morning had been only preparatory. For the first time in ten years the
depths of Etna had been stirred, and I thanked God for my detention at
Malta, and the singular hazard of travel which had brought me here,
to his very base, to witness a scene the impression of which I shall
never lose to my dying day. Although the eruption may continue, and the
mountain pour forth fiercer fires and broader tides of lava, I cannot
but think that the first upheaval, which lets out the long-imprisoned
forces, will not be equalled in grandeur by any later spectacle.
After passing Taormina, our road led us under the hills of the coast,
and although I occasionally caught glimpses of Etna, and saw the
reflection of fire from the lava which was filling up his savage
ravines, the smoke at last encircled his waist, and he was then shut
out of sight by the intervening mountains. We lost a bolt in the deep
valley opening to the sea, and during our stoppage I could still hear
the groans of the mountain, though farther off and less painful to the
ear. As evening came on, the beautiful hills of Calabria, with white
towns and villages on their sides, gleamed in the purple light of the
setting sun. We drove around headland after headland, till the strait
opened, and we looked over the harbor of Messina to Cape Faro and the
distant islands of the Tyrrhene Sea.
PLEBEIAN LIFE IN VENICE.
HORACE ST. JOHN.
[Venice is not all made up of palaces and patricians, not all
bronze and marble, pictures and statuary. Out of the range of all
this, unseen by the ordinary traveller, lies another and humbler
Venice, where the poor pass their straitened lives, but which has
a character and attraction of its own, worthy of being seen and
described. We give St. John's story of discovery in this realm of
what he calls "vulgar Venice."]
It may not be a discovery, but it is a fact not often noticed, that
there is an every-day Venice which is decidedly vulgar,--which means
that it is not all Rialto, Bridge of Sighs, Grand Canal, or Doge's
Palace. But, to judge from poems, pictures, and tourists, the city is
one beautiful dream, of marble and bronze, of jasper and vermilion, of
pictures and the sculptor's breathing models. The temptation is, no
doubt, seducing to pass all your time where the great columns stand,
where the bronze horses, near St. Mark's, glow with all the colors of
the sunset, and where that strangely composed young girl shows you
through the horrible labyrinths of the state prison.
Yet there is another Venice which artists rarely touch, as if all low
life were confined to the Low Countries, where they are eager enough
to sketch fish-stalls and kitchens by the light of "single candle"
Schendel. And this Venice has not a solitary element of romance or
beauty about it. Step into the "omnibus gondola"--the very thought is
enough to obliterate an epic of enthusiasm--and it will land you where
the Venetians lead their common lives, without any Byron to bewail
them. The songless gondoliers of these public boats are a miserable
set of folk. They never save anything; their fathers never saved
anything before them; but they keep up their spirits notwithstanding.
Thus, between Giacomo passing Beppo, "Good luck to you!" "Thanks!" "Be
hanged, you and your thanks!" Or, "Many patrons?" "Many." "You and your
patrons be hanged!" These affectionate greetings are universal.
But the grimy gondola has stopped, and the buying and selling quarter
has been reached. No stately ladies, or very few, here "serpentining,"
as Balzac says, whatever he may mean, along the pavement, and not too
many of the white-bodiced damsels, who look so graceful on canvas, as
if they were always clean and dark Madonnas into the bargain; because,
to tell the truth, these ladies are accustomed, in warm weather, to lay
aside those pretty bodices, and work in an attire at once more light
and more loose. They are exceedingly busy, and the scene is wonderfully
animated.
Venice, providing its dinner, has been compared with a huge ship in
port, taking in provisions. Padua and Vicenza have brought their corn
and oil; the islands have sent their indescribably superb fruit;
Friuli, Istria, Illyria, and the Turkish Archipelago contribute grain,
meat, game, conserves, and pickles; Austria, Hungary, and Dalmatia
supply wine, which is diluted, by the humbler sort of consumers, with
sea water, which the "stick girls," so called from the yokes they
carry on their shoulders, bring about. They are from Friuli, whose
snow-white summits are just visible from here,--and striking enough
they are in their bright bodices, short blue or green skirts, with red
borders, and white Calabrian hats, daintily tipped on one side, in
order that the massive gold hair ornaments or polished steel pins may
be admired. But these charming water-carriers are despised; they live
apart from the other inhabitants; and not a Venetian will ever marry
one of them. Still, they often return to their mountains, tolerably
rich, and their Titian faces are quite as proud with scorn of the
Venetians as those of Venetians are for them.
However, it is market-time, which must not be wasted upon international
antipathies. Nearly everything in Venice is sold, and nearly
everything eatable is eaten, among the inferior classes, in the open
air,--polenta, beef, mutton, fish, frying, grilling, roasting, and
perpetually passing hot into the hands of the _al fresco_ customers.
It is generally very good; but best of all is the bread made "on the
Continent" expressly for Venice, in the incomparable little district of
Piava. Armed with a "tasting order," which a few of the smallest coins
imaginable will command, you pass through the hungry throng. This is
soup, by no means bad, at two-thirds of a half-penny the basin. That is
calves'-head; these are lamb- and pork-chops, with heart and tripe, the
savor whereof is suggestive of ancient sacrifices.
Some of the people keep stalls; others shops, without doors or windows.
It appears odd to a stranger, upon entering a wine-hall, to be offered
a plateful of highly-salted mutton, a comestible which everybody
appears to be devouring. After it a service of fish, the entire flavor
of which has been absorbed in brine. Then you are ready to drink; but
the wine is salted also! There are two delicacies, however, in which
persons of every degree delight, and which induce the denizens of the
opulent quarter to bring their nobility here. The first is a small
white biscuit, made of the most exquisite flour and fresh butter, so
speckless, light, and fragile that they crumble at a rough touch, and
will not keep longer than twelve hours. Who wants to feast upon them,
then, must come to the oven, and, tenderly handling the _bianchetti_,
dip them in the wine of Cyprus, and believe in solid ambrosia. The
second rarity--uniqueness I would say, if there were such a word--is a
little fish, fried in oil, which is sold from morning till night, all
through the season. You shall see a maiden of Venice, gloved like a
Parisian, "well knotted," elegant of costume, and in air patrician, buy
two pennyworth of these dainties,--the whitebait of Italy,--smelling
of oil, fire, and the frying-pan, wrap them in paper, take them to
a cabaret, sit down, and relish them unmistakably over a flask of
Cyprus. She is never alone, however, but accompanied by an escort, who
is stamped a gentleman by that sign infallible in Venice, whether or
not it be so elsewhere,--his dress. At the same table may be seated,
possibly, the very fisherman who provided the banquet.
But what is the meaning of the phrase just used, "well knotted"? Let
her wear the richest silk ever spun in Italy, and the haughtiest
Hungarian hat, with its aigrette of a dove's wing, your Venetian lady
of blue blood is not distinguishable, except by what she has upon
her neck. And this is a gold chain, of apparently countless links,
beautifully brilliant, with that reddish tinge which has so often
been the perplexity of painters, though Titian mastered it, as he did
everything else; and falling from the throat is gathered in a coil
at the waist, where, the larger and heavier the knot, the higher the
patent of social splendor.
Though I am not concerned at present with the aristocracy of the
sea-born city, still, if lofty dames will eat little fishes in a
market-place, they cannot complain of personalities, should the remark
be made that some are dark as ever Giorgione or Carpaccio painted;
while others, to borrow the ejaculation of a rapturous wanderer from
Paris, who was not really in a rapture, and who, of course, did not
mean what he was saying, might be mistaken for the daughters of Aurora,
a contrast reminding you of Adam's two wives in the Talmud.
But madame has finished her _gouter_, and, once more taking a liberty
with my Frenchman, I remark that she "undulates always with an
appearance of perfect satisfaction." She will not be seen here again
until the same freak of appetite seizes her. For, as a rule, the lower
classes--as, indeed, they do everywhere--have their own neighborhoods
to themselves, though in Venice, naturally, owing to the peculiarity
of its position, there are subdivisions. The workmen and artificers
and traders are quite distinct from the boatmen and fishermen, upon
whom they look with contempt, and with whom they were formerly in a
state of incessant feud. The former wear red caps and belts; the belts
and caps of the latter are entirely either black or blue, the capes
having tassels of the same color, which give an Oriental character to a
Venetian crowd.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH OF ST. MARK, VENICE]
And here a curious point occurs. Your great lady prides herself upon
the knot in her gold chain; your fisherman or ferryman wears a scarf
round his neck, and the bigger the knot he can tie the prouder he
is of himself. Again, the gondoliers have their grades of rank. The
lords of the black "water broughams," as some one very much in want of
a smart saying termed them, are in the service of private families,
and hold themselves ready for orders like coachmen. The second degree
is composed--to carry on the analogy--of the canal cabmen, who live
upon chance, upon travellers, and upon Romeos and Juliets, whenever
these young persons are engaged in adventure. Lastly, there are the
gondoliers with fixed stations and fixed destinations, ferrymen who
float to and fro. But they are all very important to Venice. They are
the links of its life; for, singularly enough, it has not bridges
enough, and in this respect is utterly unlike Amsterdam, with which
it is so often and so absurdly compared. If, however, they swear at
one another, they swear at the railway in a chorus. It is rarely,
in these days, that any good luck befalls them. Now and then, to be
sure, a music and singing party, dizzy with the juice of the Dalmatian
grape, attempt to wake the echoes of Tasso among the lagoons, or two
fond fools, fresh from their nuptials in the north, glide over the
moonlit sea, regardless of expense, and look at life through the stars;
yet such Jessica evenings are few and far between, and the Venetian
gondoliers, seen by daylight, look like anything rather than Fenimore
Cooper's hero, or even a daub in a Canaletti canvas. Still, his
ancient art has not deserted him, and he can push his craft along at a
wonderful speed.
There is one peculiarity about them which the stranger does not readily
understand. They speak as though their language was as limpid as the
water on which they live, and made up almost entirely of vowels. You
wish to be set ashore at the steps of the "Luna" hotel? Certainly;
your gondolier knows the "Una" hotel perfectly well. He has another
characteristic, not quite so uncommon: he is an unblushing cheat.
His Venetian customers pay him tenpence, when you, being a stranger,
must pay him half a crown, which is an Italian method of expressing
patriotism, I suppose. Yet he is continually to be found upon his knees
before the altar, and has a patron of his own, whom he invokes upon
every necessary or unnecessary occasion.
From him I turn for a moment to another type,--the _ciceroni_,--only,
however, to mention a single example. She was a young girl who
undertook to show the visitor, fresh from the glories of the ducal
palace, through the black labyrinths of the ducal prison. She took two
wax tapers, lighted them, gave him one, keeping the other herself, and
jingled a great bunch of keys. Then the really pretty and graceful
maiden led the way down a worn, slippery, dark staircase, up another
across the Bridge of Sighs, down again, telling all the way fearful
legends of the place, and plunged deeper into the shadowy recesses at
every step.
"Are you not afraid?" she is asked.
"A Venetian girl feels no fear," is her answer.
That is a terrible interior, however, with its range upon range of
hideous cells; but worst of all is a vault, without a spark of natural
light in it, which seems as if dug in the rock. Its roof is stained
by lampblack; its walls bear traces of clamps and chains. "Here the
secret executions took place; here the son of a doge was beheaded for
daring to love a foreign lady. Only great criminals--that is, great
lords--were put to death here." I wonder whether this tender turnkey,
if she had prisoners under her charge, would be pitiless to them. There
is something painful in the contrast between such a gaol and such a
gaoler.
Leaving her, you pass across the square with its corner group of
beggars, its swarm of bare-headed children, its clusters of boys with
their hair flowing wild, and their brown necks and chests exposed, who
give you an idea that they are expecting their photographs to be taken,
but who, nevertheless, bake themselves in the sun languidly enough, and
act upon the national maxim, "_bisogna stare allegro_." There is but
a solitary influence which can rouse your true Venetian to a state of
excitement, and that is the presence of death. Rich or poor, he hates
it; rich, he rides or rows away to the farthest possible distance;
poor, he hides, if he can, until the object of his abhorrence is
removed. Somehow these vagrants of the island city never starve. They
earn, by one means or another, sufficient for the day, which signifies
sufficient for dinner,--two pennyworth of fish, ready cooked, as
already described; one pennyworth of soup, and one of bread; and it may
be suspected that women and girls do a principal part of whatever work
is done in Venice at all.
You turn into a sequestered nook, resembling one of the smaller
courts opening upon Fleet Street, and a number of damsels, without
dulcimers, are chattering or singing. These are the pearl-threaders,
for pearl-threading is a universal occupation, just as embroidery was
at one time in England. The wealthy do it for amusement, the humbler
classes for gain, of which, as I have said, a very little goes a
long way. It is a popular saying, "You may die of love or hatred in
Venice, but not of hunger;" still, you see many ragged, hollow-eyed,
and pallid wretches, who, in former days, might have been mistaken for
lottery-hunters; but those times, happily, have passed away, though
they presented a spectacle sufficiently interesting four or five years
ago....
Some one has compared Venice to a page of music, with its curious
streets, palaces, museums, canals, and bridges; resembling lines,
notes, double notes, points, crotchets, pauses; its long and straight,
its short, narrow and crooked ways; its open spaces scattered up and
down; its mounting and descending of bridges. I cannot myself see the
truth of the comparison; but so much may be readily admitted,--that
the stranger can easily lose his way, and not easily find it again, in
this maze of land and water, worse than Amsterdam. Unless, however, the
wanderer has some business on hand, the very best way to see Venice
is to be lost in it; because then, instead of the regulation round of
sights, a thousand unexpected novelties strike the eye, in the narrow,
ill-paved, and generally noiseless streets that intersect the islands,
though the hoof of a horse or rumbling of a wheel is never heard in
them.
Opening upon these dingy and tortuous thoroughfares are many of those
back entrances to the mansions of the opulent, which play so prominent
a part in romance and drama, though, as a rule, they are inhabited
by the poorest of the poor to whom an abode is a retreat, not a
home,--since their lives are habitually passed out of doors. As for
furniture, a bedstead and a huge chest or coffer, with a stool or two,
and a small but solid table, constitute the inventory,--if exception be
made of the bowls, and spoons, and bread-knives which the inmates carry
abroad when they intend to banquet beneath that sky in which Tintoretto
and Veronese exulted.
Nothing of marble or mosaic here; nothing of gold or purple; only
squalor, such as is never seen in a town of Holland; such as is
seldom met with, indeed, anywhere out of Ireland or Italy. The water,
however, mingles so intricately with the land that it is impossible
to go many steps without coming upon a bridge and a canal,--not the
canal of the artist, all blue except where richer tints are reflected
by the architecture on either side, but narrow, crooked, overhung by
ugly houses, and rather less sweet to the nostrils than becomes a
city famous for its love of violets. Hither come the itinerants of
the public places when the last loiterers have left the square of
St. Mark's and there is no longer a chance of selling fried cakes or
fish, salt mutton or salt tripe, mock pearls or gold thread to string
them upon; and here my glimpse closes upon Venice, a thousand times
described, yet rarely, I think, from this particular point of view.
ATHENS AND ITS TEMPLES.
J. L. T. PHILLIPS.
[To say anything concerning the claims of Athens to the
traveller's attention would be but a waste of words. For the
student of art and architecture it will long remain a place of
pilgrimage. We reproduce here such a student's story of a visit
to the antiquities of Athens. It is the ancient city of which he
speaks; modern Athens has far less to commend it to attention.]
The day is a happy one to the student-traveller from the Western World
in which he first looks upon the lovely plain of Athens. Rounding the
point where Hymettus thrusts his huge length into the sea, the long,
featureless mountain-wall of Southern Attica suddenly breaks down, and
gives place to a broad expanse of fertile and well-cultivated soil,
sloping gently back with ever-narrowing bounds until it reaches the
foot-hills of lofty Pentelicus. The wooded heights of Parnes enclose it
on the north, while bald Hymettus rears an impassable barrier along the
south. In front of the gently recurved shore stretch the smooth waters
of the Gulf of Salamis, while beyond rises range upon range of lofty
mountain-peaks with strikingly varied outline, terminating on the one
hand in the towering cone of Egina, and on the other in the pyramidal,
fir-clad summit of Cithæron.
Upon the plain, at the distance of three or four miles from the sea,
are several small rocky hills of picturesque appearance, isolated and
seemingly independent, but really parts of a low range parallel to
Hymettus. Upon one of the most considerable of these, whose precipitous
sides make it a natural fortress, stood the Acropolis, and upon the
group of lesser heights around and in the valleys between clustered the
dwellings of ancient Athens.
It was a fitting site for the capital of a people keenly sensitive to
beauty, and destined to become the leaders of the world in matters of
taste, especially in the important department of the Fine Arts. Nowhere
are there more charming contrasts of mountain, sea, and plain,--nowhere
a more perfect harmony of picturesque effect. The sea is not a dreary
waste of waters without bounds, but a smiling gulf mirroring its
mountain-walls and winding about embosomed isles, yet ever broadening
as it recedes, and suggesting the mighty flood beyond from which it
springs. The plain is not an illimitable expanse over which the weary
eye ranges in vain in quest of some resting-place, but is so small
as to be embraced in its whole contour in a single view, while its
separate features--the broad, dense belt of olives which marks the
bed of its principal stream, the ancient Cephisus, the vineyards, the
grain-fields, and the sunny hill-side pastures--are made to produce
their full impression. The mountains are not near enough to be
obtrusive, much less oppressive; neither are they so distant as to be
indistinct or to seem insignificant. Seen through the clear air, their
naked summits are so sharply defined and so individual in appearance as
to seem almost like sculptured forms chiselled out of the hard rock....
So the student-pilgrim from the Western World with native ardor strains
his sight to catch the first glimpse of the Athenian plain and city. He
is fresh from his studies, and familiar with what books teach of the
geography of Greece and the topography of Athens. He needs not to be
informed which mountain-range is Parnes, and which Pentelicus,--which
island is Salamis, and which Egina. Yet much of what he sees is a
revelation to him. The mountains are higher, more varied, and more
beautiful than he had supposed, Lycabettus and the Acropolis more
imposing, Pentelicus farther away, and the plain larger, the gulf
narrower, and Egina nearer and more mountainous, than he had fancied.
He is astonished at the smallness of the harbor at Peiræus, having
insensibly formed his conception of its size from the notices of the
mighty fleets which sailed from it in the palmy days when Athens was
mistress of the seas. He is not prepared to see the southern shore
of Salamis so near to the Peiræus, though it explains the close
connection between that island and Athens, and throws some light upon
the great naval defeat of the Persians. In short, while every object
is recognized as it presents itself, yet a more correct conception is
formed of its relative position and aspect from a single glance of the
eye than had been acquired from books during years of study.
Arrived at the city, his experience is the same. He needs no guide to
conduct him to its antiquities, nor cicerone to explain in bad French
or worse English their names and history. Still, unexpected appearances
present themselves not unfrequently. Hastening towards the Acropolis,
he will first inspect the remains of the great theatre of Dionysus,
so familiar to him as the place where, in the presence of all the
people and many strangers, were acted the plays of his favorite poets,
Æschylus and Sophocles, and where they won many prizes. Hurrying over
the eastern brow of the hill, he comes suddenly upon the spot, enters
at the summit, as many an Athenian did in the olden time, and is
smitten with amazement at the first glance, and led to question whether
this be indeed the site of the ancient theatre. He finds, it is true,
the topmost seats cut in the solid rock, row above row, stripped now
of their marble lining and weather-worn, but yet the genuine ancient
seats of the upper tier. These he expected to find. But whence are
those fresh seats which fill the lower part of the hollow, arranged as
neatly as if intended for immediate use? and whence the massive stage
beyond? He bethinks himself that he has heard of recent excavations
under the patronage of the government, and closer inspection shows that
these are actually the lower seats of the theatre in the time of the
emperor Hadrian, whose favorite residence was Athens, and who did so
much to embellish the city. The front seats consist of massive stone
chairs, each inscribed with the name of its occupant, generally the
priestess of some one of the numerous gods worshipped by that people
so given to idolatry. In the centre of the second row is an elevated
throne inscribed with the name of Hadrian. The stage is seen to be the
ancient Greek stage enlarged to the Roman size to suit the demands of a
later style of theatrical representation.