FROM TURIN TO NOVARA.
At Turin begins Pilgrimage to Rome--Description of
_Diligence_--Dora Susina--Plain of Lombardy--Its Boundaries--Nursed
by the Alps--Lessons taught thereby--The Colina--Inauspicious
Sunset--The Road to Milan--The Po--Its Source--Tributaries and
Function--Evening--Home remembered in a Foreign Land--Inference
thence regarding Futurity--Thunderstorm among the
Alps--Thunderstorm on the Plain of Lombardy--Grandeur of the
Lightning--Enter Novara at Day-break.
I had two objects in view in crossing the Alps. The first was to visit
the land of the Vaudois; the second was to see Rome. The first of these
objects I had accomplished in part; the second remained to be
undertaken.
This plain of Piedmont was the richest my foot had ever trodden; but
often did I turn my eyes wistfully towards the Apennines, which, like a
veil, shut out the Italy of the Romans and the City of the Seven Hills.
At Turin, which the Po so sweetly waters, and over which the snow-clad
hills of the Swiss fling their noble shadows, properly begins my journey
to Rome.
I started in the _diligence_ for Milan about four of the afternoon of
the 21st October. Did you ever, reader, set foot in a _diligence_? It is
a castle mounted on wheels, rising storey upon storey to a fearful
height. It is roomy withal, and has apartments enough within its
leathern walls for well-nigh the population of a village. There is the
glass _coupe_ in front, the drawing-room of the house. There is the
_interieur_, which you may compare, if you please, to the dining-room,
only there you do not dine; and there is the _rotundo_, a sort of cabin
attached, the limbo of the establishment, in which you may find
half-a-dozen unhappy wights for days and nights doing penance. Then, in
the very fore-front of this moving castle--hung in mid air, as it
were--there is the _banquette_. It is the roomiest of all, and has,
moreover, spacious untenanted spaces behind, where you may stow away
your luggage; and, being the loftiest compartment, it commands the
country you may happen to traverse. On this account the _banquette_ was
the place I almost always selected, unless when so unfortunate as to
find it already bespoke. Half-hours are of no value in the south of the
Alps, and a very liberal allowance of this commodity was made us before
starting. At last, however, the formidable process of loading was
completed, and away we went, rumbling heavily over the streets of Turin
to the crack of the postilion's whip and the music of the horses' bells.
On emerging from the buildings of the city, we crossed the fine bridge
over the Dora Susina, an Alpine stream, which attains almost the dignity
of a river, and which, swollen by recent rains, was hurrying on to join
the Po. Our course now lay almost due east, over the great plain of
Lombardy; and there are few rides in any part of the world which can
bring the traveller such a succession of varied, rich, and sublime
sights. The plain itself, level as the floor of one's library, and
wearing a rich carpeting, green at all seasons, of fruits and verdure,
ran out till it touched the horizon. On the north rose the Alps, a
magnificent wall, of stature so stupendous, that they seemed to prop
the heavens. On the south were the gentler Apennines. Between these two
magnificent barriers, this goodly plain--of which I know not if the
earth contains its equal--stretches away till it terminates in the blue
line of the Adriatic. On its ample bosom is many a celebrated spot, many
an interesting object. It has several princely cities, in which art is
cultivated, and trade flourishes to all the extent which Austrian
fetters permit. Its old historic towns are numerous. The hoar of eld is
upon them. It has rags of castles and fortresses which literally have
braved for a thousand years the battle and the breeze. It has spots
where empires have been lost and won, and where the dead of the tented
field sleep their dreamless sleep. It has fine old cathedrals, with
their antique carvings, their recumbent statues of old-world bishops,
and their Scripture pieces by various masters, sorely faded; and here
and there, above the rich foliage of its various woods, like the tall
mast of a ship at sea, is seen the handsome and lofty campanile, so
peculiar to the architecture of Lombardy.
The great Alps look down with most benignant aspect upon this plain.
They seem quite proud of it, and nurse it with the care and tenderness
of a parent. Noble rivers not a few--the Ticino, the Adige, and streams
and torrents without number--do they send down, to keep its beauty ever
fresh. These streams cross and re-cross its green bosom in all
directions, forming by their interlacings a curious network of silvery
lines, like the bright threads in the mine, or the white veins in the
porphyritic slab. Observe this little flower, with its bright petals,
growing by the wayside. That humble flower owes its beauty to yonder
chain. From the frozen summits of the Alps come the waters at which it
daily drinks. And when the dog-days come, and a fiery sun looks down
upon the plain from a sky that is cloudless for months together, and
when every leaf droops, and even the tall poplar seems to bow itself
beneath the intolerable heat, the mountains, pitying the panting plain,
send down their cool breezes to revive it. Would that from the lofty
pinnacles of rank and talent there descended upon the lower levels of
society an influence equally wholesome and beneficent! Were there more
streams from the mountain, there would be more fruits upon the plain.
The world would not be the scorched desert which it is, in which the
vipers of envy and discontent hiss and sting; but a fragrant garden,
full of the fruits of social order and of moral principle. Truly, man
might learn many a useful lesson from the earth on which he treads: the
great, to dispense freely out of their abundance,--for by dispensing
they but multiply their blessings, as Mont Blanc, by sending down its
streams to enrich the plain, feeds those snows which are its glory and
crown,--and the humble, the lesson of a thankful reciprocation. This
plain does not drink in the waters of the Alps, and sullenly refuse to
own its obligations. Like a duteous child, it brings its yearly offering
to the foot of Mont Blanc,--fields of golden wheat, countless vines with
their blood-red clusters, fruits of every name, and flowers of every
hue;--such is the noble tribute which this plain, year by year, lays at
the feet of its august parent. There is but one drawback to its
prosperity. Two sombre shadows fall gloomily athwart its surface. These
are Austria and Rome.
The plain of Lombardy is so broad, and the road to Milan by Novara is so
much on a level with its general surface, that the eye catches the
distant Apennines only at the more elevated points. The screen which
here, and for miles after leaving Turin, shuts out the view of the
Apennines, is the Colina. The Colina is a range of lovely hills, which
rise to a height of rather more than 1200 feet, and run eastward along
the plain a few miles south of the Milan road. Soft and rich in their
covering, picturesque in their forms, and indented with numerous dells,
they look like miniature Alps set down on the plain, nearly equidistant
from the great white hills on the north and the purple peaks on the
south. The sun was near his setting; and his level rays, passing through
fields of vapour,--presages of storm,--and shorn of the fiery brilliancy
which is wont at eve to set these hills on a blaze, fell softly upon the
dome of the Superga, and lighted up the white villas which stud the
mountain by hundreds and hundreds throughout its whole extent. Vividly
relieved by the deep azure of the vineyards, and looking, from their
distance, no bigger than single blocks, these villas reminded one of a
shower of marble, freshly fallen, and glittering in pearly whiteness in
the setting rays.
The road, which to me had an almost sacred character, being the
beginning of my journey to Rome, was a straight line,--straight as the
arrow's flight,--between fields of rich meadow land, and rows of elms
and poplars, which ran on and on, till, in the far distance, they
appeared to converge to a point. It was a broad, macadamized,
substantial highway, of about thirty feet in width, having a white line
of curb-stones placed eight or ten paces apart; outside of which was an
excellent pathway for foot passengers. On the left rose the Alps, calm
and majestic, clothed in the purple shadows of evening.
I have mentioned the Po as flowing past Turin. This stream is doubtless
the relic of that mighty flood which covered, at some former period, the
vast space between the Alps and the Apennines, from the Graian and
Cottian chains on the west, to the shores of the Adriatic on the east.
As the waters drained off, this central channel alone was left, to
receive and convey to the sea the innumerable torrents which are formed
by the springs and snows of the mountains. The noble river thus formed
is called the Po,--the pride of Italy, and the king of its streams. The
Greeks, who clothed it with fable, and drowned Phaeton in its stream,
called it Eridanus. Its Roman appellation was Padus, which in course of
time resolved itself into its present name, the Po. Unlike the Nile,
which rolls in solemn and solitary majesty through Egypt without
permitting one solitary rill to mingle with its flood, the Po welcomes
every tributary, and accepts its help in discharging its great function
of giving drink to every flower, and tree, and field, and city, in broad
Lombardy. It receives, in its course through Piedmont alone, not fewer
than fifty-three torrents and rivers; and in depth and grandeur of
stream it is not unworthy of the praises which the Greek and Roman poets
lavished upon it. The cradle of this noble stream is placed in the
centre of the ancient territory of the Vaudois, whose most beautiful
mountain, Monte Viso, is its nursing parent. A fountain of crystal
clearness, placed half-way up this hill, is its source. Thence it goes
forth to water Piedmont and Venetian-Lombardy, and to mingle at last
with the clear wave of the Adriatic,--emblem of those living waters
which were to go forth from this same land into all quarters of Europe.
The sun had now set; and I marked that this evening no golden beams
among the mountains, no burning peaks, attended his departure. He went
in silent sadness, like a friend quitting a circle which he fears may
before his return be visited with calamity. With him departed the glory
of the scene. The vine-clad Colina, erst sparkling with villas, put out
its lights, and resolved itself into a dark bank, which leaned,
cloud-like, against the sky. The stupendous white piles on the left drew
a thin night vapour around them, and retired from the scene, like some
mighty spirit gathering his robe about him, and leaving the earth,
which his presence had enlightened, dark and solitary. The plain lay
before us a sombre expanse, in which all objects--towns, spires, and
forests--were fast blending into one darkly-shaded and undefined
picture. Dwellers in _diligences_, as well as dwellers in hotels, must
sleep if they can; but the hour for "turning in" had scarce arrived, and
meanwhile, I remember, my thoughts took strongly a homeward direction.
With these, of course, I shall not trouble the reader; only I must be
permitted to mention a misconception into which I had fallen, in
connection with my journey, and into which it is possible others may
fall in similar circumstances. One is apt to imagine, before starting,
that should he reach such a country as Italy, he will there feel as if
home was very distant, and the events of his former life far removed in
point of time. He thinks that a journey across the Alps has somehow a
talismanic power to change him. He crosses the Alps, but finds that he
is the same man still. Home has come with him: the friendships, the
joys, the sorrows, of his past existence are as near as ever; nay, far
nearer, for now he is alone with them; and though he goes southward, and
kingdoms and mountain-chains are between him and his native country, he
cannot feel that he is a foot-breadth more distant than ever. He moves
about through strange lands in a shroud of home feelings and
recollections.
How wretched, thought I, the man whom guilt chases from his country! He
flies to distant lands in the hope of shaking off the remembrance of his
crime. He finds that, go where he will, the spectre dogs his steps. In
Paris, in Milan, in Rome, the grizzly form starts up before him. He must
change, not his country, but his heart--himself--before he can shake off
his companion.
May not the same principle be applicable, in some extent, to our
passage from earth into the world beyond? When at home in Scotland, I
had thought of Italy as a distant country; but now that I was in Italy,
Scotland seemed very near--much nearer than Italy had done when in
Scotland. We who are dwellers on earth think of the state beyond as very
remote; but once there, may we not feel as if earth was in close
proximity to us,--as if, in fact, the two states were divided by but a
narrow gulph? Certain it is that the passage across it will work in us
no change; and, like the stranger in a foreign country, we shall enter
with an eternal shroud of joys and sorrows, springing out of the deeds
and events of our present existence.
I found that if in this region the day had its beauty, the night had its
sublimity and terrors. I had years before become familiar with the
phenomena of thunder-storms among the Alps; and one who has seen
lightning only in the sombre sky of Britain can scarce imagine its
intense brilliancy in these more southern latitudes. With us it breaks
with a red fiery flicker; there it bursts upon you like the sun, and
pours a flood of noonday light over earth and sky. One evening, in
particular, I shall never forget, on which I saw this phenomenon in
circumstances highly favourable to its finest effect. I had walked out
from Geneva to pass a few hours with the Tronchin family, whose mansion
stands on the southern shores of the lake. It was evening; and the deep
rolling of the thunder gave us warning that a storm had come on. We
stepped out upon the lawn to enjoy the spectacle; for in the vicinity of
the Alps, whose summits attract the fluid, the lightning is seldom
dangerous to life. All was dark as midnight; not even the front of the
mansion could we see. In a moment the flash came; and then it was
day,--boundless, glorious day. All nature was set before us as if under
the light of a cloudless sun. The lawn, the blue lake, the distant
Alpine summits, the landscape around, with its pines, villas, and
vineyards, all leaped out of the womb of night, stood in vivid intense
splendour before the eye, and in a twinkling was again gone. This
amazing transition from midnight to noonday, and from noonday to
midnight, was repeated again and again. I was now to witness the
sublimities of a thunder-storm on the plain of Lombardy.
Right before us, on the far-off horizon, gleams of light began to shoot
along the sky. The play of the electric fluid was so rapid and
incessant, as to resemble rather the continuous flow of light from its
fountain, than the fitful flashes of lightning. At times these gleams
would mantle the sky with all the soft beauty of moonlight, and at
others they would dart angrily and luridly athwart the horizon. Soon the
storm assumed a grander form. A ball of fire would suddenly blaze forth,
in livid, fiery brilliancy; and, remaining motionless, as it were, for
an instant, would then shoot out lateral streams or rays, coloured
sometimes like the rainbow, and quivering and fluttering like the
outspread wings of eagles. One's imagination could almost conceive of it
as being a real bird, the ball answering to the body, while the flashes
flung out from it resembled the wings, which were of so vast a spread,
that they touched the Apennines on the one hand, and the Alps on the
other.
The storm took yet another form, and one that increased the sublimity of
the scene, by adding a slight feeling of uneasiness to the admiration
with which we had contemplated it so far. A cloud of pitchy darkness
rose in the south, and crossed the plain, shedding deepest night in its
track, and shooting its fires downward on the earth as it came onwards.
It passed right over our heads, enveloping us for the while (like some
mighty archer, with quiver full of arrows) in a shower of flaming
missiles. The interval between the flashes was brief,--so very brief,
that we were scarcely sensible of any interval at all. There was not
more than four seconds between them. The light was full and strong, as
if myriads and myriads of bude lights had been kindled on the summits of
the Apennines. In short, it was day while it lasted, and every object
was visible, as if made so by the light of the sun. The horses which
dragged our vehicle along the road,--the postilion with the red facings
on his dress,--the meadows and mulberry woods which bordered our
path,--the road itself, stretching away and away for miles, with its
rows of tall poplars, and its white curb-stones, dotted with waggons and
couriers, and a few foot-passengers,--and the red autumnal leaves, as
they fell in swirling showers in the gust,--all were visible. Indeed, we
may be said to have performed several miles of our journey under broad
daylight, excepting that these sudden revelations of the face of nature
alternated with moments of profoundest night. At length the big
rain-drops came rattling to the earth; and, to protect ourselves, we
drew the thick leathern curtain of the _banquette_, buttoning it tight
down all around. It kept out the rain, but not the lightning. The seams
and openings of the covering seemed glowing lines of fire, as if the
_diligence_ had been literally engulphed in an ocean of living flame.
The whole heavens were in a roar. The Apennines called to the Alps; the
Alps shouted to the Apennines; and the plain between quaked and trembled
at the awful voice. At length the storm passed away to the north, and
found its final goal amid the mountains, where for hours afterwards the
thunder continued to growl, and the lightnings to sport.
Order being now restored among the elements, we endeavoured to snatch
an hour's sleep. It was but a dreamy sort of slumber, which failed to
bestow entire unconsciousness to external objects. Faded towns and tall
campaniles seemed to pass by in a ghost-like procession, which was
interrupted only by the arrival of the _diligence_ at the various
stages, where we had to endure long, weary halts. So passed the night.
At the first dawn we entered Novara. It lay, spread out on the dusky
plain, an irregular patch of black, with the clear, silvery crescent of
a moon hanging above it.