast; there is seldom a particle of it in Titian. An appearance of silence, a tendency to still-life, pervades Titian’s portraits; in Giorgioni’s there is a bending attitude, and a flaunting air, as if floating in gondolas or listening to music. For all these reasons (perhaps slenderly put together) I am disposed to think the portrait of the young man in the picture alluded to is by Giorgioni, from the flushed cheek, the good-natured smile, and the careless attitude; and for the same reason, I think it likely that even the portrait of the lady is originally his, and that Titian copied and enlarged the design into the one we see in the Louvre, for the head (supposed to be of himself, in the background) is middle-aged, and Giorgioni died while Titian was yet young. The question of priority in this case is a very nice one; and it would be curious to ascertain the truth by tradition or private documents of any kind.
I teazed myvalet de place(Mr. Andrew Wyche, a Tyrolese, a very pleasant, companionable, and patriotic sort of person) the whole of the first morning at every fresh landing or embarkation by asking, ‘But are we going to see the Saint Peter Martyr?’ When we reached the Church of Saint John and Saint Paul, the light did not serve, and we got reprimanded by the priest for turning our backs on the host, in our anxiety to find a proper point of view. We returned to the charge at five in the afternoon, when the light fell upon it through a high-arched Gothic window, and it came out in all its pristine glory, with its rich, embrowned, overshadowing trees, its nobly-drawn heroic figures, its blood-stained garments, its flowers and trailing plants, and that cold convent-spire rising in the distance amidst the sapphire mountains and the golden sky. I found everything in its place and as I expected. Yet I am unwilling to say that I saw it through my former impressions: this picture suffices to itself, and fills the mind without an effort; for it contains all the mighty world of landscape and history, grandeur and breadth of form with the richest depth of colouring, an expression characteristic, powerful, that cannot be mistaken, conveying the scene at the moment, a masterly freedom and unerring truth of execution, and a subject as original as it is stately and romantic. It is the foremost of Titian’s productions, and exhibits the most extraordinary specimen of his varied powers. Most probably, as a picture, it is the finest in the world; or if I cannot say it is the picture which I would the soonest have painted, it is at least the one which I would the soonest have. It is a rich feast to the eye, ‘where no crude surfeit reigns.’ As an instance of the difference between Titian and Raphael, you here see the figures from below, and they stand out with noble grandeur of effect against the sky; Raphael would have buried them under the horizon, or stuck them against the landscape, without relief or motion. So much less knowledge had he of the picturesque! Again, I do not think Raphael could have given the momentary expression of sudden, ghastly terror, or the hurried, disorderly movements of the flying Monk, or the entire prostration of the other (like a rolling ruin) so well as Titian. The latter could not, I know, raise a sentiment to its height like the former; but Raphael’s expressions and attitudes were (so to speak) the working out of ‘foregone conclusions,’ not the accidental fluctuations of mind or matter—were final and fixed,[47]not salient or variable. I observed, in looking closer, that the hinder or foreshortened leg of the flying monk rests upon the edge of a bank of earth, from which he is descending. This explains the action of the part better, but I doubt whether this idea of inequality and interruption from the broken nature of the ground is an addition to the feeling of precipitate fear and staggering perplexity in the mind of the person represented. This may be an hypercriticism. The colouring of the foremost leg of this figure is sufficient to prove that the utter paleness of the rest of it is from its having faded in the course of time. The colour of the face in this and the other monk is the same as it was twenty years ago; it has sustained no injury in that time. But for the sun-burnt, well-baked, robust tone of the flesh-colour, commend me to the leg and girded thigh of the robber. What a difference between this and Raphael’s brick-dust!—I left this admirable performance with regret; yet I do not see why; for I have it present with me, ‘in my mind’s eye,’and swear, in the wildest scenes of the Alps, that the St. Peter Martyr is finer. That, and the Man in the Louvre, are my standards of perfection; my taste may be wrong; nay, even ridiculous—yet such it is.
The picture of the Assumption, at the Academy of Painting at Venice, which was discovered but the other day under a load of dirt and varnish, is cried up as even superior to the St. Peter: it is indeed a more extraordinary picture for the artist to have painted; but for that very reason it is neither so perfect nor so valuable. Raphael could not paint landscape; Titian could hardly paint history without the help of landscape. A background was necessary to him, like music to a melodrame. He had in this picture attempted the style of Raphael, and has succeeded and even failed—to admiration. He has given the detached figures of the Roman school, the contrasted, uniform colours of their draperies, the same determined outline, no breaking of the colours or play of light and shade, and has aimed at the same elevation and force of expression. The drawing has nearly the same firmness with more scope, the colouring is richer and almost as hard, the attitudes are imposing and significant, and the features handsome—what then is wanting? That glow of heavenward devotion bent on ideal objects, and taking up its abode in the human form and countenance as in a shrine; that high and abstracted expression, that outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, which Raphael alone could give in its utmost purity and intensity. One glimpse of the Crowning of the Virgin in the Vatican is worth it all—lifts the mind nigher to the subject, dissolves it in greater sweetness, sinks it in deeper thoughtfulness. The eager headlong enthusiasm of the Apostle to the right in a green mantle is the best; the lambent eyes and suffused glow of the St. John are only the indications of rosy health, and youthful animation; the Virgin is a well-formed rustic beauty with a little affectation, and the attitude of the Supreme Being is extravagant and distorted. Raphael could have painted this subject, as to its essential qualities, better; he could not have done the St. Peter Martyr in any respect so well. I like Titian’s Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (notwithstanding the horror of the subject) better than the Assumption, for its characteristic expression, foreshortening, and fine mellow masses of light and shade. Titian could come nearer the manner of Michael Angelo than that of Raphael, from an eye for what was grand and impressive in outward form and position, as his frescoes of Prometheus, Cain and Abel, and another grotesque and gigantic subject on the ceiling of one of the churches, shew. These, in picturesque grouping, in muscular relief, and vastness of contour, surpass MichaelAngelo’s figures in the Last Judgment, however they may fall short of them in anatomical knowledge or accuracy. I also was exceedingly delighted with the Salutation of the Virgin at the Academy, which is shewn as one of his masterpieces, for the mixture of airy scenic effect with the truth of individual portraiture. The churches and public buildings here bear ample testimony to the powers of Titian’s historic pencil, though I did not see enough of his portraits in private collections, of which I had hoped to take my fill. In the large hall of the Academy of Painting are also the fine picture of the Miracle of Saint Mark by Tintoret, an inimitable representation of a religious and courtly ceremony by Paris Bourbon (inimitable for the light, rich, gauze-colouring, and magical effect of the figures in perspective), and several others of vast merit as well as imposing dimensions. The Doge’s Palace and the Council-Chamber of the Senate are adorned with the lavish performances of Tintoret and Paul Veronese; and in the allegorical figures in the ceiling of the Council-Chamber, and in the splendid delineation of a Doge returning thanks to the Virgin for some victory over the Infidels, which occupies the end of it, I think the last-named painter has reached the top of his own and of Venetian art. As an art of decoration, addressing itself to the eye, to the vain or voluptuous part of our constitution, it cannot be carried farther. Of all pictures this Thanksgiving is the most dazzling, the most florid. A rainbow is not more rich in hues, a bubble that glitters in the sun is not more light and glossy, a bed of tulips is not more gaudy. A flight of angels with rosy hues and winged glories connects the heavenly and the earthly groups like a garland of blushing flowers. The skill and delicacy of this composition is equal to its brilliancy of effect. His marriage of Cana (another wonderful performance) is still at Paris: it was formerly in the Refectory of the church of St. Giorgio Maggiore, on an island on the opposite side of the harbour, which is well worth attention for the architecture by Palladio and the altar-piece in bronze by John of Bologna, containing a number of figures (as it appears to me) of the most masterly design and execution.
I have thus hastily run through what struck me as most select in fine art in this celebrated city. To enumerate every thing would be endless. There are other objects for the curious. The Mosaics of the church of St. Mark, the Brazen Horses, the belfry or Campanile, the arsenal, and the theatres, which are wretched both as it relates to the actors and the audience. The shops are exceedingly neat and well-stocked, and the people gay and spirited. The harbour does not present an appearance of much traffic. In the times of the Republic, 30,000 people are said to have slept everynight in the vessels in the bay. Daniell’s Hotel, at which we were, and to which I would recommend every English traveller, commands a superb view of it, and the scene (particularly by moonlight) is delicious. I heard no music at Venice, neither voice nor lute; saw no group of dancers or maskers, and the gondolas appear to me to resemble hearses more than pleasure-boats. I saw the Rialto, which is no longer an Exchange. The Bridge of Sighs, of which Lord Byron speaks, is not a thoroughfare, but an arch suspended at a considerable height over one of the canals, and connecting the Doge’s palace with the prison.
We left Venice with mingled satisfaction and regret. We had to retrace our steps as far as Padua, on our way to Milan. For four days’ journey, from Padua to Verona, to Brescia, to Treviglio, to Milan, the whole way was cultivated beauty and smiling vegetation. Not a rood of land lay neglected, nor did there seem the smallest interruption to the bounty of nature or the industry of man. The constant verdure fatigued the eye, but soothed reflection. For miles before you, behind you, and on each side, the trailing vines hung over waving corn-fields, or clear streams meandered through rich meadow-grounds, and pastures. The olive we had nearly left behind us in Tuscany, and were not sorry to part with its half-mourning appearance amidst more luxuriant scenes and various foliage. The country is quite level, and the roads quite straight for nearly four hundred miles that we had travelled after leaving Bologna; and every foot or acre of this immense plain is wrought up to a pitch of neatness and productiveness, equal to that of a gentleman’s kitchen-garden, or to the nursery-grounds in the neighbourhood of London. A gravel-pit or a furze-bush by the roadside is a relief to the eye. There is no perceptible difference in approaching the great towns, though their mounds of green earth and the mouldering remains of fortifications give an agreeable and romantic variety to the scene; the whole of the intermediate space is literally, and without any kind of exaggeration, one continued and delightful garden. Whether this effect is owing to the felicity of the soil and climate, or to the art of man, or to former good government, or to all these combined, I shall not here inquire; but the fact is so, and it is sufficient to put an end to the idea that there is neither industry nor knowledge of agriculture nor plenty out ofEngland, and to the common proverbial cant about the sloth and apathy of the Italians, as if they would not lift the food to their mouths, or gather the fruits that are drooping into them. If the complaints of the poverty and wretchedness of Italy are confined to the Campagna of Rome, or to some districts of the Apennines, I have nothing to say; but if a sweeping conclusion is drawn from these to Italy in general, or to the North of it in particular, I must enter my protest against it. Such an inference is neither philosophical, nor, I suspect, patriotic. The English are too apt to take every opportunity, and to seize on every pretext for treating the rest of the world as wretches—a tone of feeling which does not exactly tend to enhance our zeal in the cause either of liberty or humanity. If people are wretches, the next impression is that they deserve to be so; and we are thus prepared to lend a helping hand to make them what we say they are. The Northern Italians are as fine a race of people as walk the earth; and all that they want, to be what they once were, or that any people is capable of becoming, is neither English abuse nor English assistance, but three words spoken to the other powers; ‘Let them alone!’ But England, in the dread that others should follow her example, has quite forgotten what she herself once was. Another idea that the aspect of this country and of the country-people suggests, is the fallacy of some of Mr. Malthus’s theories. The soil is here cultivated to the greatest possible degree, and yet it seems to lead to no extraordinary excess of population. Plenty and comfort abound; but they are not accompanied by an appearance of proportionable want and misery, tracking them at the heels. The present generation of farmers and peasants seem well of; the last, probably, were so: this circumstance, therefore, does not appear to have given any overweening presumptuous activity, or headstrong impulse to the principle of population, nor to have determined those fortunate possessors of a land flowing with milk and honey, from an acquaintance with the good things of this life, to throw all away at one desperate cast, and entail famine, disease, vice, and misery on themselves and their immediate descendants. It is not, however, my intention to enter into politics or statistics: let me, therefore, escape from them.
We reached Verona the second day: it is delightfully situated. Mr. Addison has given a very beautiful description of the Giusti gardens which overlook it on one side. They here shew you the tomb of Juliet: it looks like an empty cistern in a common court-yard: you look round, however, and the carved niches with the frescoes on the walls convince you that you are in the precincts of an ancient monastery. The guide also points to the part of thewall that Romeo leaped over, and takes you to the spot in the garden where he fell. This gives an air of trick and fiction to the whole. The tradition is a thousand years old: it is kept up with a tender and pious awe: the interest taken in the story of a passion faithful to death shews not that the feeling israre, but common. Many Italian women have read Shakspeare’s tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, admire and criticise it with great feeling. What remains of the old monastery is at present a Foundling Hospital. On returning from this spot, which is rather low and gloomy, we witnessed the most brilliant sight we had seen in Italy—the sun setting in a flood of gold behind the Alps that overlook the lake of Garda. The Adige foamed at our feet below; the bank opposite was of pure emerald; the hills which rose directly behind it in the most fantastic forms were of perfect purple, and the arches of the bridge to the left seemed plunged in ebon darkness by the flames of light that darted round them. Verona has a less dilapidated, pensive air than Ferrara. Its streets and squares are airy and spacious; but the buildings have a more modern and embellished look, and there is an appearance of greater gaiety and fashion among the inhabitants. The English sometimes come here to reside, though not in such crowds as at Florence, and things are proportionably less dear. The Amphitheatre is nearly as fine and quite as entire as that at Rome: the Gate of Galienas terminates one of the principal streets. We met with nothing remarkable the rest of the way to Milan, except the same rich, unvaried face of the country; the distant Alps hanging like a thin film over the horizon, or approaching nearer in lofty, solid masses as we advanced; the lake of Garda embosomed in them, and the fine fortress of Peschiera buried in its almost subterranean fastnesses like a mole; the romantic town of Virli, with a rainbow glittering over its verdant groves and hills; a very bad inn at Brescia, and a very excellent one at Treviglio. Milan was alive and full of visitors, thick as the ‘motes that people the sun-beam;’ it felt the presence of its lord. The Emperor of Austria was there! Milan (at least on this occasion) was as gay as Bath or any town in England. How times and the characters of countries change with them! In other parts of Italy, as at Rome and at Florence, the business of the inhabitants seemed to be to hide themselves, neither to see nor be seen: here it was evidently their object to do both. The streets were thronged and in motion, and the promenades full of carriages and of elegantly-dressed women, as on a festival or gala-day. I think I never saw so many well-grown, well-made, good-looking women as at Milan. I did not however see one face strikingly beautiful, or with a very fine expression. In this respectthe Romans have the advantage of them. The North has a tinge of robust barbarism in it. Their animation was a little exuberant; their look almost amounts to a stare, their walk is a swing, their curiosity is not free from an air of defiance. The free and unrestrained manners of former periods of Italy appear also to have been driven northward, and to have lingered longer on the confines. The Cathedral or Duomo is a splendid fabric of white marble: it is rich, vast, and the inside solemn and full of a religious awe: the marble is from a quarry on the Lago Maggiore. We also saw the celebrated theatre of the Gran Scala, which is of an immense size and of extreme beauty, but it was not full, nor was the performance striking. The manager is the proprietor of the Cobourg Theatre (Mr. Glossop), and his wife (formerly our Miss Fearon) the favourite singer of the Milanese circles. I inquired after the great pantomime Actress, Pallarini, but found she had retired from the stage on a fortune. The name of Vigano was not known to my informant. I did not see the great picture of the Last Supper by Leonardo nor the little Luini, two miles out of Milan, which my friend Mr. Beyle charged me particularly to see.
We left Milan, in a calash or small open carriage, to proceed to the Isles Borromees. The first day it rained violently, and the third day the boy drove us wrong, pretending to mistake Laveno for Baveno; so I got rid of him. We had a delightful morning at Como, and a fine view of the lake and surrounding hills, which however rise too precipitously from the shores to be a dwelling-place for any but hunters and fishermen. Several English gentlemen as well as rich Milanese have villas on the banks. I had a hankering after Cadenobia; but the Simplon still lay before me. We were utterly disappointed in the Isles Borromees. Isola Bella, belonging to the Marquis Borromeo, indeed resembles ‘a pyramid of sweetmeats ornamented with green festoons and flowers.’ I had supposed this to be a heavy German conceit, but it is a literal description. The pictures in the Palace are trash. We were accosted by a beggar in an island which contains only a palace and an inn. We proceeded to the inn at Baveno, situated on the high road, close to the lake, and enjoyed for some days the enchanting and varied scenery along its banks. The abrupt rocky precipices that overhang it—the woods that wave in its refreshing breeze—the distant hills—the gliding sails and level shore at the opposite extremity—the jagged summits of the mountains that look down upon Palanza and Feriole, and the deep defiles and snowy passes of the Simplon, every kind of sublimity or beauty, changing every moment with the shifting light or point of view from which you beheld them. We were tempted tostop here for the summer in a suite of apartments (not ill furnished) that command a panoramic view of the lake hidden by woods and vineyards from all curious eyes, or in a similar set of rooms at Intra on the other side of the lake, with a garden and the conveniences of a market-town, for six guineas for the half year. Hear this, ye who pine in England on limited incomes, and with a taste for the picturesque! The temptation was great, and may yet prove too strong. We wished, however, to pass the Simplon first. We proceeded to Domo d’ Ossola for this purpose, and the next day began the ascent. I have already attempted to describe the passage of Mont Cenis: this is said to be finer, and I believe it; but it impressed me less, I believe owing to circumstances. The road does not wind its inconceivable breathless way down the side of the same mountain (like the circumgyrations of an eagle), gallery seeing gallery sunk beneath it, but makes longer reaches, and passes over from one side of the valley to the other. The ascent is nearly by the side of the brook of the Simplon for several miles, and you pass along by the edge of precipices and by slender bridges over mountain-torrents, under huge brown rugged rocks, hanging over the road like mighty masses of ruins or castle walls—some bare, others covered with pine-trees to the top; some too steep for any plant to grow on them, others displaying spots of verdure, the thatched cottage, and the winding path half-way up, and dallying with vernal flowers and the winter’s snow to the last moment. The fir generally clothes them, and its spiny form and dark hues combine well with their ‘star-ypointing pyramids,’ and ashy paleness. The eagle screams over-head, and the chamois looks startled round. Half-way up a little rugged path (the pathway of their life) loitered a young peasant and his mistress hand in hand, with some older people behind, following to their peaceful humble home—half hid among the cliffs and clouds. We passed under one or two sounding arches, and over some lofty bridges. At length we reached the village of the Simplon, and stopped there at a most excellent inn, where we had a supper that might vie, for taste and elegance, with that with which Chiffinch entertained Peveril of the Peak and his companion at the little inn, in the wilds of Derbyshire. The next day we proceeded onwards, and passed the commencement of the tremendous glacier of the Flech Horr. Monteroso ascended to the right, shrouded in cloud and mist, at a height inaccessible even to the eye. This mountain is only a few hundred feet lower than Mont-Blanc, yet its name is hardly known. So a difference of a hair’s breadth in talent often makes all the difference between total obscurity and endless renown! We soon after passed the barrier, and foundourselves involved in fog and driving sleet upon the brink of precipices: the view was hidden, the road dangerous. On our right were drifts of snow left there by the avalanches. Soon after the mist dispersed, or we had perhaps passed below it, and a fine sunny morning disclosed the whole amazing scene above, about, below us. On our right was the Swartzenberg, behind us the Simplon, on our left the Flech Horr, and the pointed Clise-Horn—opposite was the Yung-Frow, and the distant mountains of the lake of Geneva rose between, circled with wreaths of mist and sunshine: stately fir-trees measured the abrupt descent at our side, or the sound of dimly-seen cataracts; and in an opening below, seen through the steep chasm under our feet, lay the village of Brigg (as in a map) still half a day’s journey distant. We wound round the valley at the other extremity of it: the road on the opposite side, which we could plainly distinguish, seemed almost on the level ground, and when we reached it we found a still greater depth below us. Villages, cottages, flocks of sheep in the valley underneath, now came in sight, and made the eye giddy to look at them: huge cedars by the road-side were interposed between us and the rocks and mountains opposite, and threw them into half-tint; and the height above our heads, and that beneath our feet, by being perceptibly joined together, doubled the elevation of the objects. Mountains seem highest either when you are at their very summits and look down on the world, or when you are midway up, and the eye takes in the measure of their height at two distinct stages. I think the finest part of the descent of the Simplon is about four or five miles before you come to Brigg. The valley is here narrow, and affords prodigious contrasts of wood and rock, of hill and vale, of sheltered beauty and of savage grandeur. The red perpendicular chasm in the rock at the foot of the Clise-Horn is tremendous; the look back to the snow-clad Swartzenberg that you have left behind is no less so. I grant the Simplon has the advantage of Mont Cenis in variety and beauty and in sudden and terrific contrasts, but it has not the same simple expansive grandeur, blending and growing into one vast accumulated impression; nor is the descent of the same whirling and giddy character, as if you were hurried, stage after stage, and from one yawning depth to another, into the regions of ‘Chaos and old Night.’ The Simplon presents more picturesque points of view; Mont Cenis makes a stronger impression on the imagination. I am not prejudiced in favour of one or the other; the road over each was raised by the same master-hand. After a jaunt like this through the air, it was requisite to pause some time at the hospitable inn at Brigg to recover. It only remains for me to describe the lake of Geneva and Mont Blanc.